Point Lookout Hotel; memories of fun, history and dreams of yesterday are mixed with reports of trash and poor conditions at State Park

In some fairness to the military owners – they did improve the Old Girl while She was under their command. They installed a sprinkler system, put storm windows on each window, erected a helicopter pad behind the swimming pool (something every little hotel needs,) and saw to it that it was kept in as good of shape as possible.

UPDATE: Alan Brylawski died in Florida – This interview with Alan Brylawski recalls the tough days of the war in Europe and horrors of Buchenwald

Alan Brylawski, 85, says funny things happen at war, though some horrors still haunt him.
“I am an optimist and humorist. I don’t take life too seriously,” the World War II veteran said.
War has been part of human culture since man got out of the cave, Brylawski says. “It’s senseless, there are no winners. We slaughter people. Everybody loses.” He said the kind of horror one man perpetrates on another during war is inconceivable, adding once the enemy is demonized everything becomes okay.
“It is either you do it or they are going to do it to you. So self-preservation says you do it first,” he said. “When you see bullets pass you, there’s no question you are under fire. At that point the enemy becomes a demon, devoid of humanity.”

The last days of Point Lookout Hotel

He also writes of how to cook fried hard crabs and about banquets on Saturday nightAfter the hotel closed it sat abandoned for many years as the State of Maryland fought its typically inept strategy at purchasing the property from owners who generally despised certain state officials.

During that time period, it came to look like this, stripped of anything of value by thieves and beaten by the weather. The long journey to destruction finally was reached when the transaction transferring about sixteen acres and the hotel was completed and the site of the hotel is now where the parking lot is located for the fishing pier.

Point Lookout Hotel was once a lovely old lady sitting on the beach at the Chesapeake Bay

I first visited the hotel sometime around 1937-38, and thought She was grand with Her wide double staircase leading to the upstairs from the great oaken-curved desk. The picture of Point Lookout Hotel that was carried in the November issue of The Chesapeake brought back poignant memories that I have really tried to put out of my mind. The last time I visited the Hotel, She reminded me of a skull looking with sightless eyes across the waters of the Bay. I say ‘She,’ because to me She was once a lovely old lady sitting there beside the beach smiling at the sea gulls and fishermen as they passed in their boats.