McCord: The Man and the Business
By Bill Thompson Historical Photos courtesy of the Historical Society of Talbot County. Editor's note: Eastern Shore Land Conservancy hopes to purchase and renovate the McCord building to become the main portion of the Eastern Shore Conservation Center. When Walter Sharples McCord died at his home outside Oxford on Dec. 7, 1981, at age 78, there was no question that the news would break on the front page of the next day’s newspaper. McCord, better known as “Duke” to his many friends, was a respected pillar of the Talbot County business and civic communities. His influence was so in demand that he served as a director of three different banks, board president of Memorial Hospital in Easton, a trustee at Washington College in Chestertown, and in the vestries of two churches. McCord founded and presided over the local Rotary Club. He was a member of the Talbot Country Club, the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Club, and the Tred Avon Yacht Club. He belonged to Easton’s Elks Lodge and was a past master of Coates Lodge and a 32nd Degree Mason. He was named in the early 1940s to the board of Easton Publishing Company, which put out the then weekly Star-Democrat newspaper, and served as president from 1947 to 1963. But more than three decades after his death, McCord’s legacy is tied most directly to a decision he made in 1925 when he was 22 years old and hardly a candidate for any board or prized office. He started a laundry business. McCord, whose family moved from Radnor, Pa., to Talbot County when he was six, dropped out of high school in the ninth grade to take a job vacated by a brother bookkeeping for the Talbot Packing and Preserving Company, which canned fruits and vegetables under the Le Grande label. In the midst of his stint