Century stories

5.24.99
The WPA salved Depression's sting; but nothing slowed the 'Great Gale'

By TOM CARBONE
Special to the Journal

In the West Bay region, the 1930s began and ended with hard times and the need to rebuild.

First, the Great Depression pushed thousands of people out of work and helped elect Franklin D. Roosevelt president.

FDR created the Works Progress Administration in 1933, which put hundreds thousands of workers nationwide on the federal payroll, doing public service projects from construction to photography.

Many WPA works remain as landmarks in the West Bay area today: the original hangars of T.F. Green Airport and the Aldrich High School, now a junior high, on Post Road in Warwick, for example.

Miles of sidewalks still have a WPA emblem embedded at one end.

Don Boylan, of Warwick remembers: ''There was a neighbor of mine named Mr. Birch, he made $27.50 every two weeks working for the WPA.''

''There was also the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] that my older brothers, Ed, Jim and Henry joined. They were each paid $21 a month, and of this, $16 was sent home to my parents. With a family of 13, the $48 each month was greatly appreciated. Times were rough. Their pay included free housing, food and medical assistance.''

The CCC helped build many state parks.

John Davis, of Cranston, remembers his time as a WPA worker: ''I was paid 25 cents an hour and happy to get it. At least I could put food on the table for my family.''

Marge Migliaccio, of Warwick, says that her father, who also worked for the WPA, ''eventually was able to save enough money to buy a used Model A Ford for $35.''

Near the end of the decade came what was known then as the Great Gale, now as the Hurricane of 1938.

Before the storm, the shoreline of Conimicut Point in Warwick included two landmarks: One was known as Butler's Point House; the other, Mary and John's Whiterock Inn.

Some years back, Ginny Coppa, the daughter of Mary and John, recorded her memories on tape. She recalled, '' My parents opened this dinner and dance restaurant in 1923.''

In September 1938, the inn had its last call.

''The place was totally destroyed,'' Coppa recalled. ''A few days later my parents got a call from the National Guard saying that they had found the bar ... on the shoreline of Barrington. When we arrived, the bar was still in pristine condition, its mirror still intact. It was however minus its lively liquid refreshments that had graced the bar.''

Some 14 years later, a friend of the family who was operating a forklift at a warehouse at the shipyard on the Cranston-Providence line found a battered copy of a 1938 menu from the Whiterock Inn.

''The menu listed a huge antipasto at 50 cents; a steak dinner with french fries and mushrooms cost a buck, as did a complete chicken dinner with all the fixings.''

Butler's Point House suffered the same destruction in 1938. Known also as the Conimicut Dining Hall, it featured seafood dinners. Unlike the Whiterock Inn, the Point House was rebuilt only to suffer another knockout blow when Hurricane Carol hit the Point in 1954. It was never rebuilt.

The 58-foot-tall Conimicut Lighthouse, built in 1868, survived the once-in-a-century storm.

On the shoreline of Oakland Beach, a longtime resident recalled: ''I was 10 years old at the time. My friends and I walked home from the Oakland Beach School that afternoon and we thought it was quite funny that trees were being uprooted. Once home, my father hustled the family into the car for higher ground at my aunt's house in the village of Centerville. Suddenly the storm became not so funny.''

The American Roller Rink was destroyed. Hundreds of the clamp-on skates became buried in the sands of Oakland Beach. The yacht club also became a memory. The shoreline and the village of Oakland Beach would never be the same.

At Rocky Point, the amusement park was literally blown into the water by this storm of all storms. Gone forever was the QuarterDeck. Francis ''Jiggs'' Ginaitt, a lifelong resident of Warwick, remembers this dance hall along Narragansett Bay where couples could dance under the moonlight.

Ginaitt also recalls the inland bathing pool that became history, with hundreds of rental bathing suits hanging from tree limbs after the storm.

(Six monkeys had escaped from the park's zoo in 1937. They survived the ensuing winter and the hurricane and lived in the surrounding woods around the park for a number of years. One of the monkeys was affectionately known to many as ''Jocko.'' Their final fate is unknown.)

The Wildcat, Rocky Point's largest roller coaster, was another casualty of the storm as was the wooden, 2-1/2-story shore dinner hall that could seat thousands. After the hurricane, diners had to wait for chowder and clamcakes until 1948, when the park reopened and a new dinner hall was built.

The shoreline in Edgewood and Pawtuxet fared no better. The Edgewood Yacht Club was severely damaged by this storm. The Rhode Island Yacht Club, next door, was destroyed.

At the Pawtuxet Athletic Club, the late Lenny Wennerstrom once recalled, ''Members hung onto the tables for dear life as the storm surged into the club with over 10 feet of water. But there was no loss of life here that day.''