Small Town News

Rehoboths honeysuckle-tangled oaks looked like opportunity

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BAREFOOTIN'

In the late 1940s, Frank Jones and his wife, Donelda Marsh Jones, knew an opportunity when they saw one. Just over the bridge leading into Rehoboth Beach, a honeysuckle-tangled grove of trees looked to them like a vacationers' diamond in the rough.

They envisioned a cluster of simple cottages catching ocean breezes under the shade of tall oaks. With World War II just ended, Americans were ready to play at the beach, and Rehoboth was moving into its modern era as a summer retreat for city dwellers in Washington, Wilmington and Baltimore.

According to their grandson Paul Lovett, Frank and Donelda brought a strong combination of skills that allowed them to single-handedly get their Oak Grove cottages and motor court up and running. They lived at and farmed a 100-acre parcel on Angola Neck's Camp Arrowhead Road. That area has long been a stronghold of the Marsh clan.

Frank, said Lovett, was no stranger to clearing land and constructing farm buildings. Donelda knew something about raising chickens, gathering eggs and the business of marketing both. They came from families living off the land in Sussex for centuries. The oak grove over the canal offered them the opportunity to put Frank's clearing and carpentry skills together with Donelda's head for business and to branch out from farming as their sole livelihoods. Work was nothing foreign to them.

"Hard core labor - they didn't shy away from that," said Lovett.

"I started coming down here when I was about 10. The farm was still their primary residence. I'd ride in the back of my grandfather's pick-up - no such thing as seat belts in those days - and there was nothing between the farm and the bridge. We would stop at an old gas station near Rehoboth Airport - maybe a Pure station - and get a Coke and a Tastykake for lunch. My grandfather would let me help him work on the units."

Lovett remembers watching his grandfather sitting behind one of the cottage units along the canal one day. "He drew out, with a stick on the ground, what would become the Oak Grove motel. He went to work on the seven-unit structure and two-thirds of the way to being finished he died. He had a heart attack after a day of work His assistant drove him home and he died that night on the couch. He was in his 70s. My grandmother took over the project and saw it to completion. She stayed involved until her death at age 92."

Over the decades, Frank and Donelda cobbled together several small parcels of land and added a few more units each year until the total included a little more than two acres of land and 26 rental units. Up until four years ago, three owner siblings continued to follow their grandparents' business model, renting out units each summer for days and weeks at a time. Then they decided to change to seasonal rentals. "Up until then we were cleaning units every Saturday morning," said Lovett. But there was also more change in the air.

"We decided it was time to transition the property again. It was no longer the economically appropriate thing to clean bathrooms on Saturday mornings."

The Lovetts have been working through Rehoboth's zoning procedures to have the property subdivided into 15 building lots. They hope to get the approvals to start on the next phase of their Oak Grove project in September. The project will involve removal of the cottages and motel built so long ago by Frank Jones.

"We've contacted the West Rehoboth coalition to see if they could use some of the cottages and we've offered them - free - to anyone else who will haul them away," said Lovett. "Of course moving them could be an expensive proposition. The ' plumbing and electrical systems are 60 years old and they're uninsulated. They've been kept in good shape but they're still showing some age."

If no one comes forward in the next week or so to claim the cottages, Lovett says they and the motel will be demolished. Also to go is the concrete block structure part of the complex, near Rehoboth Avenue, that once served as a commercial laundry for the bustling resort town. Anyone interested in the cottages should contact Lovett at 302-893-9391.

One thing that will remain, however, is the tall oaks that caught the eye of Lovett's grandfather in the first place. The collection of red oaks, white oaks and pin oaks has been identified, plotted and named along with the tree sizes. "That was four years ago so the diameters have probably grown since then," said Lovett. "I believe Rehoboth Beach is the first town anywhere to place a conservation easement on individual trees. The city will be managing 10 of the largest and oldest trees - some of them more than 100 years old with trunk diameters more than 40 inches. Those trees will not be able to be removed by any owner. The tree easements are being recorded with each of the lots being created.

"My grandfather appreciated those trees and we've appreciated them ever since," said Lovett. "The preservation of those trees has been an object of ours from the very beginning."





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