Female WW II aviators showcased at Topsail Beach museum

One section of the Missles & More Museum at Topsail Beach, N.C.,  is dedicated to the story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) who served during World War II at Camp Davis Army Air Field in nearby Holly Ridge.

The federal program was organized in 1942 when military leaders, faced with a shortage of pilots in World War II, decided to allow women to fly military aircraft stateside, so that male pilots could be deployed overseas for combat duty.

WASPs performed test flights, provided instruction for raw recruits, delivered new aircraft to air bases and transported cargo and personnel. They proved that a woman was as capable as a man in the cockpit.

The WASP program produced female pilots from July 1943 to December 1944. After their basic training, the WASP pilots were stationed at 126 bases across the United States. Just two were located in North Carolina – Army Air Forces Weather Research Center at Asheville in Buncombe County and Camp Davis in Onslow County.

The 52 WASP pilots assigned to Camp Davis played an essential role in military training. They towed targets and flew simulated strafing missions for anti-aircraft gunnery training over the firing range on Topsail Island, which was uninhabited at the time.

Betty Deuser of Oakland, Calif., was one of those WASP pilots. A collection of letters she wrote to her family back home while serving at Camp Davis has been published as a book. Kevin Maurer, an author and award-winning journalist, shared highlights in an article published in Our State magazine in 2017.

One letter described Deuser’s experience flying at night under a full moon, skirting the North Carolina coast at 10,000 feet. “For three hours, she flew back and forth as soldiers from Camp Davis scanned the darkness with a searchlight, looking for her plane. They were training to man anti-aircraft guns overseas, and it was Deuser’s job to prepare them,” Maurer wrote.

Deuser grew up in Oakland, Calif., and earned a private pilot’s license in 1941. She volunteered to enter the WASP program. She completed training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, before reporting for duty at Camp Davis.

There was risk involved in the training flights. The soldiers were firing live rounds of ammunition, the outdated planes that the pilots flew were unfit for combat duty. Engine failures and maintenance problems were common, and there was a shortage of parts.

Two WASP aviators died in airplane crashes at Camp Davis in 1943, and these women are memorialized at the Missles & More Museum.

The North Carolina Highway Historical Marker program recognized the Camp Davis WASP unit in 2021 with the installation of signage on U.S. Route 17 near Camp Davis Road at Holy Ridge. 

While the accompanying essay salutes the bravery of these female pilots, it reminds us that the WASP was “underappreciated” by the military brass, as “WASP aviators never achieved military status during wartime.”

Despite the valiant efforts of WASP leaders, including Jackie Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love, who served under Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, the female pilots were never militarized. Hence, as “civilians,” they did not qualify for veterans’ status or benefits.

Jackie Cochran

Nancy Love 

In total, more than 25,000 women applied to enter the WASP, but fewer than 2,000 were accepted, and only 1,074 were awarded silver wings. The badge itself is believed to have been designed by Cochran.

 

At its center is the shape of the shield carried by Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, weaving, crafts and war.

Motown Records worked like a well-oiled machine

Several music historians have observed that Motown Records’ formula for success, beginning in 1959, was patterned after the automotive manufacturing process that was perfected in Detroit, Mich.

For an article in TIME magazine, Gilbert Cruz wrote that Motown’s founder Berry Gordy Jr. modeled his Detroit ‘hit factory’ after a car assembly line: “Make a good product, then make something similar, and make it quick.”

 Berry Gordy Jr.

Cruz painted the picture. Over here were the songwriters – Smokey Robinson and the team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland. Over there were the talented artists – Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and all the others.

“In a neglected corner were the session musicians,” Cruz said. The band became known as the Funk Brothers, the guys who played the instruments on tons of hit songs.

“Indeed, Motown had an extraordinary house band made up of some of the best nightclub and bar musicians in ‘Black Detroit,’ noted Dr. Gerald Early, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., who has written extensively on the Motown era.

Dr. Gerald Early 

“The Funk Brothers played a huge role in the development of the Motown sound,” Dr. Early commented.

The ClassicMotown website refers to the musicians as “the factory workers of the hit machine, the unsung heroes.”

Nobody kept track of all the “comings and goings” of Funk Brothers during the early years, but James Jamerson’s bass voice “was widely hailed as the heartbeat of the Motown sound.”

William “Benny” Benjamin was Motown’s first drummer, and the first keyboardist of note was Earl Van Dyke. These three musicians claimed Studio A as the “Snakepit.” Dozens would follow in their footsteps.

 

The Motown musicians weren’t credited until 1971, when Marvin Gaye listed their names on the cover of his album “What’s Going On.”

 

Motown’s move to Los Angeles in 1972 effectively broke up the Funks as a unit. “Several went west, but their Motor City heyday was history,” according to the website narrative. Their story is best told through the 2002 “Standing In The Shadows Of Motown” documentary film.

In 2013, the collection of Funk Brothers was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Former Motown producer Mickey Stevenson said: “These guys were just magic. The gifts came from upstairs, but the touch, they formed together.”

Alongside the Funks, the Andantes was an essential part of the classic Motown sound. The female trio sang background vocals on thousands of recordings, behind all the major artists. The original singers were Louvain Demps, Jackie Hicks and Marlene Barrow.

 

Dr. Early remarked: “Motown records were specifically mixed to sound good on car radios and were characterized by a thumping backbeat that made dancing easy for everyone. Motown sought to be…and became the ‘Sound of Young America.’”

The job of Motown choreographer Charles “Cholly” Atkins was to make the groups “look as good as they sang.”

Atkins was a fabled tap dancer and vaudeville star from Pratt City, Ala. Gordy brought him to Motown to teach his Motown artists how to move and sway in harmony for the camera.

 

During a 2003 interview with David Lyman of the Detroit Free Press, Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas said that Atkins “would analyze the songs and map-out steps for each vocal movement. Our performances had twice the value because of his input.”

Duke Fakir of The Four Tops said that Atkins “gave us more than steps. Cholly gave us wisdom. He taught us how to touch an audience and about living life. He was Motown’s father figure.”

The beat goes on.

Motown sounds with ‘beach music beat’ arrived in 1959

Carolina beach music changed dramatically in 1959, welcoming to the dance floor the new soul music sounds coming out of Detroit, Mich., generated at a new record studio, Motown Records.

William “Smokey” Robinson Jr. was 17 when he met the entrepreneurial Berry Gordy Jr., who had made a little money writing songs for Jackie Wilson, including “Lonely Teardrops.” Gordy invested his earnings and cash contributions from family members to create a new record company.

 Impressed by Robinson’s budding talent and a relentless work ethic, Gordy signed Robinson and the Miracles to a recording contract. Their first hit together was “Shop Around” in 1960. It became Motown’s first record to sell more than 1 million copies.

 

That was the beginning of a long friendship as well as a successful business relationship between the two Detroit natives. In the first 10 years alone, Robinson produced 26 “top-40” hits with the Miracles as the group’s lead singer, chief songwriter and producer.

 

The cultural implications that emanated from Motown were monumental, according to Dr. Kip Lornell, author and music history instructor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He said that Motown “desegregated the radio dial,” accomplishing across the country something that “beach music did in a two-state area” – the Carolinas – beginning in the mid-1940s.

The movement of making rhythm and blues (R&B) music universal as a tool to dissolve racial barriers in music halls originated with Carolina beach music.

Tom Poland of Columbia, S.C., a freelance journalist, reported that the 1945 dance sessions at the Crystal Club at White Lake in Bladen County, N.C., near Elizabethtown, were fully integrated. Harry Driver of Dunn, N.C., acclaimed to be the “father of shag dancing,” told Poland:

“We were totally integrated; the blacks and whites had nothing in our minds that made us think we were different. We loved music, we loved dancing and that was the common bond between us.”

Back at Motown Records, Smokey Robinson took on greater responsibilities. Gordy hired him to write and produce songs for other Motown performers. Robinson responded by penning soul music hits for Mary Wells, The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Marvelettes, The Supremes and Marvin Gaye.

 

Scads of Motown-style tunes in the 1960s and ’70s “crossed over” to reach acclaim as beach music classics. Nine songs from artists with Motown heritage are included in the “All Time Beach Music Top 100” listing compiled by the deejays at 97.9 The Surf, a beach music radio station in North Myrtle Beach, S.C. Here are the Motown artists mentioned and their songs:

The Temptations – “My Girl” #11.

Marvin Gaye – “Come Get to This” #43.

Barbara Lewis – “Hello Stranger” #49 and “Think a Little Sugar” #78.

Jr. Walker and the All Stars – “What Does It Take (To Win Your Love) #55. (Shown below.)

The Four Tops – “I Just Can’t Get You Out of My Mind #59 and “When She Was My Girl” #79. 

Mary Wells – “My Guy” #80.

Otis Redding – “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” #98. (He is shown below.)

Author Rosecrans Baldwin, who contributed an article on Carolina beach music to Our State magazine in 2012, agrees that Barbara Lewis is a genuine beach music legend. His personal favorite from Barbara Lewis is “Baby, I’m Yours.”

 “‘Baby, I’m Yours’ will still affect me when I’m 90,” Baldwin said. Here’s a bit of it:

 Baby, I’m yours / Till the stars fall from the sky… / Till the rivers all run dry… / Till the poets run out of rhyme / Baby, I’m yours. 

Chestnut family found a home at Ocean City Beach

Opportunity knocked for Wade H. Chestnut II in 1949. He owned a car repair business in Wilmington, N.C., at the time, but he was hand-picked to move to Topsail Island and oversee the development of a beach community for African-Americans.

In 2021, Wade Chestnut’s son, Kenneth Chestnut Sr. told Pat Fontana of Topsail Magazine: “Dad was intrigued by the opportunity to develop this area. He left the business and dedicated his life to developing Ocean City Beach.”

Wade Chestnut’s primary partners in the formation of Ocean City Developers, Inc., were Edgar Lee Yow, a white attorney and former Wilmington mayor, and Dr. Samuel Gray, a black physician who had relocated to Wilmington from Jamaica.

After the U.S. Navy closed down its highly secretive “Operation Bumblebee” guided missile testing program on Topsail Island in 1948, Yow purchased about six miles of beach property. He wanted to use about a mile of the shoreline to provide housing and beachfront recreational opportunities for African-Americans.

“Not surprisingly, Yow faced some difficulties with his vision of encouraging black people to own oceanfront property and faced criticism for what he was doing,” Fontana wrote. It was Dr. Gray who recruited Wade Chestnut to provide the “boots on the ground.”

Wade Chestnut and his wife, Caronell Carter Chestnut, were the first to move in, and Chesnut’s siblings Bertram, Robert and Louise Chestnut Thompson soon had homes at Ocean City Beach, as did Dr. Gray.

 

A motel, the Ocean City Motor Court (with 11 sleeping rooms and a three-room apartment), was built in 1952. A restaurant, named Ocean City Terrace, opened in 1953, making use of Tower Six, which had been abandoned after the shutdown of “Operation Bumblebee.”

 

By 1954, there were 15 homes in the Ocean City community, but with the arrival of Hurricane Hazel, the majority were destroyed…only to be rebuilt.

In 1955, Camp Oceanside was established as the first Episcopal camp for blacks in the Diocese of East Carolina. St Mark’s Episcopal Chapel was built in June 1957. (It has since been renamed as Wade H. Chestnut Memorial Chapel.)

 

In 1958, the Ocean City Fishing Pier was erected at the site of the Ocean City Terrace tower. The 700-foot lighted pier was the only ocean pier on the South Atlantic coast open to BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) patronage.

 

Kenneth Chestnut told Chase Jordan of the Wilmington Star News in 2022 that some of his best memories as a youth involved the pier, which was run by the Chestnut family and became a very popular attraction. Kenneth recalled working there, selling sno-cones and doing odd jobs.

Fishing didn’t care about one’s skin color or what a person looked like. “People came together at the pier when the fish were biting with the common interest of fishing, without regard to race,” Kenneth said.

By 1979, Ocean City grew to about 100 homes of African-American ownership. In August of 1983, Ocean City Developers, Inc., was dissolved, and the Ocean City Beach Citizens Council was established to manage community affairs. The close-knit community of Ocean City became a part of the Town on North Topsail Beach in 1990.

In 1996, Hurricane Fran destroyed the pier and many of the beach homes. It’s a constant struggle, dealing with Mother Nature, but Ocean City became recognized as an important stop on the North Carolina Civil Rights Trail in 2022. 

Ocean City’s signature event is its annual Ocean City Jazz Festival, which occurs this year from July 5-7. Proceeds benefit the nonprofit citizens council. There is always an impressive lineup of performing artists.

Topsail Island museum relives days of ‘Operation Bumblebee’

Remnants of the U.S. Navy’s super-secret “Operation Bumblebee” operation at North Carolina’s Topsail Island are being preserved for the purpose of retelling the stories about what happened along this 26-mile “spit of sand” in 1946-48.

After World War II, about 500 people were deployed to this desolate strip along the Atlantic Ocean to establish the U.S. Naval Ordnance Testing Facility. The mission was to conduct test firings of ramjet-powered guided missiles that could defend U.S. warships at sea.

About 200 experimental missiles were built in the assembly building, which has since been transformed into a community events center. The facility opened in 1995 and is now owned and operated by the Historical Society of Topsail Island.

 

This old assembly building in the Town of Topsail Beach contains about 3,300 square feet of usable space. It can accommodate a maximum of 250 people for any type of social function.

Additionally, the facility is home to the incredible Missiles & More Museum. Exhibits document all aspects of the significance of “Operation Bumblebee” and depict what life was like at the Army’s Camp Davis in nearby Holly Ridge, which operated from 1941-44.

 

Admission to the museum is free, but donations are appreciated. Hours vary depending on the season, so it’s best to check ahead at misslesandmoremusum.org or call (910) 328-8663.

 

The old launching pad was incorporated into the holdings of the Jolly Roger Inn & Pier in Topsail Beach and was once the resort’s patio. The former control tower has been transformed into a wing of a large private residence.

The most intriguing old structures from “Operation Bumblebee,” however, are the eight sturdy observation towers that were strategically located up and down the island. Private-sector scientists climbed up and photographed the missile launches. 

Some of these towers were repurposed over the years, while others have gradually deteriorated. The contrasts are quite amazing. Tower Four (shown below) is available as a vacation rental.

 

Topsail Island’s name is derived from the days when pirate ships would hide in the channel between the island and the mainland, hoping to capture passing merchant vessels. As word spread about this tactic, mariners supposedly began referring to the place as “Topsail Island,” because a pirate vessel’s topsail was often the only visible indicator of a planned ambush.

The Topsail Island town website says that many adventurers came in search of the buried treasures left by the most infamous pirate of all – Blackbeard. He was rumored to have hidden jewels, gold and silver in the maritime forests that blanketed Topsail Island. No one has found Blackbeard’s booty yet.

 

Visitors to the Missiles & More Museum can experience a new exhibit this year, titled “Historic Ocean City Beach,” which opened on April 20.

Ocean City Beach was established in 1949 as one of first communities in the state where African-Americans could purchase oceanfront property.

At the time, the Wilmington Star News reported that the idea of having a beach community with black ownership came from Edgar Lee Yow, a white Wilmington attorney and former mayor, who owned land on Topsail Island.

He shared his thoughts with Dr. Samuel Gray, a black physician from Jamaica, who had been recruited as one of the first two resident physicians to work at Community Hospital, which opened in 1920 in a former drug store to serve Wilmington’s African-American citizens.

Yow and Dr. Gray formed a business partnership to develop Ocean City Beach along a mile of Topsail Island. Dr. Gray knew the ideal person to manage the project – his friend Wade Chestnut, who ran an automobile repair shop in Wilmington.

Buzz over to Topsail to learn about ‘Operation Bumblebee’

We don’t have to travel far from Carteret County (N.C.) to begin to discover “the hidden history” of North Carolina – 50 “fascinating tidbits” that light up the editors of Our State magazine.

One of those little-known pearls that was featured in Our State’s April 2024 issue is “Operation Bumblebee.” That was the code name assigned to the U.S. Navy’s secret guided missile testing program that operated on Topsail Island after World War II from 1946-48.

Topsail Island is about a 70-mile drive from Morehead City (around Jacksonville and down toward Wilmington on U.S. Route 17).

 

To set the stage, Topsail Island was just an uninhabited “spit of sand,” albeit 26 miles long, in the Atlantic Ocean off the mainland from Onslow and Pender counties in late 1940, when the U.S. Army began construction of Camp Davis Army Air Field at Holly Ridge.

At the time, the clock was ticking leading up to the United States’ involvement in World War II. The Camp Davis project – to build a state-of-the-art anti-aircraft artillery training facility – was a major $16.8 million investment.

Troops started arriving in April 1941, and the base was fully operational by June. At its peak, more than 20,000 officers and soldiers were stationed at Camp Davis.

 

The Army took possession of the nearby barren spit (Topsail Island), which was only about five miles away from the camp. A site known as Sears Landing (within present-day Surf City) served as an anti-aircraft firing target point for Camp Davis troops.

Eventually, all Camp Davis operations were transferred to the Army’s Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, in September 1944, and the base at Holly Ridge was closed.

In June 1946, the Navy began moving about 500 individuals onto Topsail Island and established U.S. Naval Ordnance Testing Facility to conduct test firings of ramjet-powered missiles. “Operation Bumblebee” was a highly classified effort to develop guided surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to be used to defend U.S. warships at sea.

The project on Topsail Island involved scientists from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Silver Spring, Md., and the Kellex Corporation, a civilian contractor, based in Jersey City, N.J. It was a unique partnership initiated by the federal government to mobilize scientific resources to address wartime challenges.

Merle Tuve was the director of the APL during “Operation Bumblebee.”

Within months, teams had constructed an assembly building, a launching platform, a control tower, eight 35-foot observation towers to photograph, track and study the flights of the rockets, as well as dormitories, a mess hall and a bombproof shelter. A pontoon bridge was built across the small sounds and channels that are part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

The mission was to develop a jet-powered missile that could destroy an air target up to 20 miles away. The program was named “Operation Bumblebee” on a lark, “since the seemingly impossible aerodynamic challenges that the scientists faced resembled those of a bumblebee in flight,” one historian remarked.

“Although deemed aerodynamically unable to fly, the bumblebee does not know this and flies anyway.” The operation at Topsail Island led to the maturing of supersonic aircraft and shipboard missile design in the mid-20th century.

 

An estimated 200 experimental rockets were assembled and launched over the course of 18 months. The tests provided an impetus to the development of jet aircraft engine technology and insights into rocketry incorporated later in the space program.

 

When the Navy pulled out of Topsail Island, officials took all records but left the structures intact. Fortunately, the assembly building has been preserved as a Topsail Island community events center and museum. We’ll go there next.

Carolina beach music beat ‘is for lovers’

Carolina beach music has been described as “falling-in-love” music, and many of the popular tunes dealt with teenage summer romance.

At least, that’s the way the late Steve Hardy viewed it. Clearly, Hardy knew a thing or two about beach music. His legendary radio show, “Steve Hardy’s Original Beach Party,” broadcast from Greenville, N.C., first went on the air in 1974.

 

Hardy, who grew up in the small town of Maury in Greene County, N.C., called it quits in 2019, ending a 45-year run on the beach. Suffering from dementia, Hardy died in 2020 at age 73.

Author Rosecrans Baldwin was a big fan. He had the opportunity to interview Hardy on the subject of beach music in 2012 for Our State magazine. Hardy told him: “A lot of the lyrics have to do with girls and boys falling in love.”

To illustrate, Hardy started singing the 1963 hit “So Much in Love” by The Tymes:

As we stroll along together / Holding hands, walking all alone / So in love are we two, that we don’t know what to do / So in love (so in love) in a world all our own (so in love)

 

The song was co-written by lead vocalist George Williams, who had joined The Tymes in 1960. (The group had originated in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1956 as the Latineers.) “So Much in Love” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and peaked at #44 on the Hot R&B singles chart.

The Tymes’ “Ms Grace,” written by John and Johanna Hall, was released in 1974 and instantly embraced by the Carolina beach music community. The tune is #2 on the “All Time Beach Music Top 100” chart created by the deejays at 94.9 The Surf, a radio station in North Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, Ms. Grace / Satin and perfume and lace / The minute I saw your face / I knew that I loved you

Being “young and in love” described Maurice Williams, who was a 15-year-old, growing up in Lancaster, S.C., in 1953.

Charles Morris of The Financial Times, based in London, England, said that Maurice tried unsuccessfully to persuade his date “to stay out and break her parents’ 10 p.m. curfew. The next day the musically talented youngster wrote a song about it, titled ‘Stay,’ which has provided him with a lifelong financial bonanza.”

“Like a flood, the words just came to me,” Williams said.

Stay, ah just a little bit longer…./ Tell me that you’re going to / Now your Daddy don’t mind / And your Mommy don’t mind / If we have another dance, yeah / Just one more, one more time

 

“Stay” was released by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs in 1960, and the recording remains the shortest single ever to reach the top of the American record charts, at 1 minute 36 seconds.

Many groups covered “Stay,” but the inclusion of the original version on the soundtrack of the film “Dirty Dancing” in 1987 introduced Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs to a new, younger audience.

 

“Stay” ranks #24 on The Surf’s top-100 beach music chart, and another Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs favorite tune, “May I,” recorded in 1965, is included at #30.

Williams’ group was originally known as the Gladiolas but adopted the name Zodiacs in 1960 after bass player Albert Hill took a shine to a new automobile – a British-made Ford model named “Zodiac” (an upscale version of the “Zephyr”) with two-tone paintwork, leather trim, whitewall tires and other bells and whistles.