Betty Lockwood, 91, looks back on a lifetime in a changing town.
GLASSBORO -- After 60 years in the same house on the same street, it was time to say goodbye. Betty Lockwood, 91, decided earlier this year that she could no longer care for her Franklin Road home. After a few conversations with her children, she packed up her things at the end of August and moved to Pitman, just one town over and less than five miles away from the house where she was born.
It's a normal story -- the kind of situation that most people would consider a best-case scenario for someone who makes it to that age. But for one neighborhood, and for Betty, it was the end of an era. It was the first time she had lived anywhere outside of Glassboro.
Betty Lockwood, 91, of Glassboro, stands outside of her Franklin Road home, August of 2015. She moved out of town for the first time in her life a few days later. (photo provided)
Old Glassboro
"We think she's one of the last people to be born and raised here from that time to live here continuously," said Betty's daughter, Marie Lockwood.
That would make Betty one of the last residents to have lived in what some call "old Glassboro." It's a version of the town that hasn't existed since the college that would later become Rowan University consisted of a few buildings; since a general store dominated the corner of Main and High streets; since Betty's neighborhood was a series of empty fields dotted with houses.
With the last days of the summer coming to an end, Betty sat in the courtyard of her new residence in Pitman Manor last week and looked back on a lifetime in a changing community.
"In the last 30 years it's changed a lot," Betty said, sitting next to Marie.
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But developments like the Rowan Boulevard project, which began in 2008, and the housing boom in neighborhoods along Delsea Drive in the early 1990s are just a few of the things she's seen. In fact, Betty's family moved to town in the midst of one of Glassboro's earliest building booms. Chestnut Ridge, the neighborhood located off of Route 322 near Rowan's campus, began life as a series of undeveloped plots marketed to World War I veterans looking to start families in the country. Betty's father, Charles Brewster, was one of those veterans. He repaired railroad switches and signals for a living, and he and his wife Emily were among the first people to buy land on the Ridge. A residential lot cost $400.
"My mother grew up near Camden," Betty said. "The first time she got off the train [at the Oakwood Avenue station in 1923], she looked around, and there was nothing. She didn't know where she was."
Betty was born in a house on Ellis Street in 1924, and as she grew, so did the town around her. High Street was a shopping destination for the families of Gloucester County. Houses on Chestnut Ridge sprang up steadily over the years, and Glassboro was big enough that students from several neighboring communities were commuting to town to finish their schooling.
The elementary schools were segregated in Betty's childhood, with black students attending school in a building that now houses the Boys and Girls Club.
"You can't believe it, can you?" she said, looking back. "How ridiculous that was."
The high school, however, was integrated for the few black students who could afford to finish 12th grade. Betty was there in the late 1930s, when the students all chipped in to buy a bulldog named Mugs. He was Glassboro High School's original mascot, and was free to roam the halls as he liked.
"I don't know where they got him, but he seemed old," Betty recalled. "He wasn't very frisky, but he walked around the school all day."
The Great Depression was relatively kind to Betty's family. Because they kept chickens in their backyard, the Brewsters never went hungry. And although Betty's father was laid off from railroad work for long periods of time, he was called back occasionally to make emergency repairs.
"There was no unemployment," Betty said. "You saved your pennies. But then a big storm would happen and he'd go back to it. When there was a big snow storm, we'd be happy."
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Glassboro in wartime
Everything changed on a Sunday afternoon in 1941. The Brewsters had company for Sunday dinner, and when they were finished eating, everyone went into the living room to listen to the news on the radio. That was how Betty -- fresh out of high school -- learned that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
"I said, 'where is that?' I didn't know where it was."
For the next four years, she watched as her brother, who had joined the Navy just before the war, as well as most of her male childhood friends, went off to fight. The names of those who never made it home now adorn street signs in town (Betty and her children contacted NJ Advance Media in the summer of 2012 when they began to worry that residents would forget how the streets got their names).
Betty married her husband, a Pennsylvania native named Harvey Lockwood, in June of 1944 when he was home on leave from Navy service in the South Pacific.
Telegrams were delivered at a local ice cream parlor, which meant the owners of the shop had the unhappy duty of alerting families in town when their sons were killed, wounded or missing.
"One time he pulled up in front of our house when my husband and brother were both overseas," Betty said. "That was a scary moment."
The driver had the wrong house, however, and moved on. Betty never found out where he was going.
Change
After a few years of renting, the couple bought the empty lot next door to Betty's childhood home. They built a house in 1955, and there, they raised their three children. Betty would live there nearly 60 years in total, working on and off for 22 years at South Jersey Gas while Harvey worked in trucking.
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In the 1960s, when a new high school went up on Bowe Boulevard and new suburban shopping centers were built, the busiest part of town shifted away from Main and High and moved to Delsea Drive. By that point, all of the local schools had been completely integrated, though Betty said some people took the change "not well," to put it mildly.
"When they built Collegetown [shopping center], that was a huge deal," said Marie. "It moved the whole focus of town."
Much of the old downtown fell into disrepair by the 1990s. Things changed again in 2008, when work began on the Rowan Boulevard downtown revitalization project -- a development that has not yet been completed. Even as Glassboro changed before her eyes, Betty saw no point in pining for the old days.
"It was different then, I'll tell you," she said. "And all the college kids moving in, I think that's the future. I have not been bothered by them," she said, though she acknowledged that there were some tensions between longtime residents and students.
Rowan's growth has meant more students are staying through the winter and summer recesses, and more homes in residential neighborhoods are being used as college rentals.
"I know over by State Street there've been problems, but I don't have a lot to complain about. You have to be progressive -- can't stay to the old ways, though I'm sure some people don't like it at all."
In Betty's case, there was no last straw. No injury or sudden illness pushed her out of her home. She and her children simply decided that the time had come, and in typical fashion, Betty took it in stride.
"I think it's good that she made the decision, while she could still make a decision," said Marie. "She's tough. She's always been tough."
"It's not like home. No place is," Betty said. "But I came in here on my own two feet."
Andy Polhamus may be reached at apolhamus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ajpolhamus. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
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