Bradlee Calls Ehrlich Picks to
Historic Commission Boost to St. Mary’s

Dyson Says All Will Pass Senate Confirmation

By Kenneth C. Rossignol

ST. MARY’S TODAY

ST. MARY’S CITY --- Former St. Mary’s City Commission Chairman Ben Bradlee says that the new appointments by Governor Robert Ehrlich to the Historic St. Mary’s Commission are excellent choices and a great boost to the goal of blending preservation of Maryland’s history and promoting the enjoyment of the site by the public.

Senator Roy Dyson, who must give his approval to the appointments before Senate confirmation, says the group of recess appointments made by the Governor are all well qualified and will win confirmation.

Gov. Ehrlich, in the last six months, made a round of recess appointments to the outdoor museum devoted to preserving and explaining the history of Maryland’s colonial capital located on the banks of the St. Mary’s River at St. Mary’s City.

Along with the selection of new appointees to the came the selection by the commission of a new chairman to succeed the long-time chairman, Ben Bradlee.

"Dick Moe was chairman of the National Trust for historic preservation for ten years and is a top-notch choice to lead the commission," said Bradlee, who himself was selected to be chairman by former Governor William Donald Schaefer in 1991.

Bradlee was asked if he was able to survive the rough and tumble of local St. Mary’s politics after only being prepared by the amateur antics of the nation’s capital.

"This was tough at first but we worked with a great group of folks over the years, we were able to get the consolidation with the college five years ago and that was a real plus, now we have a great director, a really top-notch guy with Dick Moe as chairman and I am glad to be able to stick around to work with them all," said Bradlee last week at his home at Portobello.

"Moe has a national reputation and is a great asset to our local museums," said Senator Roy Dyson.

"He brings a national reputation which helps us with a lot of other historical projects in this region that we ask him for his help on," said Dyson. "He has helped us bring money in for Sotterley and he brings money in from the private sector, which helps us then get matching money from state and federal sources. In this time of tight fiscal constraints, talent such as Dick Moe has is critical to the success of maintaining our ability to preserve our history."

"We have a great group of fascinating people who really believe in the purpose of preserving the history of Maryland at this site and they have a lot ability, they are just a great group and I am really happy to see the appointments made by the Governor, it just makes a lot of sense," Bradlee told ST. MARY’S TODAY.

Bradlee, who has been the longest serving chairman since the commission was formed as a result of a bill passed by former Sen. J. Frank Raley in 1965, remains on the commission and on the St. Mary’s College Board of Trustees.

More progress has been made during Bradlee’s tenure as chairman than at any time since the original land purchases were made to assemble and preserve the colonial capital.

During Bradlee’s 13-year stint at the helm of the commission, the man who became the most famous newspaper editor in America at his job as executive editor of the Washington Post oversaw an ambitious series of projects to turn around the lackluster colonial capital.

Most weeks St. Mary’s City had more people underground at the Trinity Church cemetery than tourists above ground viewing exhibits or scenery.

Bradlee vowed to ‘put this place on the map’, an expression which Bradlee has often used to describe the impact of the Post coverage of the Watergate scandal which resulted in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon and put the Post ‘on the map’.

Bradlee also convinced Gov. Schaefer to fund $500,000 to move the huge old country 1840-era manor house from where it was built in the middle of the old capital city several miles away to a riverfront site off of Rosecroft Road where it was then turned into a bed and breakfast inn with facilities for dining and receptions.

The lead coffins excavation in Chapel Field, the site of the first Catholic Brick Chapel in the original 13 colonies, was an ambitious project to determine the identity of those persons entombed in lead coffins discovered under the unexplored substructure of the first brick Catholic chapel at St. Mary’s City.

Television satellite trucks jammed the field near large Army tents which were set up to provide shelter from the elements as the investigation reached a dramatic step when the coffins were finally disinterred.

With a press pool of national media peering over the shoulders of scientists, archaeologists and anthropologists, the unusual lead coffins were carefully opened to reveal their human remains and tell the story of colonial life in Maryland, which had been sealed for more than 200 years.

Reporters filed news stories from the scene via cell phones, CNN covered the event, while ABC’s Nightline sent it’s top reporter, Dave Maresh, and broadcast live at 11:30 p.m. from Chapel Field.

Nightline’s anchor, Ted Koppel, a buddy of Bradlee’s, lives in an old manor house around the bend, down-river from St. Mary’s City, and was part of the magic Bradlee was able to set in motion to bring widespread notoriety, national stature and historic standing to Maryland’s early beginnings.

Bradlee had set in motion a modern hi-tech version of a Barnun and Bailey Big Top atmosphere mixed with a historical Ripley’s Believe or Not explanation of what they expected to learn and hoped to achieve from the examination of the lead coffins.

Benefits to modern times included speculation that scientists could learn of the relationships between colonial era health and immune systems to solve modern health problems.

And just to keep up the more prurient interests of the public, Bradlee’s troop of professors and scientists continued to suggest that the bones of the biggest coffin were likely that of Maryland’s colonial governor, Phillip Calvert.

After the big dig, the coffins were shipped off to laboratories at the Smithsonian for more research and it was later determined that the woman in a second lead coffin was likely Calvert’s second wife, proving that even then, most dead guys didn’t get buried with their first wives when they remarried.

While teams of experts in pathology, insects, colonial era vegetation, fabrics, disease, pollen and bones were assembled to examine the coffins and their contents, the public was involved in every step of the process.

Groups came by bus to tour and to learn what an examination of "stale air" could provide modern society.

While some might call the lead coffins effort government sponsored graverobbing, others could say it was simply entertainment and thrills for geeks not able to review the work of professors breaking into Egyptian tombs.

The work of the Lead Coffins project led into the plans for the restoration of the Brick Chapel, which was built by Jesuits around 1667 and later ordered shuttered by order of the Protestant Governor of Maryland in 1705.

While the restoration and reconstruction of the brick chapel has been subject to false starts and a near war over staff plans to simply use the chapel as a visitor’s center, a new twist to the plans came about as a result of intervention by Senator Roy Dyson (D. St. Mary’s, Calvert).

The historic commission authorized a probe into what the chapel looked like and assured the public that the extensive research would result in an authentic recreation of the chapel and it would not be subject to any inappropriate activities.

The chapel site still has about 300 people buried under and near the chapel, posing special problems for the construction effort, which is not allowed to disturb any of the burial sites in order to install utilities. The site remains a protected cemetery under state law and is a consecrated Catholic cemetery in spite of the removal of the chapel due to the order outlawing the open worshiping by Catholics as religious intolerance became the law of the land in Maryland, a condition which existed up until the American Revolution.

The chapel research into the construction techniques of the era reveals that the church was likely 22 to 25 feet tall and the foundation shows that it was built in the shape of a cross.

St. Mary’s City has been the battle ground for some volunteers who believe that they know best how to run things with many elitists taking action to rid the outdoor museum of the volunteers that they could not control, and replace them with paid staff.

Bradlee set into motion a plan to consolidate Historic St. Mary’s City under the St. Mary’s College, two groups who had battled each other in turf wars for years.

Initially opposed by Sen. Dyson, the plan to marry the two panels finally won approval after assurances were made that the College would not decimate the commission.

Bradlee argued that it made sense for the College and Commission to share staff, expenses, and work together to preserve the same small village that they both occupy.

The College is finally taking a major step towards making the St. Mary’s River a laboratory for environmental sciences with a new waterfront facility located at the boathouse area of the college.

The previous major use the College made of the river, besides for the sailing team, was to use it as a sewage discharge point. That problem was finally corrected with a sewage line connecting the college with the county’s sewage treatment plant, which serves Lexington Park.

Citizens who were active in saving St. Mary’s City from being overrun by the College pointed out various construction projects which unearthed Indian village remains and paved over early settler’s homes without any archeological digs performed.

The new commission/college alliance guided by Bradlee was aimed at preventing such events from occurring again and to foster a new spirit of cooperation, which actually seems to have taken place.

But regardless of the viewpoints of those who enjoy St. Mary’s City and believe it important, Bradlee has been a key figure to the long-term success of the colonial capital museum.

At the age of 84, Bradlee remains a vigorous Washington Post executive and has his hand in a number of projects for the huge conglomerate around the world and with local concerns in St. Mary’s City, where he maintains a weekend home to escape Washington.

"With Marty Sullivan as the director, this place has really improved and we have ironed out problems which we inherited," said Bradlee. "This is a great way to involve students in learning about history and taking part in discovering colonial life and our early beginnings. It is exciting to be a part of this and to work with such a great group of people."