Helen Chalke, 102, Recalls Her Husband’s Place In Cape Cod Lore

by Alan Pollock

            HARWICH – Every week at Rosewood Manor nursing home, Activities Director Jack Sheedy reads books aloud to a group of residents.  A few weeks ago he was reading from Henry Beston’s classic Cape Cod book “The Outermost House” when resident Helen Chalke gave him quite a shock.

            “Helen said, ‘My husband is mentioned in that book,’” Sheedy recalled.  “Everybody was in awe.”  Sheedy flipped through the pages and found it, right there in Chapter 8.

            “I went down to the beach that night just after 10 o’clock,” Beston wrote.  “The fog was compact of the finest moisture; passing by, it spun itself into my lens of light like a kind of strange, aerial, and liquid silk.  Effin Chalke, the new coast guard, passed me going north...”

            A day before her 102^nd birthday Saturday, Mrs. Chalke reminisced about her life and her husband, who died in 1992 at the age of 85.  Among those who came to hear her story were Don Wilding, president of the Henry Beston Society, and Cape Cod National Seashore Historian Bill Burke.

            A native of North Andover, Mrs. Chalke was a graduate of Boston University and Fanny Farmer’s Boston cooking school; she came to Cape Cod in her early 20s, working at the Blue Lantern Restaurant in Barnstable.  It was there that she met her future husband, Effin.

            Mr. Chalke was a member of the new U.S. Coast Guard, which had been born from the old U.S. Lifesaving Service only about a decade earlier.  He was assigned to the Nauset station in Eastham in the mid 1920s as a surfman.  It was at this time, when he was in his late teens or early 20s, that Mr. Chalke met Henry Beston, who was staying in a small house on the outer beach.  Years later, Beston used the experience to pen “The Outermost House.”

            Her husband rarely spoke of his time in the Coast Guard, Mrs. Chalke said.  While he never admitted it, it was duty that didn’t suit him well, she said.  This was particularly true when he had to slog long miles up the beach in the stormy darkness, part of the routine patrols surfmen were expected to perform.  His patrols brought him right in front of the Outermost House.

            “I think he was frightened being all alone on nights like that,” she said.  That might have been because of what Mr. Chalke feared stumbling across; his service was during prohibition, and the outer beach was bristling with well-armed rumrunners. 

            Beston was among those who disagreed with prohibition, and occasionally aided and abetted the smugglers by hiding their booze.

            When her husband’s last stint in the Coast Guard was over, Mrs. Chalke recalled, “He said, ‘I don’t think I’ll enlist again.’  But I wish he had.” 

            The two raised a family in Yarmouthport, and owned and operated a heating oil company for many years.  Mr. Chalke was also a member of the volunteer fire department. 

            Still possessing a keen memory, Mrs. Chalke enjoys telling her friends about the times she and her husband spent together, like the time he asked her to drive the oil delivery truck.  Every time she tried to put it in gear, the big truck lurched backwards. 

            At 102, Mrs. Chalke enjoys regular games of bingo, and loves hearing and sharing tales about Cape Cod history. 

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6/4/09