Stories tell history of Havelock

One thing was clear at Saturday's Back Porch Conversation at Havelock's Tourist and Event Center. All of the seven speakers had come to Havelock directly or indirectly because of Cherry Point.

The event kicked off the city's celebration of 50 years of incorporation.

Whether it was working to build the station or serving aboard it, everyone had a connection to the base.

George Griffin was Havelock's first mayor and told of his arrival in the community he swore he would eventually have to leave.

"I was born in Pitt County and raised on a tobacco farm," he said. "Had a brother in law who was in the Marine Corps. He said you know you really out to come down and get a job at Cherry Point. and it was the best thing I ever did. I came to Havelock in January of 1948, I went to work on the base in the telephone office and ended up 34 years."

He recalled arriving and going to a housing area known as Splinterville, which was in the vicinity of where Havelock High School is today.

"There were about 500 apartments all heated with coal-fired furnaces," he said. "And, if you wanted hot water, you had to build a fire in a pot burner to get hot water. I thought it was the dirtiest place I had ever seen. I came off of the farm and we didn't have much on the farm now but what we had was pretty clean. It didn't look like Splinterville. I thought I'm not going to be here very long. That shows you how much I know."

Griffin was later a part of the effort to get the town incorporated and became the city's first mayor in 1959.

"So, 1959 was a good year for the Griffin family," he said. "My son was born, the city was incorporated and I was elected mayor of Havelock."

But the fight was not over. He talked of the legal battle that later ensued, with some claiming the election was illegal because it was held at Havelock Elementary School, then an area outside of the area to be incorporated.

"The statutes say that when you are incorporating an area you must hold the election within the area to be incorporated," Griffin said. "We didn't do that. So technically we were wrong in doing that, but the facts were that the election was held in the Havelock Elementary School which was probably 50 or 60 feet from the area to be incorporated and it was also the area in which all of the elections in Havelock had been held over the years.

"So, when we went to the Supreme Court that was declared to be a minor technicality. We didn't hide from people to keep them from finding the polls so they could vote."

Griffin said the city owes a lot to Kennedy Ward, the attorney who fought the legal battle for the city.

"He approached us and offered to work with us to organize the town and offered to be our attorney and not be paid until after the town was up and going and revenue was coming in," Griffin said. "So, thanks to Kennedy Ward I think we got off to a pretty good start."

Longtime resident Nell Hoogendam arrived in Havelock in 1942.

"There was absolutely nothing here," she said. "My father helped to build the first building that was on Cherry Point, and I came down later with my mother to get a job and I worked there and had a terrible time getting used to it. No school. No church. No store. Nothing. So, we have seen the first of everything to be built in Havelock."

She also told the story of meeting her husband, Dick Hoogenam.

"In 1942 or 1943 we moved into one of the flattops, and boy that was really a nice home, then I met a Yankee," she said. "And they said it wouldn't last, but he was called a damn Yankee and my mother said it will never last, but he learned to eat collards and we got the damn out of him, and he learned to eat grits which got the Yankee out of him, and we'll be celebrating our 66th anniversary this coming November, so like Havelock, we've come a long way baby."

Dick Hoogendam remembered his first date with the woman he eventually proposed to.

"We both worked at the same warehouse, 154, a big long warehouse on two sides of the street," he said. "And of course we young Marines would sit out there bare-chested and these girls would walk up there and we'd say ‘We know where you're going.'

"Then the girls gave a party and they were going over to Minnesott Beach. They gathered together, and Nell was the only one that could pronounce my name, HOO-GEN-DAM. So they said ‘You get him.'

"That's where we had our first date, over at Minnesott Beach. I went back home to Canada, and it wasn't the same, and I came back and the first day home I said ‘Will you marry me' and she said yes.

"We've been together almost 66 years and had a great time. Nelly was an instrument mechanic and I worked at the commissary store for over 30 years and out at the bank. We have enjoyed Havelock and enjoyed so many people and met so many people."

Dick Hoogendam also recalled his trip with a neighbor for illegal liquor.

"We drove down to Harlowe. The road wasn't paved and we drove down there and pulled into the yard and the kids were playing around in the yard and we sat there a few minutes," he said. "I think I smoked a cigarette or two and I said ‘What's happening,' and he said ‘We're ready,' so we back out and I said ‘Where's the booze?' He told me the kids put it in the trunk.

"So, I came home and I gave her (Nell) a big cocktail. She drank that thing down and guess what she says. ‘I'm feelin' high.' That was our first introduction to Craven County Corn."

Curly Brazelton flew into Cherry Point for the first time as a young Marine in 1946 when many others were being shipped to China. He said confusion reigned when a group of Marines landed on a short runway off N.C. 101 out of site of the rest of the base.

"We're all standing around and here come an MP," Brazelton said. "We seen all these beaches coming around, you know. The MP says ‘What in the hell are all you doing down here?' We said ‘We don't know.'

"Well back in them days you couldn't see Cherry Point from 101. This one individual holds up his hand and says ‘Sir' and the MP says ‘What do you want?' ... And he said ‘I got a question,' and he said ‘What is it?' He says ‘Sir. Is this China?' We didn't know where China was at."

Marge Goetz came to Havelock because her father was one of the men who built the base. She recalled having to go to New Bern to school.

"The first three weeks they had some Marine buses that took us to school," she said. "And then the county decided that they would drag some really old buses out of the barn, fix them up. But they didn't really fix them up too well. A lot of days the buses didn't get there. And there were some indications that there had been some help keeping those buses from getting there."

She said transportation was so bad she eventually paid $1 a week to be transported to Newport High School, from where she graduated in 1947.

Henry Sermons came to Havelock perched on top of his family's belongings with his brother as they rode from Fort Barnwell in 1943.

"We rode on top of the furniture and all of our belongings," he said. "We had two BB guns and we were coming down from Fort Barnwell through New Bern and were shooting everything we could see with those BB guns."

Sermons later worked as fire chief and became involved in Babe Ruth baseball.

"I love Havelock," said Sermons, whose wife Eva served as a city commissioner. "It's been good to us. There's something about Havelock that's unique. One thing is our age in the community is getting old, but we're still a young community if you look at our elementary schools. It's nice living in a small community of course because you know a lot of people. People say ‘Well why don't you move to New Bern?' They couldn't pay me to move to New Bern."

He said the sound of planes from Cherry Point has never bothered him

"People talk about ‘How can you live around Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point?'

Airplanes don't bother me. I'll tell you what. In 1991 in Desert Storm/Desert Shield when the planes were not flying, it was a ghost town. It was eerie not being able to hear a plane.  You get used to it."

Commissioner Danny Walsh nearly took the long way to Cherry Point as a young Marine arriving in the 1960s. He stopped at the Esso station where he asked directions from Pat Bruno.

"Being a former Marine and a Yankee from New York, he had to mess with me," Walsh recalled. "And I said ‘by the way' once we got that straight ‘How do I get to Cherry Point?' The next thing on the map after New Bern says Cherry Point.

"So Pat says ‘It's real easy. You follow highway 70 to Morehead City. That'll carry you to Beaufort. When you get to Beaufort get on 101 and that'll carry you right to Cherry Point.'

"So as luck would have it, in those days I had much better eyes. When I pulled out of the gas station I saw a sign that said Cherry Point."