Navy veteran, 101, recalls the changes of the decades

CAPE MAY POINT – Richard B. “Dick” Hargrave has seen a lot of changes in the borough over the course of his long life.

Now, at 101, virtually everything looks different to him than it did early on.

“Everything has changed,” he said.

Hargrave said someone who visited the Point in 1923, the year he was born, and came back today would not recognize the place. He said he watched three blocks of Crystal Avenue get washed away. He used the same terminology to refer to the loss of other structures from tropical storms, including the original family home on Stites Avenue.

He was born on March 5, 1923, to Frank and Bertha Hargrave and grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. The family started visiting Cape May Point, as far as he knew, right after his birth, when he was 3 weeks old.

He said every year they would come to Cape May Point on the day after school let out and stay until the day before it started again. He recalled days filled with swimming, fishing and playing tennis. He said he enjoyed catching flounder, but he and his friends would sell croakers three for a quarter, and that’s how they got money. A friend’s dad would catch between 50 and 60 croakers a day and would give some to the boys to sell.

They would take their money to Gruber’s general store, located at Crystal and Stites, and maybe spend a nickel on candy.

The boys had another method for earning money for candy. They would hang around the Sisters of St. Joseph house and “by chance” would encounter the sisters taking a walk. Hargrave said the nuns would ask the boys if they had been good, and the boys would invariably say yes, after which the nuns would give them pennies.

He said when he was growing up and spending summers at the shore, people would rent a house for the entire summer. He said the Point was very much a family town, and people would go down to the beach and sit together and talk, making plans for the evenings.

He remembers when there was a lot more left to the S.S. Atlantus, the concrete ship that ran aground at Sunset Beach. He said there was a lot more superstructure remaining on the ship, and boys would swim out, climb up on the ship and walk around, and dive off.

At one point, he said, you could look down into the hull, and there was a shark living inside. That and the fact that, one time, a young man dove off the Atlantus and did not reappear helped put an end to those adventures.

Hargrave said everything in Cape May Point changed over the years – he said the Pavilion Circle was nothing more than cactus at one time – and so did he. The eighth child out of nine, he went to school in Philadelphia and attended Simon Gratz High School.

His father died before he graduated from high school, where he was class treasurer and won the American Legion Award, which he said was highly sought-after. He said it was not based solely on academics but was given to the most all-around student.

Hargrave had watched his siblings moving out, some going to war, and he attempted unsuccessfully, due to a physical problem, to enlist in the Army. He said he later had surgery to correct the problem and was accepted in the Navy Air Corps, becoming an aviation storekeeper.

He was a member of a Carrier Aircraft Service Unit, which supported aircraft carriers, but he never saw sea duty on a ship because the war ended. He was in the Navy when his mother informed him that a storm had destroyed their house in the Point.

After he was discharged from the Navy he attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance, earning a bachelor’s degree in accounting. He said he attended school at night, working during the day to help out his mother.

He would later be hired by the Uniroyal plant in Philadelphia, where they made plastic products such as seat covers. There he met his wife-to-be, Mabel, and they had to keep their dating a secret because he was her boss and they were not allowed to fraternize. When they finally got engaged, Mabel quit her job and found another. They married in 1948; she died in 2011.

Hargrave said Mabel came from Confluence, Pennsylvania, near the West Virginia state line, and she had never been to the shore before meeting him. With his family’s house having been washed away in a storm, he bought a bank-owned house and had it moved to Stites Avenue. He paid $25 for the 50×100 lot. His only regret is not buying five lots.

He led an active live. He bowled and played golf, tennis and shuffleboard. He was a runner and participated in the Point’s annual run, once winning a ribbon in the over-50 category. He was a trustee and treasurer of Beadle Memorial Presbyterian Church in Cape May Point for many years.

He and Mabel had two children, and he still lives on the site with his daughter Jayne and her husband, Fran Branigan, who are both retired.

“Cape May Point was heaven, really,” he reminisced. “Everyone was so friendly; it was like one big family.”

Contact the reporter, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.