INTERVIEWER: Karen Kruse Thomas TAPE NO.: 6.8.95-DO INTERVIEWEE: Darryl Ottaway Original, Stereo, Dolby NO. OF SIDES: 2 NO. OF TAPES: 1 INTERVIEW DATE: June 8, 1995 6PM LOCATION: At the home of Darryl Ottaway, Holly Ridge, NC TOPIC: How the construction of Camp Davis Army Base affected Darryl Ottawa's family and the surrounding community of Holly Ridge. This tape covers Mr. Ottaway's reminiscences about the construction of the base; the jobs that he, his father and mother worked at during and after the war; stories about the soldiers he and his family met at during the war, some of whom boarded with the Ottaway family; and how the base was dismantled and the land was used after the war. Counter No. Topic [Side A] TAPE INDEX 001 Intro announcement, personal background. 011 During 1930s, sawmills were only "public work," pay was 75 cents a day for 10 hours. All work on his family's farm was done by hand, before tractors. Grandfather owned "a couple hundred" acres, 50 or 60 of which was farmable. 035 Ottaway attended the Dixon school, graduated from high school in 1947, with the first class to go for twelve years. 037 Remembers hearing rumors that a base would be built, and that the government would pay local farmers a dollar per acre per year to lease their land, and they would eventually get the land back. Ottaway remembers the community reacted positively to the building of Camp Davis. 050 International Paper Company owned much of the land that Camp Davis was built on. 060 Story about coming home from school near Christmas of 1940 on the dirt road through the camp, and watching workers surveying and "shrubbing" the land. The barracks were built with "handsaws and crowbars and hammers-they didn't have power tools in those days." The troops came in March of 1941. Story about brother reported missing in Navy submarine during World War II. 094 Description of what area was like before Camp Davis was built. Story about community coming together to herd and butcher cows owned by Bill Hardeson. People worked for meat, and shipped the processed meat on the railroad. >fec^9a vr\\\ jb^ \ r}
fc-4^ 125 Life before electricity and running water: hauling water and chopping wood. Ottaway's father worked for Camp Davis contractors on the night shift, unloading railroad cars full of lumber that was shipped in to build the base. Ottaway children hauled water for their mother, who did laundry for Camp Davis soldiers, using a washboard. The base didn't build a laundry until many of the soldiers had already arrived. Although Mrs. Ottaway had been trained as a school teacher and attended Greenville College, she began working at the base laundry after it was built. Ottaway's mother taught at the schoolhouse where his father went to school. 165 "Back in the thirties, people would take politics really seriously....those people were really serious about getting the right man elected....they would have basket parties and make up money to help support their politicians....if they got in a little disagreement, most times they'd settle it, but they'd come in some skinned up! I remember one of those nights, they had the basket party out there, and they all got to fightin....at the old school house." The whole community was active in politics. The Wilmington politicians controlled the base. Wilmington was a "five-family city" for many years. Wealthy families controlled the railroad and the shipyard, and were influential in bringing Camp Davis to Holly Ridge but "when the soldiers got to Wilmington, raising sand, they didn't want it too much then." Story about Ford Motor Company considering the old Camp Davis airfield as a site for a proving ground. Blames politicians in Wilmington for discouraging Ford from building a plant there. New cars used to be shipped on barges up the Cape Fear River, or on the railroad out of Wilmington. 220 Recently, when the government bought land near Holly Ridge to extend Camp Lejeune, Ottaway believes that many landowners, who had inherited the land and had done little to improve it, were unwilling to fight the government to receive a fair price for their land. 230 Dirt road to Maple Hill (now highway 50) ran near Ottaway's father's property. Camp Davis built another dirt road connecting the base to Maple Hill Road. The new road ran across part of Ottaway's father's property. From the new road, the troops would shoot artillery out over the ocean at targets pulled behind a plane. The planes were flown by female pilots. The roads built by the military were open for public use, and benefited the whole community. 265 Most farmers in the area began to phase out farming during the war. Parents worked on the base, and allowed their children to run the farms. After the war, Ottaway's father worked for civil service in the boilerrooms at the base hospital and laundry. Ottaway estimates that several hundred people, mostly women, worked in the base laundry. After Camp Davis closed, Ottaway's mother went to work in the Camp Lejeune laundry until she retired. Ottaway himself began working at the Camp Lejeune laundry, and then worked at the steam plant until he retired. 295 Residents of Holly Ridge welcomed the influx of new people during the construction of the base. Ottaway's family boarded seven or eight construction workers. His mother took their ration stamps to buy groceries and cooked for everyone, and also used the produce and livestock from the farm to feed the extra people. 320 Story about a tornado that struck Ottaway's house in 1935.
W3< 350 Ottaway's father was renting the land he was farming just before Camp Davis was built. The owner offered it to him for $5,000, which he couldn't afford. In 1939, Southern Craft (later bought out by International Paper Company) bought the 6600 acres of land for a dollar an acre. This parcel was the majority of the land recently bought to extend Camp Lejeune. 370 In 1943, Ottaway's father leased a small country store. There were six or eight rooms in the building that the Ottaways rented out to soldiers. 390 Conditions at Camp Davis: tarpaper shacks were built in "Mosquito Holler," where swampy areas had been filled in. Cars had to zigzag around the many pedestrians walking along the streets of the camp, and to obey a 25-mile per hour speed limit strictly enforced by the MPs. 400 Although there was a high turnover of boarders who stayed with the Ottaways, since most left after 60 or 90 days, Mrs. Ottaway kept in touch with some of them. Even though they were drafted, Ottaway remembers that the soldiers at Camp Davis during World War II were very dedicated to their jobs. Ottaway remembers some soldiers who went AWOL being brought back to camp in handcuffs and thrown in the brig. 450 Story about soldiers staying out in the field in pup tents, and locals who were scared the first time they saw the powerful searchlights from the base light up the sky. 470 Cold drinks were at a premium at Camp Davis. Soldiers watched for the delivery truck when it came to the Ottaway's store, and the drinks "hardly had time to get cold before they [the soldiers] would be there wanting them." 480 Beer joints popped up around the outskirts of Camp Davis. The joints often boarded the bar maids who worked there, as well as some soldiers. Ottaway remembers that taxis had a 25-mile limit from the base. The cabs would almost get to Wilmington, and then a cab from Wilmington would have to come out and take the fare the rest of the way. The taxis ran out of gas late at night, and came to Ottaway's store to fill up at all hours. Story about a second lieutenant who ran out of gas on the way to take his pregnant wife to the hospital. [side B] 001 Story about soldiers on practice maneuvers on the Ottaways' land. The community was sometimes invited to eat at the mess tent after the soldiers had eaten. The convoys tore up the dirt road to the Ottaways' house so badly that "we drove more in the woods than we did on the road." Sometimes, convoys blocked the only way that residents had to get out to the main road. At times, the road was so undriveable that residents had to drive a route 27 miles long instead of the two-mile road by the camp. Ottaway talks about counting the vehicles in the convoys when he was a boy. Story about school bus driver who turned down the soldiers' offer to pull him through the ruts in the road and made it through anyway.
V~-M^ 040 Story about riding into town with the sergeant who boarded with Ottaway's family. When Ottaway's shoes had worn out and he didn't have a ration stamp to get new ones, the sergeant got him a new pair from the military supply. 053 Black regiment stayed at Camp Davis. Family's store near Pender was on edge of black community. German prisoners were brought to the camp. A local man, John Hicks spoke German and communicated with the prisoners. Ottaway remembers German soldiers saying, "You people are misinformed. Those Russians are pigs." Ottaway also mentions the Dutch marines stationed at Camp Davis during World War II, but he couldn't understand their language. 090 At the end of World War II, the Navy kept a lease on the camp after the Army had left. The KellEx Corporation used the land from 1946 to 1950(?) to test missiles near Topsail Beach. Locals used to drive down to the beach and park on the concrete slab used to launch the missiles. The company left and went to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It later considered returning to Holly Ridge, but went to Cape Canaveral instead. During the years the land was used for missile testing, there was tight security, with jeep patrols at night. 120 The base was dismantled in 1946. Ottaway remembers that when he graduated from high school in 1947, he helped tear down buildings on the base. He lists the different companies that dismantled and purchased the base buildings the twostory barracks were about $50 apiece. Some buildings went to the highest bidder for as much as $300, or were sold together. Both commercial buyers and local residents bought the buildings and used them as housing. Tom Kenney and J. Burton Smith came from Florida to buy items such as the water and sewer lines, water pumps, wells, sewer lift stations, etc. Kenney also bought 50-60 acres of the base land. Ottaway remembers riding to Orlando and Miami Beach on a tractor-trailer truck loaded with cast-iron water lines. One of the water tanks at Camp Davis is now in Wilmington. Kenney bought all the water towers and sold them, and brought in cranes and bulldozers to dig up all of the water lines. 160 Ottaway says that locals had originally thought that the government would leave all the buildings intact after the war, but no one questioned it when they were sold off instead. "It was a lot of politics. There was a lot of favoritism shown to different ones." 175 While Mr. Kenney was in Holly Ridge, he and his family lived in the old base administration building. The building was about 240 feet long, and had 85 foot wings. Various members of Ottaway's family bought different sections of the building, and made 3 buildings out of it. Ottaway's mother lived in one of the sections for the rest of her life. Ottaway and his wife eventually used the section he bought to open the Camp Davis Restaurant in 1977. 200 After Ottaway graduated from high school in 1947, he worked with salvaging companies to help dismantle the base. After the war, there was a lot of construction along the beach, which Ottaway took part in. People were buying lots and building cottages, and some renovated old buildings. In 1952, Ottaway began working for the civil service at Camp Lejeune. He worked for 9 months in the laundry, and then
c- worked at the steam plant like his father had. After being laid off in 1957, he worked at the commissary, and then as a boiler plant operator at the air station. He eventually became foreman of utilities. When the air station consolidated with Camp Lejeune, he worked for the steam plant at Lejeune until he retired. 225 The construction on Camp Davis began in late 1941 and continued until 1944. After they were no longer needed to build the base, many workers went into civil service jobs, or opened local businesses in plumbing, carpentry, or sheet metal. After the war, most left some went back to their farms, or their homes in other parts of the state. Even though the thousands of war-time residents left after the war, the number of permanent residents in Holly Ridge still grew enough to support a few local businesses. Ottaway points out that it took five or six years to finish dismantling the base, so there were still jobs after the war. Tom Kenney took over the government lease after the war, and paid local landowners two dollars per acre per year to retain use of the land. When the salvage companies did not meet the deadlines to remove the buildings they had bought, Kenney made them buy extensions for as much as $50,000. The companies could take a barracks building they had bought for $50 and make as many as eleven houses from it by reassembling parts from different buildings. 285 Ottaway's worst memory from World War II was wondering whether the soldiers shipping out would ever come back. Story about a young couple from Louisiana who stayed in contact with Ottaway's mother, and whom Ottaway visited in Louisiana in 1970, twenty-seven years later. Ottaway also visited other friends he had met in Holly Ridge during the war, and talks about the joys of seeing old soldiers return to visit him when they come back to see Camp Davis. 375 Ottaway remembers how patriotic the soldiers at Camp Davis were, and thinks that people are more selfish and less patriotic now. Talks about Oliver North and King Solomon. [end of interview]