Interviewee Kay Starkey
Interviewer Sara Underwood
Indexer Sara Underwood
Date of Interview 6-14-16
Location of Interview: Starkey’s home
Interview Accession Number SQ-2016-Starkey-Kay-i-01
Father as Deputy Sheriff
My father was a deputy sheriff, and then he became sheriff during World War II… They took all
of the law enforcement out of here… all the state police were removed. My father ran this
county by himself. He had no marked car. They gave him a stipend… when it was time to get a
new car, and it was his responsibility to buy a car with that money. So it was very different in
those days. In the upper county, because you couldn’t get alcohol… if you’ve ever heard of a
place called Golts, Maryland… part of it’s in Delaware and part of it’s in Maryland, and… that’s
where all the stills were operated, where they made the moonshine… He would have to break
those up. He would get so exhausted that they would send a commander from state police…
here for a weekend so he could get… a bit of rest. He worked 24/7.
Mom’s Work in Munitions Plant
She [mom] brought work [from the Munitions Plant] home. During World War II it was a very
concentrated effort for everybody to maintain and she would bring home things called
detonator caps, big boxes, and we would sit around the evening and put those together. All I
can tell you is that you put pieces together and that that was the cap of detonators for the
military. It was just a part of life; you didn’t think anything about it.
FDR’s Visit
…I can remember going to a parade when FDR was here… My mother made us ha[ve] Tick Fever
shots at the Health Department… and they burned like you wouldn’t believe. And I remember
her walking us to the park to see FDR, because she was a great fan… and I remember seeing
him… I think everyone in the vicinity was in town… my mother was dragging me down there still
crying, because she had to see FDR.
Black Outs
We just drew the curtains and that was it, sirens, then the sirens stopped sounding then you
could open the curtains again. We did [drills in school]. And my cousin Maddie Lowe was the
principle of the school, which is now the Mitchel building at 400 high street and it had an old
chute that you had to go out of for fire drills. I was terrified of that thing and yeah we did the
drills.
Sage Apples and the War Effort
We had used to pick up something called sage apples and they had kapok in them and that was
used for the military for life vests. When we went out to Morgnec Road to the farm there was
an area along there where we would search for them and I’ve seen them down here on Erie Hill
Road there still some of them around and they say that they were a good thing with crickets
that people would baskets of them on the hearth. Now I’ve never tried that but we used to
collect that for sumac so they could um material must of taken a lot of them to make a life vest
but that was what that was for so…
First Defense Plant Explosion in 1943
We heard about it because it cracked windows, shook foundations, created a lot of problems
structurally in the town and as I was saying to you, my mother just sat and cried because two
men were killed that she had worked close to their sides.
Second Defense Plant Explosion
And then there was the second time [the defense plant exploded]. I was at the beach then, um,
a big high school graduate, you know, just having fun. My mother had taken us and left us there
and it was when they used to have military still there to guard the coast and they called, some
guys from there called and said we had been with, that Chestertown had been blown up, you
couldn’t get through by phone. We didn’t know what was going on. They couldn’t get through
to us to let us know what was going on and that was the end of the defense plant and there
were workers in there that ran all the way down through the marsh, down here by the armory
to get away from there and at that time I lived on the river, still with my parents and it cracked
windows in our house there.
Well of course we were concerned because we didn’t know what was happening, um, and as it
turned out my father was directing traffic up by Dixon Valve and the explosion was so great that
it picked him up and threw him in the ditch.
Isolation from the War
They didn’t talk that much, as I said to you. We were all insulated, protected as children. So we
had a delightful life, we didn’t realize that things were as bad as what they were. But when the
War was declared over, and the sirens blew, and the church bells rang, I remember that, and I
remember my mother just sitting and crying nonstop. And my father was just silent.