Multiple Generations Grow Roots In Severna Park

Nick Codd spoke with the Severna Park Voice this month, sharing stories about the five generations of Codds who have called Severna Park home for nearly a century. His family is one of many that came to Severna Park decades ago and remains.

What is it about Severna Park that makes folks stay for generations? Why has Severna Park retained its small-town feeling despite burgeoning growth and development? At shopping centers, pools and beaches, churches and playing fields, the feeling of community is palpable, so many families have lived here for generations. Here are a few of their stories.

Codd’s grandfather, also a Nicholas, owned several pharmacies in Baltimore. In 1924, Nicholas Codd moved to Severna Park and hung his shingle on what became known as the Codd/Grotzky building on Riggs Avenue next to Severna Park Elementary School. The Codds lived above their pharmacy for many years and raised four children there even after the building survived two fires.

One of those children was Nick’s father, “Paddy.” Following his graduation from medical school, Paddy married Florence Virginia Weaver. They were friends from their days at Severna Park Elementary, a three-room schoolhouse at the time.

His story features one of the common threads that runs through many multi-generational Severna Park families; quite a few married their childhood sweethearts.

Paddy served as a physician in the Navy during World War II. Upon his return, he and Florence built a home in Linstead and raised three sons. He spent the next 70 years as a general practitioner, affectionately called “Doc Codd.”

According to Nick, “None of my family has ever left Severna Park. All of my siblings and nieces and nephews and now great-nieces and nephews live within a few miles from downtown Severna Park in Olde Severna Park, Linstead and Round Bay.”

Patrick Codd, a 2009 graduate of Severna Park High School and great-grandson of the original Nicholas, also married his high school sweetheart. He owns the building his great-grandfather bought in the 1920s. He’s renovating in the hopes of revitalizing the historic Riggs Avenue property, and he also plans to have an acai bowl truck and snowball truck to enhance the “Severna Park lifestyle.”

“It’s really special to me that I am renovating the building where my great-grandfather first set up shop,” he said. “It feels like we are coming full circle.”

Patrick emphasized that he would not want to raise his family anywhere else, a sentiment shared by lifelong Severna Park resident Miriam Ferris Morrow. Her father, Dean Ferris, discovered Severna Park as a young boy with his grandfather.

“They were originally from Pittsburgh but would vacation in Ocean City, Maryland,” she said. “There was no Route 2 at that time, so they would take B&A Boulevard down to catch the Bay Bridge ferry.”

The route took them along the Severn River, where they fished and pitched tents along the riverbank.

When Miriam’s father graduated from college with an engineering degree, he was one of the first engineers hired at the Westinghouse plant in Baltimore. Yet there was no question where he and his wife, Mildred, would settle and raise their four children. They built a house in Linstead. Miriam said her brothers and sisters had an idyllic childhood.

“We had a lot of freedom, a lot more than the kids today have,” Miriam said. “I think I was 5 years old when I was allowed to take out our rowboat by myself.”

She recalled other childhood charms of Severna Park: playing in the woods, ice skating on the river, riding bikes to Dawson’s with her friends for penny candy and root beer floats, and swimming in the river league during the 1960s and 1970s.

Miriam briefly moved to Northern Virginia after college and she “absolutely hated it.” Once back, she and her now former husband, Todd Morrow, raised five children in their home on Hatton Drive.

Currently, Miriam has seven grandchildren living nearby. Her daughter Toni is married to Mark Hepburn, from another long-standing Severna Park family. The couple recently returned from Virginia Beach, where Mark was stationed as a Navy Seal, and bought a house in Berrywood.

“I never, ever thought I would move back to Severna Park,” Toni said. A 2009 graduate of Severna Park High School, she said things changed when she and Mark had their first child. “We really wanted our kids to have the same kind of experience and lifestyle that we had, and we wanted to be near our families.”

Mark’s parents, George and Karen, live in Linstead. Three sisters are also nearby. Currently, the Hepburns have two boys, ages 1 and 3, with another baby girl on the way.

Some of Toni’s friends chose to move back to Severna Park for the same reason she did. “It’s just an unusual place with so many amenities and water activities,” Toni said. “Once you leave, you realize how unique the area is and we wanted our kids to enjoy that. We feel very safe and secure here.”

Emily McGeady, 89, and her husband, Joe, raised seven children, most of whom are still in Severna Park, along with 36 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. Five generations of McGeadys have called Severna Park home since the early part of the last century.

Emily and Joe raised their seven children in a home they built in West Severna Park. Years later, they turned that West Severna Park house over to their daughter, Monica, (named for her grandmother) and husband, Mike Ruppert, and moved to the original homestead off Old County Road.

“Monica called me and said, ‘Mom we need a bigger house; we’re getting ready for baby number five,’” Emily recalled. “So we just moved down the road a little bit and that was that.”

The Rupperts also were childhood sweethearts who grew up together in West Severna Park. Their moms were best friends but didn’t expect their children to fall for each other.

After college, Mike and Monica married and had 10 children, most of whom are still in the area.

Other McGeady offspring living within a five-mile radius of downtown Severna Park include Marcie, Stuart, Jenny and Pat. The Rupperts’ daughter, Emma, and husband Matt Siska, also childhood sweethearts, live around the corner in West Severna Park with two small children.

When asked how Severna Park has changed, Emily responded flatly, saying, “It hasn’t changed at all. We still have Dawson’s and St. John, although Old County is a little busier.”

Nick Codd agrees.

“Really, not much has changed except the traffic,” he said. “If you walk around downtown Severna Park and the old neighborhoods, things are very much the same. It’s comforting to see the same house and remember who lived in them once upon a time.

“A lot of time, it’s the kids and grandkids of the original homeowners,” he added. “That makes it fun and even a little comforting.”