L. B. Cropper

In the record (6)

1. 1937 · 1937-06-07

   Ocean City put two more men on the beach for the 1937 season

   'Motion was made & carried that life Guard be increased by 2 men' - the last item of the meeting of 7 June 1937, taken with the season a fortnight off. The Beach Patrol had been seven men in August 1936. The same evening the council dealt with the rest of its public safety: Chief L. B. Cropper, Edw. Powell and Nottingham were present, and the council voted to pay Chief Cropper and Nottingham 'one dollar each a week for use of their Cars for town work'; and after discussing 'the regulation of fast driving on Balto & Phila Ave', it agreed to pass an ordinance forbidding reckless driving and instructed the solicitor to prepare it.

   Ocean City Beach PatrolOcean City Police DepartmentEdmond H. JohnsonW. Thomas Elliott

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

2. 1941 · 1941-12-11

   Four days after Pearl Harbor and on the day Germany declared war, the Ocean City council sat down and organised a home defence council — eleven departments, twenty-two names, and a Department of Evacuation.

   The 1940 minute book does not mention the war once, in the year of the fall of France. The 1941 book does not mention it either — until 11 December. The council met at 7:15 on Thursday evening with Mayor C. P. Cropper and Councilmen Harold Rayne and Raymond Bounds, granted a building permit to Chas. S. Powell for a two-apartment dwelling on the alley between 11th and 12th Streets, let the English Diner move to a site next to the Post Office on Dr. Chas. W. Purnell's ground, and resolved to borrow from the Bank of Ocean City to meet bonds and coupons due 1 January. Then: 'Mr. S. Earl Tromley, John I. Timmons and Miss Lena Riggin were present to help in organizeing home defence council and the following were selected to head the orginization.' Those three were not helpful neighbours. As the Worcester Democrat printed a week later, they were the entire executive of the Worcester County Council of Defense — Tromley its Executive Director, Timmons its Chief Air Raid Warden, and Miss Lena H. Riggin its Executive Secretary, all three of Snow Hill — going town to town. They were carrying an order. The same paper prints the telegram that sent them: 'Supplementing my telegram December 10, immediate arrangements must be made to hold blackouts just as quickly as possible. No delay in this matter, as conditions are very serious. Let me know when ready. Col. Henry Barrett, Director of air raid Precaution Service for Maryland.' The roster Ocean City adopted that night, verbatim from the minute: John B. Lynch, Commander. Harold Rayne and L. B. Cropper, Dept. of Public Safety. J. M. Mumford and Robert Allen, Dept. of Public Works. Dr. F. J. Townsend and Guy R. P. Dennis, Dept. Public Health. Archie Davis and Morris Peacock, Dept. Fire Protection. D. Trimper Sr. and Denard Baker, Dept. Transporation. Arthur Davis and Preston Laws, Dept. Gen. Supplies. Rev. Dewees and F. W. Truitt, Dept. Evacuation. Willie Ludlam and Gladys Jackson, Red Cross. E. M. Scott and Chas. J. Jackson, Communication. Bob Jackson and Wm. H. Purnell, Air Wardens. The council adjourned at eleven. Pocomoke City's mayor and council met specially the same Thursday evening and resolved to organise a Civilian Defense Corps of their own, and Pocomoke's published department list — Public Safety, Evacuation, Transportation, Communications, Public Works, Fire Protection, General Supply, Public Health — is the same scheme under the same headings. So the eleven departments were a template handed down, not a local invention; what Ocean City supplied was twenty-two names, and the names are the whole value of the document. By 18 December the county could report that Home Defense Corps in Snow Hill, Pocomoke City, Berlin and Ocean City were 'now complete in every detail', and Mayor Clifford P. Cropper sat on the county council himself.

   Ocean City Home Defense CouncilWorcester County Council of DefenseBank of Ocean CityClifford P. CropperHarold J. RayneE. Raymond BoundsJohn B. LynchS. Earl TromleyMiss Lena H. RigginGladys JacksonMorris PeacockWillie LudlamFrancis J. TownsendArchie DavisRobert AllenJ. M. MumfordDaniel Trimper, Sr.W. Preston LawsF. W. TruittEdward M. ScottWilliam H. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

3. 1942 · 1942-05-06

   With the coast dimmed out and bodies from a torpedoed freighter lately at its Coast Guard station, Ocean City hired a lifeguard captain, three extra policemen and voted $1,750 of public money to advertise the 1942 season.

   The clearest measure of what a resort does in the first summer of a war at its own beach is what it spends. At a special call meeting on Wednesday evening 6 May 1942 — four days after the blackout ordinance, five weeks after the Atwater — the council employed Thomas E. Price as captain of the life guard at $25.00 a week and set the men's pay at $20.00; decided to have McCabe repaint the peeling road signs and 'the new signs to let go for this year'; agreed, on Harold Rayne's motion seconded by Raymond Bounds, that 'the City agreed to finance them for $1750.00 for the season', 'them' being the Chamber of Commerce and its advertising; and told the chief of police to take on three extra police 'and if more were needed to try to secur more as needed'. Set that against 1941, when the town paid its lifeguards $17.50 a week: the men's wage rose to $20 in the year the visitors were least likely to come. The season was run, and it was run in the dark — on 11 September the council's own minute says 'we were dimed out and not sufficent light'.

   Ocean City Chamber of CommerceThomas E. PriceClifford P. CropperHarold J. RayneE. Raymond Bounds

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

4. 1942 · 1942-08-03

   Ocean City held a municipal election on 3 August 1942 and twenty-five votes were cast in four hours — every one of them for the unopposed slate.

   The polls opened at two in the afternoon in the engine room of the fire house and closed at six. Three judges sat: Clarence Wright, C. T. Jackson and John J. Rayne. 'Only 25 votes were cast and were all cast for' Clifford P. Cropper, mayor, 25 votes; E. Raymond Bounds, council, 25; Harman D. Parsons, 25; Harold J. Rayne, 25. Returns were properly made to the city clerk. A town of about 1,052 year-round people, in the first summer of the war at its own beach, returned its mayor to a third term on twenty-five ballots and no opposition. Robert L. Cropper, on the council since 1940 and still on the letterhead in 1942, does not appear among the elected; Parsons replaces him. The new board was sworn in on Friday 11 September before trial magistrate Edward White and organised itself in the city office in the fire house: Cropper mayor, Bounds president of council, Rayne treasurer, Parsons councilman, Edmond H. Johnson city attorney, J. M. Mumford secretary-treasurer, L. B. Cropper chief of police — the same men who had run the town before, in the same order. The election judge C. T. Jackson matters beyond the arithmetic. A Chas. T. Jackson stood on the clerk's March 1941 list of neighbours notified of a building hearing, and he is a different man from the Chas. J. Jackson whom this council put on its Communication department on 11 December 1941. The 1940 census finds him: Charles T. Jackson, 72, head of household 161 in Ocean City, owner of a house valued at eight thousand dollars, with his wife Mabel and a son-in-law from North Carolina. — 1944 FULL PASS, 2026-08-12 [extended]: Turnout returned in 1944. Ocean City's municipal election of 7 August 1944, held in the Engine Room of the Fire House with polls open 2 to 6 PM, drew 452 VOTES - against the 25 cast in 1942. Daniel Trimper Jr. beat the sitting wartime mayor Clifford P. Cropper 231 to 160, and both sitting councilmen finished last of six for the three council seats.

   Clifford P. CropperE. Raymond BoundsHarold J. RayneHerman D. ParsonsClarence WrightCharles T. JacksonJohn J. RayneEdward WhiteEdmond H. JohnsonJ. M. MumfordRobert Lee Cropper

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

5. 1942 · 1942-09-11

   On 11 September 1942 the Ocean City council resolved to stop the autumn's 'colored days' — and gave the dim-out, rubber and gasoline as its reasons.

   For two consecutive years the Ocean City minute book had named no Black resident and no Black institution. In 1942 the silence breaks, and it breaks as an act of policy against Black visitors. The newly sworn council met on the evening of Friday 11 September 1942, and the clerk recorded this, verbatim: 'Councilman Harold J. Rayne reported that he had heard that some of the boardwalk stand people were trying to advertise that there would be colored excursions again this fall starting on Sept 24th and being the Gov. was requesting the saving of rubber and gas and as we were dimed out and not sufficent light that the city was justified in trying to stop the having of colored days and the secretary was instructed to get the chief of police to contact the parties that were advertiseing and request that they abandon the idea for this season.' Four things are in that sentence and each is a finding. First, Ocean City had colored excursions — 'again this fall' — so they were an established autumn trade and not a novelty. Second, the people advertising them were 'boardwalk stand people': white concessionaires who wanted the business, which means the council was overruling its own merchants to keep Black visitors off the beach. Third, every reason given is a war reason — the Governor's rubber and gasoline conservation, and the town being dimmed out with insufficient light — which is what makes the minute so useful: it shows a wartime emergency being picked up and used, and the councilman saying out loud that this made the city 'justified'. Fourth, the instrument was not an ordinance and not a refusal of a licence. It was the chief of police sent to 'request that they abandon the idea', which leaves nothing to appeal against and no record beyond this paragraph. Whether anything ran on 24 September 1942 is not recorded here.

   Harold J. RayneClifford P. CropperE. Raymond BoundsJ. M. Mumford

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

6. 1943 · 1943-07-18

   On the third weekend of July 1943 about 12,000 vacationists virtually filled Ocean City's beach front hotels — and the chief of police said business was still less than half of normal and most cottages and apartments were vacant.

   Source · checked 2026-08-12