ST. MARY'S TODAY

CHARLOTTE HALL — Lawrence Simpkins is a Southern Maryland living legend with Chesapeake waters running in his veins.

Simpkins, who turned 91 on Thursday, has been on the water all his life, dredging for oysters in the early days and during World War II he was a diver at the Corpus Christie Texas Naval Air Base on the air-sea rescue unit.

“I was born on the water, only 50 feet from it,” Simpkins said during an interview at his home with ST. MARY’S TODAY.

When he turned 90 last July, at a big party thrown in his honor, he remembers one speaker remarked that he didn’t have any enemies, “because I outlived them all.”

He was born in Compton, in a house that still stands, and went to school in a one-room schoolhouse, where his aunt was the teacher. Simpkins said he remembers traveling to Leonardtown by horse and buggy to go to church, passing by miles of land owned by his grandfather, Harrison Ewell.

Ewell was one of the most well known people in St. Mary’s County, partly because he operated the biggest most sophisticated marine railway system in Southern Maryland, used for pulling boats out of the water for painting and repairs.

“Not even today do I know a man who was smarter than he was,” Simpkins said of his grandfather.

Two big horses provided power to the railway, walking in circles to operate the pulley system that pulled the boats out of the water.

Simpkins remembers traveling by steamboat several times from Leonardtown to Baltimore and the Eastern Shore. “On one of those big side-wheelers.”

He lived on the Eastern Shore until turning 17, dredging oysters from a “bateau”, known today as a skip-jack, with his other grandfather, Capt. Billy Wes Simpkins. That’s were he learned his sailing tactics.

In 1934 he moved to Washington and began working for a commercial diver who did work inspecting underwater bridge pilings and other tasks. He worked there as a “diver’s tender” for nine year, being the person who would “dress” the diver, help him with decompression maneuvers and listening (or feeling) for rope signals from the man underwater.

In 1944 he was drafted into World War II, at 29 years old.

“Things were getting pretty bad, for them to draft a man with a wife and three kids,” Simpkins said.

In Texas, the air-sea rescue unit waited on  rescue barges while PBY’s, “flying boats”, conducted “bounce hoping” missions, landing on the water and taking off again.

When a PBY had a mishap, Simpkins’ nine-man diving team was ready to dive to make a rescue. Many time though the divers’ mission was to recover bodies.

The diving suits used by the team were the precursor to modern SCUBA diving, and divers didn’t go much deeper than 150 feet, which at the time was astounding.

When he got out of the Navy (after President Harry S. Truman issued an order after VJ Day that any men with families are to be immediately discharged) Simpkins went on run a painting business for 40 years. He invented a machine for laying parking lot lines, called the Simpkins Liner. The idea was eventually stolen and duplicated.

Though he gave up sailing about a month ago, Simpkins still mows his lawn and messes around in his workshop. Sailing requires a little too much energy than he can give, he says.

“He knows the Chesapeake like the back of his hand,” said his grandson, Wes Simpkins.