Landmark Dewey property to be auctioned
An historic Dewey Beach property is set to leave the Walsh family for the first time in 85 years.
Located at the corner of Coastal Highway and Saulsbury Street, across from The Starboard and Dewey Beer Co., the two-story sprawling yellow structure comprises a main home, two apartments, courtyard, eight parking spaces and generations of memories.
Butch Emmert of Emmert Auction Associates will auction the commercially zoned, ocean-block property at 2004 Coastal Highway at noon, Saturday, March 14.
“It’s a unique property and would make a great bar site,” Emmert said during an evening reunion with some of the Walsh children. Emmert said he spent many happy times in the Walsh home while growing up.
The property was originally purchased by Mary Grubb Dugan of Wilmington. Dugan, who emigrated from Ireland in 1893, outlived two husbands before purchasing lots 15 and 16 of block 39 from Rehoboth By the Sea Realty Company, Sept. 27, 1935.
By that time, Dugan’s daughter Madeline had already married Jerome Walsh. Madeline and Jerome had six children; the oldest was James, born in 1923. Dugan died in 1950, and Madeline became sole owner of the property. In 1953, Jerome was added to the deed.
James was a Dewey Beach lifeguard, Navy veteran and Bottle & Cork bartender who met wife Alice Stanford when she moved from Maryland to Lewes to take a job as an X-ray tech at Beebe Hospital.
After James and Alice married in 1953, they were deeded a half-interest in the property, where James set up Walsh Electronics, a sales and TV repair shop, with the front showroom and office facing Route 1 and the family’s living quarters in the rear. A small, older summer cottage house on the property sat beside the home and shop.
In the early 1960s, Delaware seized part of the Walsh property to dualize the highway. In an Oct. 8, 1963 letter Jerome wrote to his daughter Joan, Jerome said the highway department planned to take the front yard, front steps and half the front porch for right of way in what he called a “hostile land grab.”
At this time, James, Alice and their children moved to Lewes, but not for long. Construction of Freeman Highway caused their Lewes home to be demolished by the highway department.
So, they moved back to Dewey in 1964, when James added more living space to the rear of the home to accommodate the growing family. About this time, the adjacent summer cottage was also connected to the home with the addition of a flat roof and second-floor living space.
James and Alice had eight surviving children: Michael, Denise, Thomas, Teri, Claire, Bernadette, Joseph and Francis; children Timothy and Patrick died as infants.
The Walsh children had a happy childhood in Dewey, with many other kids to play with, visiting cousins, and the beach as a backyard. When the Duggan family, no relation to Dugan, built The Starboard directly across the street about 1960, the children went to work.
“We buttered toast, washed silverware, opened cans,” Teri said. “At 9 a.m., when they brought out the alcohol, we weren’t allowed in the dining room. It was an Italian restaurant then, with a piano in the corner.”
Claire said the annual Dewey Beach Lions Club Christmas party at the old Bottle & Cork was always a big deal. “We won the drawing for a free turkey one year,” Claire said. “We cut off its head, and it ran around the back yard!”
Bernadette said her father set up a Christmas display each year in the front showroom, with a tree, cardboard fireplace, and revolving lights. The sound of Christmas carols could be heard nightly from the shop’s speakers. James also did the sound for the Rehoboth Christmas parades.
Family matriarch Alice became somewhat of a mother to all the neighborhood children. “We had cousins by the dozens camping out here,” Denise said. “It was a home for friends, families who needed a temporary home, and surfers and skimboarders from around the world.”
“Your mom didn’t turn many kids away,” Emmert said.
“I’d like to see a kid mom did turn away,” said Claire, who went on to be a Dewey Beach commissioner. “It was a refuge for families, a happy place. We would come downstairs in the morning, and kids would be sleeping under the dining room table, on the floors and couch.”
“There were always so many kids, but no one was allowed to bother you if you had your face in a book,” Bernadette said.
The children took full advantage of life in a resort town.
“The beach was our playground,” Teri said. “It’s always been a family town, and a drinking town. We had friends everywhere, lots of parties and holidays. We had front-row seats for Running of the Bull. With no air conditioning, we could hear the Bottle & Cork every night.”
“There was always a lot of singing in our house,” Claire said. “We had records for all the Broadway shows. We had a piano, so we all learned to play. It was a fun place to grow up.”
Siblings laughed recalling when brother Michael went Labor Day streaking in 1971. “All the cars were stuck in traffic and stuck with seeing him run down the highway!” Claire laughed.
James closed Walsh Electronics in 1973, and worked for the City of Rehoboth as an electronics engineer until 1983. He passed away in 1994.
In the late 1970s, Alice became heavily involved in tackling water, sewer and other infrastructure needs the town faced. In 1978, she was named president of the unincorporated Dewey Beach Area Citizens Association and led town efforts leading to its incorporation in 1981.
“It was needed at the time because it was getting out of control,” Teri recalled. “There were pyramids of beer cans on the beach each morning.”
“Roads were gravel until 1977, when the sewer was put in,” Claire added.
After incorporation, Alice served on the planning and zoning commission, board of adjustment, and town council. She lived at home until her death Feb. 5, 2019.
“The last few years of mom’s life, we would have needed full-time care for her if not for Woody’s and The Starboard, and people in the community who watched over her,” Claire said. “She’d go to Woody’s and The Starboard 14 times a day, and the employees watched over her.”
By the time of Alice’s death, all other family shares in the property had been passed to her children. A little more than a year after her death, the property will transition to a new owner, with new memories yet to be made.
“It’s hard, but it’s time,” Bernadette said. “It won’t really feel real until auction day.”
Call Emmert Auction Associates at 302-227-1433 for terms or go to www.emmertauction.com.
