BRINGING BACK TURNER STATION
It’s Friday in Turner Station, which means Speed’s Barber and Beauty Shop on Main Street is packed and tales of the good old days are flowing as freely as the gray trimmings from Rudy Dews’ head.
Dews, 68, grew up in this historically African-American neighborhood south of Dundalk. He recalls a boyhood of shooting marbles on the sidewalk, crabbing in the Patapsco River and playing cowboys and Indians in the woods.
Barber Zellious Allen, 72, remembers a community where no one locked their doors, “everybody knew everybody,” and kids like Frizzell “Pee Wee” Gray — later known as congressman Kweisi Mfume — and future NFL legend Calvin Hill were just buddies down the block. Courtney Mears-Speed |
They describe a time and place where church and family ruled and there were so many thriving businesses that no one needed to go anyplace else.
“You had it all right here — movies, barbers, grocery stores, churches, schools — so why leave Turner Station?” says Allen, who has cut hair in the community since he was just 13.
Now it’s Turner Station that has left — or in many ways simply faded away. Residents are fewer and less neighborly, crime and drugs are a concern, buildings need repair.
But a few dozen elders are fighting to bring it back.
Longtime shop owner Courtney Mears-Speed is a tireless advocate
“We’re trying to bring back businesses, home ownership, a whole way of life that is disappearing.”
and organizer. Mary Coleman studies and shares local history. And the circle of retirees behind the Turner Station Conservation Teams, a nonprofit, have attracted investment and helped get a new community center built.
The people at the barber shop say reviving Turner Station won’t be easy, but that it would be foolish to discount those who came of age in its golden era.
Allen looks up from his cutting.
“With these folks, nothing is impossible,” he says.
The Meadows and the Point