Robert M. Craig’s “From the Pen of the Captain’s Kid” will give OceanCity.com’s readers a window into decades of Ocean City life. Mr. Craig’s column will amuse, intrigue, insight, or move the viewer. Don’t miss his unique perspective on Ocean City, Maryland.
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Robert M. Craig is a contributor to OceanCity.com. Any opinions and views of Mr. Craig belong solely to Mr. Craig. Mr. Craig’s opinions to do not represent OceanCity.com.
From The Pen of the Captain's Kid: Vietnam Part II About a decade after that lifeguard reunion, I attended my 50th high school reunion in St. Louis. I looked forward to seeing fellow students after five decades during which our lives had taken us in different directions and to distant locales. Many from my 1962 Principia high school class (the same prep-school where Captain Craig taught...
From the Pen of the Captain’s Kid: Rainy Day Matinees The movie theatres in Ocean City that I remember as a kid were three: the Capitol, Showell’s, and the Shore Drive-In; none of them has survived. The Shore-Drive-In, which opened in 1954 and was located about 3 miles west of Ocean City along Route 50 , has now returned to forest.  Since the drive-in closed in 1976, the site has...
From the Pen of the Captian's Kid: Vietnam Part I “You got me through Vietnam,” the former lifeguard remarked soberly as he looked over at his former beach patrol mentor, and I witnessed one of the most memorable and powerful tributes to my father, Captain Robert S. Craig, that I had ever heard. It was a statement both pithy and awesome stated by a Vietnam veteran at a lifeguard...
From the Pen of the Captain’s Kid: The Coppertone Girl was a future OCBP lifeguard “How did you get that great tan?” the girl in a bikini asked, looking up at the Ocean City lifeguard. “Why, Coppertone, of course.” he replied from his lifeguard stand, sometimes holding up a bottle like a television barker. “We get it from the Captain.” The direct connection, during the...
Two National Register listings and the Case for more, and for local protective ordinances St. Paul’s by the Sea Protestant Episcopal Church, 1900-01, 301 Baltimore Avenue. Photo by Robert M. Craig. From the Pen of the Captain's Kid... One of my favorite quotes concerning the significance of good architecture and art in the life of a community is an observation by John Ruskin, the 19th...
Robert M. Craig is an historian who taught for 40 years at the architecture school at Georgia Tech. He resides in Atlanta but considers Ocean City his summer home. He served on the Ocean City Beach Patrol from 1960-65, and between 2010 and 2015 he and his wife Carole restored Bay Breeze cottage (now on the National Register of Historic Places). The house was built circa 1950 by Craig’s father, Captain Robert S. Craig of the Beach Patrol, and for many years Bay Breeze provided summer housing for the family and various members of the lifeguard organization. The younger Craig is a Vietnam veteran (U. S. Navy), received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1973, and has published nine books (mostly architectural history); he will bring a wide range of interests to this new series of feature articles about Ocean City “From the Pen of the Captain’s Kid.”
