Cooperative Living March/April 2017 - 32

A Town
Between
Two Eras
Clockwise, from upper left: Dr. Arthur Carter was an OB-GYN at Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital for a dozen years. He stopped counting
how many babies he delivered in his career when he reached 6,000. * The old sawmill still stands in a building partially refurbished by a grant
and now the property is maintained by Northampton Lumber Co. * The main street of Nassawadox is named Rogers Drive after John T. Rogers,
who once owned most of the land where the town is now located. * Jenny Floyd has operated the Smiling Dolphin for the past 42 years.
" will continue to have viable small
businesses that offer various and needed
services to the area. "
Dr. Drury Stith and his wife Patsy, a
retired physical therapist, have lived in
the former home of hospital founder
Dr. William Sturgis for 41 years. Now 73,
oncologist Dr. Stith retired once, but it
lasted only three months before he
resumed his short walk across the street
to Shore Cancer Center.
With the cancer center also moving
north with the hospital, many of Dr. Stith's
Patsy Stith, who retired 12 years ago
when her first grandchild was born, served
10 years on the council before becoming
the town's mayor for 10 years. She is now a
council member who has always had the
town's interest at heart. She is most proud
of helping residents who were living in
substandard housing move to new
apartments that provided amenities lacking
in their previous homes.
" When I moved here, I said I would
give it two years because I grew up in the
city, but there was no place I felt as
comfortable as
I was here,
including where
I grew up, " says
Patsy, who enjoys
painting in her
Jack
Hallett
Ed
Gibb
patients feared he would retire again.
But not so. " I guess I will have to drive
to work, " he says, " but there are too
many exciting things happening with
the treatment of cancer to retire now.
The medical advances we are seeing
keep me motivated. "
Dr. Stith has cut back to two days a
week, leaving time for his hobbies of
growing orchids, playing in a local
bluegrass band and building a huge,
outdoor train set. He also was elected for
the first time to the town council, where
his wife is a veteran.
30 | Cooperative Living | March-April 2017
Felton
Sessoms
spare time.
" We've had a
good life here,
raising four children, all educated in
public schools. "
TOWN HISTORIAN
Jack Hallett is also on the town council
and regarded by many as the town's
historian. " I guess they call me that because
I've lived in town about as long as anyone, "
says Hallett, 73, and living in the same
house where his father and grandfather
once resided.
Hallett's great-grandfather was John T.
Rogers, who once owned all the land
between Seaside and Bayside roads, where
much of Nassawadox is located now. The
town's main road that runs east to west is
Rogers Drive. Rogers, who died in the early
1900s, is credited with naming the town.
With respect to the impact of the
hospital leaving, Hallett says, " It will work
or it won't. It's a lot easier to write history
than to write the future. "
Among those uncertainties about
Nassawadox's future is who will fill the
mayor's seat. Ed Gibb served two-and-half
years and stayed on two more months
when no one ran last November. But he
resigned at the end of January, saying he
needed to devote more time to his general
contracting business.
As of January, neither Gibb nor other
council members were certain who would
be the town's next mayor.
Felton Sessoms, who returned to his
native Nassawadox after a earning a college
degree in biology and then serving in
Vietnam while in the Navy, has long been
involved in town matters.
" I had friends and family who said I
was crazy to come back because I had good
opportunities elsewhere, but I wanted to
make a difference here. "
Today a minister at age 69, Sessoms
took over his father's grocery business in
town before embarking on a 27-year career
as an environmental health specialist with
the county while also serving three terms
each as a councilman and mayor. He
continued on pg. 32
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Cooperative Living March/April 2017

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