Round Bay Celebrates Centennial

Birthdays are usually celebrated with cake, cards and some combination of food and beverages. But what is the appropriate way to celebrate the birthday of a neighborhood?

Round Bay residents gathered at the main beach on September 21 to hold a centennial celebration for their community. Each person marked the occasion in his or her own way. Some people participated in the regatta. Others drank wine and reminisced.

Marilyn Sickels reflected on her move to Round Bay in the early ‘80s. During her time in Round Bay, she helped start a Montessori school on Ritchie Highway and she developed an affinity for sailing.

“It started with the Wednesday night races in the neighborhood,” she said. “[A neighbor] offered me his boat, and I realized I needed to know more about engines. I had sailed on Lake Erie when I was 14. I brought my skills to the new age.”

For the next 20 years, she taught women’s sailing all over the world.

Sickels no longer lives in Round Bay full-time, but her daughter resides in the family home. Although much has changed in Severna Park over four decades, she said things in Round Bay operate nearly the same way they did when she moved in.

“Most of the kids grow up knowing how to sail, how to swim,” she said. “They learn how to keep the water clean, how to help the oyster population. The things are available to everyone – a book club, group pickleball. You don’t need to have an engraved invitation or whatever.”

In her 50 years in the community, Suzi Ochs said she has noticed “a lot of people have returned to the shores of Round Bay.”

As for her own family, they purchased a house for about $40,000 several decades ago. “My kids were on the swim team; they were river rats,” Ochs said. “It was a great place to grow up.”

Deke Johnson’s family moved to Round Bay in 1977, moved away in 1990 and came back around 2000. He now serves as president of the community.

He started a youth sailing camp, which some neighbors took over when he moved. Johnson later returned to his post, teaching children how to sail. Johnson praised his neighbors for the love and support bestowed upon one another.

“My wife got leukemia five years ago and people were always bending over backward to help,” he said. “There’d be a meal waiting for my kids when I got off work.”

It wouldn’t be a true centennial celebration without honoring the history of the neighborhood.

According to a Round Bay community directory published in 2016, Norvell Chapman, Walter Piper and Ernest LeSeure formed the Round Bay Beach Company in 1910, and proceeded to sell building lots. The beach company acquired the land from the Annapolis and Baltimore Short Line, a steam-operated railroad. Those 90 acres included woods and beaches, a pier, a summer hotel with bathhouses, a dance pavilion, and a log cabin occupied by Scott Nolan, who tended cows and delivered milk to early residents. According to the Department of Agriculture, the county’s first peach orchard on record was planted on a Round Bay hill.

During the first decades of family life in Round Bay, many houses were for summer use only. A rapid conversion to all-year living took place in the ‘30s, and community carnivals became must-attend events on the Severn.

While Round Bay is still enjoyed for water and recreation, the population has grown to 230 homes.

“The houses don’t all look alike,” Sickels said. “It’s a different sense of charm.”

So how did she celebrate this special birthday for Round Bay? The same way residents celebrate most occasions in the neighborhood: by enjoying the party.

“There’s a wide mix of ages, and the parties keep the older people feeling younger,” she said.