July 2020

we had. He sent me a box with a ring from Louisiana.
He came home on leave, we got married and
I went to Louisiana. We shared a house with a
sergeant and his wife. I taught swimming and was
a lifeguard. He asked me if I wanted to have our
baby in Germany. I said, ‘That sounds exciting.’
He’s been a wonderful husband and father.
Tell us about your children. Eugene Jr
served a stint in the US Navy. He’s an engineer
with Boeing in Chester, PA. Mary Katherine
Dempsey is in Alexandria, VA. She works with
the Department of Forestry. Pamela Dempsey
Jones passed in the first week of April. A couple
of years previous she had a partial lung transplant.
It is still so surreal. It just happened so fast.
What do you love about living on this
island? What do you wish were different? I love
that so much of my family is here, and the family
that wasn’t here loved coming here. I love fishing.
I love sketching. I love just being out there.
This is my home. I could explore this area forever.
Great, great history. I’m just finding out now
about a lot of the history. I love Cape May. Any
place we go, I mention Cape May and it starts a
real conversation.
How about what you’d like to see change?
If you’d have asked me that 20 years ago, I’d
have filled your whole magazine. [Laughs.] I’m
just hoping for more of people working together,
getting things done. There are some great things,
like the museum. It took a visionary, Bob Mullock.
When he came up with the idea, I said. ‘Really?’
I’m associated with good people and that gives
you some kind of ballast.
Why did you get into the antiques business?
How did you get started? I was always
attracted to old houses and old things. I remember
I was going to have a yard sale. A girl that
I worked with lent me a Kovel guide, a pricing
guide with pictures. She said, ‘I need to have
it back tomorrow.’ I stayed up all night going
through that book. It was like I was hooked. We
had had a restaurant for four years, the Family
Tree Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. All of a
sudden, we decided to do this. It’s exciting. It will
get you up in the morning.
What has been your role with the Harriet
Tubman Museum? I keep everything, sometimes
to a fault. Our history committee files everything.
We started pulling from our collection, and at
home I had such a collection. They’ll tell me what
they’re looking for and nine times out of 10, I’ll
have it. It’s a miracle. One of the things that was
the most meaningful was the journal from William
Still, who had a house in Cape May.
have boxes and boxes of photographs and
important papers. They included the death
certificate of my great, great grandfather. His
recruitment papers to go into the Civil War.
His name was Charles Bose. I also had a program
from the opening of the USO on Jackson
Street. Paul Robeson was the guest speaker. He
autographed the program. There were also photos.
One of the greatest pictures is the overall
shot from the stage showing all the people at
the opening. That, I’m sure, is going to be in the
exhibit.
Have you been surprised by the response
of the town to this project? No. It’s a long time
coming, even though I didn’t know it was coming.
Everybody that hears about it says, ‘Tell me
when the museum is going to open.’ I think there
will be buses coming into Cape May. There’s
information there you couldn’t get anywhere
else around here. Then when the Franklin Street
School opens with the library, hopefully we’ll
have a bit of a museum there.
At a fundraiser for the museum last year,
you said, ‘It’s like a light has been switched on
in Cape May.’ What did you mean by that? As
far as history’s concerned, you’re in the dark. We
didn’t know. We didn’t know that all you needed
was the right name. You need a starting point,
some path to follow. At one time, I didn’t know
my great grandmother’s maiden name. Once you
know that, it opens things up. With the name,
you can find out where someone’s buried or find
Welcome home!
Happy Summer!
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exit zero 38 july