No Cookie-Cutter Community: Bayberry Believes in Dirt, Difference

By S.A. Kalinich
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, May 17, 2008

Coming home to Bayberry is like "going to sleep-away camp," resident Elliot Nudell said of the pocket of 57 homes perched on the south shore of the Magothy River in Anne Arundel County.

"I look at Bayberry as a camp for adults," he said. "It's in a rustic, wooded area that isn't totally groomed. People leave work on Friday, go to the grocery store and liquor store, go home and don't leave till Monday."

Much of Bayberry Drive looks like many other suburban streets lined with bright green lawns and driveways leading to oh-so-similar structures. But on the road's northern third, where the Bayberry neighborhood is, thick-trunked trees drip viny tendrils nearly to the ground. The way is narrow, dirt-shouldered, and crowded by more old trees and tangled undergrowth.

Back here, the native dogwoods have survived, gleaming white amid the brown brush on an early spring afternoon. The human habitats blend into rather than dominate the landscape. On mostly third- and half-acre lots, the homes are a mix that includes little brick cottages, white clapboarded saltboxes and rambling ranches.

Edie Segree is president of the Bayberry Community Association's 12-member board. She and her husband, Allan, moved into their split-level home on a half-acre non-waterfront lot in 1965.

"It is the first and only house I ever lived in," Segree said. "It wasn't a development per se then. People bought the lots, then built. That's why all the houses are different."

Bayberry's residents also built the community's common area. That's where many residents spend their weekends, swimming in the shallows of the wide sandy beach, cooking on the community grills or launching their motorboats and sailboats from the pier.

It's not all play, though.

"Everybody pitches in," Nudell said. "If the pier falls down, we're all out there with a hammer."

The 44-year-old father of two traced that attitude to "the elders who kind of pulled us in and said, 'We don't pay for things; we do it ourselves.' " He said, "That builds camaraderie."

Among those elders is Peggy Scheide Hancock, Bayberry's first resident, who moved to the community in the 1950s. The land's owner, for whom she and her husband Mel Scheide worked, gave the lot to the couple, provided that they "build a home and live in it," Hancock said.

But the 1 1/2 -story brick house with its prime view of the river wasn't finished when they had to leave their Baltimore digs.

"Fall into winter, with a potbelly stove," Peggy, Mel and 18-month-old Steve lived in a windy shack, she said.

When daughter Susan came along a few years later, the family moved to their second home in the neighborhood. All told, Hancock has lived in three Bayberry houses.

"Every house we lived in, my husband built a bar and a clubroom. Back then, hon, you didn't go out to places, you'd stay home," she said. "We were friends. We weren't just neighbors. We partied together."

Just outside Hancock's house lies Scheide's Cove, the waterway named for her first husband in 1977.

"Mel put up steps and a pier so people could get down to the ice to skate. They'd have ice hockey games, and we used to take pots of hot chocolate," she recalled. "And that's why they named it after him."

Hancock's son, Steve Scheide, now 58, said he was the only child in Bayberry at first.

"Let's just say the Magothy was my friend," he said. "During summertime, my mother would put me in a rowboat and tie the boat's rope to her waist."

His mother would push a net along the river bottom as she walked along the shoreline, he said.

"She'd pick up soft crabs. I'd wrap them in seaweed," said Scheide, who now lives in a development nearby.

Life in Bayberry today is not that much different. The Chapman family lives in the Scheides' first house, and 9-year-old Noah "loves fishing," said his mother, Linda Chapman. "Sometimes we'll drop chicken necks off the big pier."

Chapman, 45, grew up in adjacent Ulmstead Estates. "If you have water around you growing up, you always yearn for it," she said. And so she and her husband, Andy, spent many weekends looking at waterfront homes, almost as a hobby.

When they bought the house in 2006, it was far from perfect. "There was standing water in the basement," she said. Renovations took two months.

"Under moldy carpets and linoleum, we found the original hardwood floors," Andy Chapman said.

With its broad view of the Magothy River and Gibson Island, the back yard becomes a soccer field when Noah and his father step out with a ball. Two doors east is the community area.

"We walk along the beach and get other kids to get a game going," said Andy Chapman, 38. "It's a pretty nice-size field with two lacrosse goals."

Do they still drive around looking at houses?

"We're not going anywhere," Linda Chapman said. "They're going to sprinkle my ashes here."

At Scheide house No. 2, built in 1953, Bob and Janet Witter, married 56 years and in their 70s, said they're settled in, too. Once among the many people who rented the two-story, white-siding-clad house over the years, the Witters bought the home in 1981. It sits on a bluff next to the beach and playground.

"My grandchildren think I own it," Janet Witter said of the common area, which includes a swing set, slide, basketball court and picnic tables.

"It's here as a community asset, but this time of year when nobody's there, it's [like having] another three acres of our property," said Bob Witter, a member of the community's board and a retired Coast Guard naval engineer.

The house never was listed for sale. Bob Witter said he had to talk its owner into selling it, but the negotiation was well worth it. Their location gives them eastern and western vistas.

"We can see the water from every room in the house except the upstairs bathroom," Janet Witter said.

Segree doesn't have a waterfront view, but that doesn't diminish her love for Bayberry. After her husband died in 2006, friends suggested that she move. But she's satisfied where she is.

"I have wonderful neighbors," she said. "It's a place where you can feel safe. The kids -- you look out your window and they're riding their bikes, playing basketball."

Segree, 67, came to Bayberry "as part of the new generation." Now the next generation is arriving.

"The ones that come in are younger, and that's great," she said. "Now there's an influx of a lot of little ones."

One of those little ones, 4-year-old Gus Garrett, and his mother, Catherine Garrett, strolled down the community pier on a recent brisk afternoon after seeing off two sailors -- Gus's dad, Mike Garrett, and neighbor Nudell.

The family moved to Bayberry from Silver Spring in 2006.

"We knew we had to move" as Gus grew older, Catherine Garrett said. "We asked ourselves, 'Do we move to the city or the water?' It was a no-brainer." Now she and Gus walk down the hill from their back yard to the beach almost every day. That's become their tradition.

Then there are the community traditions "that we carry on," Garrett's neighbor, Theresa Nudell said, such as "Santa at the beach" and the Easter egg toss. The Fourth of July brings a kids' parade of decorated bikes to the beach.

"People bring covered dishes, and people swim," Garrett said.

The October oyster roast draws many former residents and their grown children. A neighbor roasts a whole pig. Even the shellfish caterers are an institution.

"The same family from the Eastern Shore has been shucking the oysters for 32 years," Theresa Nudell said.

Perhaps Bayberry's harmony endures because it "is a good size," as Segree said. "It's big enough to have activities as a community. It's small enough that you can even have an annual meeting in someone's house."