On Sunday morning, while running errands in Elkton, I was sorry to see that the Holly Hall Oak Tree had finally toppled. This ancient tree stood near the entrance to Big Elk Mall at Rt. 40 (next to the Elkton Diner). A couple was walking around the tree, taking photos.
The tree takes its name from Holly Hall, the early 1800s mansion just down the hill. I have a photo that shows volunteers cleaning brush away from the big tree in 1975, before Big Elk Mall was built. At the time, there was just a lot of scrub brush on the site and a billboard almost right up against the tree. It’s hard to imagine a time when Big Elk Mall -- home of Acme, Dunkin Donuts and Kmart, among others -- did not exist. Yet, if you think about it, this old oak was around before there was a Cecil County, a Maryland, a United States -- or even any European settlers.
State arborists had said the tree was more than 400 years old, which means it must have started growing long before Captain John Smith explored the upper Chesapeake Bay.
An article from the Cecil Democrat reports that...
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“He took the Fokker to three thousand meters, nearly breathless with the speed of the climb. The long flat rays of the sun were deep gold, and the earth was a mosaic of sharply contrasted yellows and purples. The rich, sweet exhaust mixture coming back from the engine was, in the high coolness, an ambrosia ...”That’s a description in the 1964 novel “The Blue Max” of future German ace Bruno Stachel taking his first flight in a Fokker D-7 over the battlefields of Europe during World War I. That war, the descriptions, even the biplane are very real — it’s Stachel who is the stuff of fiction, but certainly a memorable character.
He came from the mind of Jack D. Hunter, a former Cecil County resident whose novel featuring Stachel became a 20th Century Fox movie. Local residents and visitors to Chesapeake City may be familiar with The Blue Max bed and breakfast at the corner of Bohemia Avenue and Second Street. The impressive, three-story structure was so named by Jack and Tommie Hunter, who renovated the building and opened a shop there in the 1970s. The Hunters later lived in Chesapeake Isle overlooking the water.
Sadly, Jack passed...
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Tags:
chesapeake city, flyboys, jack hunter, the blue max
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