The Maryland Center for History and Culture in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood has a ceremonial pen within its collection.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill creating the Assateague Island National Seashore with its ink, thus saving a pristine portion of Maryland’s Atlantic Coast from becoming a tangle of pizza joints and amusement parks.

A biography of Maryland Senator Daniel B. Brewster, who died in 2007, details his role in the legislative maneuvers to save this barrier island immediately south of Ocean City.

Brewster, once called “the golden boy of Maryland politics,” led a life marked by hard personal challenges. Maryland’s voters turned him out of office in 1968. Brewster himself said his support of the Vietnam War cost him re-election but he was also battling alcoholism at the time. Brewster eventually rebuilt his life and avoided politics.

The 2023 biography, “Self-Destruction: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of U.S. Senator Daniel B. Brewster” by former Sun reporter John W. Frece recounts Brewster’s very much up, then down political and personal career. And, later, a life redeemed.

Frece writes it was a life characterized by the emotional effects of a brutal experience in World War II when he was a Marine officer on Guam and Okinawa. Brewster suffered multiple wounds and witnessed close friends being mowed down in the fighting.

But in the 1960s, Maryland’s senator was a golden Washington political player, an aristocrat, and war hero. He loved running his Worthington Farms, a horse and cattle farm home to the Maryland Hunt Cup.

Brewster’s son, Gerry, said, “As kids we’d go fishing with my father at Tilghman’s Island or deep sea fishing off Ocean City. He felt that Maryland deserved a National Seashore park. He did not want to see Assateague become another Ocean City. As he testified in the Senate, there were 34 million people within 150 miles of Assateague and it was the last strip of undeveloped land between Cape Cod and Cape Hattaras.”

A powerful Democrat, Brewster had allies in Washington, D.C. One colleague was Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. The other was President Lyndon B. Johnson, the master politician who was a skilled game player at repaying a political favor. Brewster fought off segregationist George Wallace in the election of 1964 and helped deliver Maryland to Johnson in that year’s election.

(If you think Maryland has always been a reliably liberal state, consider that segregationist Wallace took the 1972 plurality in that primary election.)

“[Interior Secretary] Udall was concerned that almost all property along the coasts of the United States was in private hands and argued that the public deserves access to areas still unspoiled by development He said Fire Island in New York and Assateague Island in Maryland were two prime candidates to become National Seashores.” Frece writes.

Brewster lobbied for Assateague and succeeded. A staff member called the saving of Assateague “his greatest achievement.” Others might point to Brewster’s valiant work fighting for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Assateague is a barrier island and its contours have changed with time, tides and storms. It was once connected to Ocean City, but the August 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac hurricane created an inlet. The wide waterway separated the two land areas and was made a permanent channel to Ocean City after the Army Corps of Engineers created artificial jetty reinforced with Brandywine stone. Now the two areas are just 0.62 miles apart.

At times the federal government expressed interest in creating a national seashore on the island. But developers and get-rich-quick artists had other ideas too. A section of Assateague was planned for development. An asphalt road, Baltimore Boulevard, was constructed to cross the new development. Assateague was to be renamed Ocean Beach. Street names and sign posts went up.

The March “Great Storm of 1962” washed over Baltimore Boulevard and what little building development that had taken place was damaged. Ocean City, Rehoboth and Bethany beaches rebuilt quickly after that event. It appeared that Assateague might also fall under a renewed pressure to carve up the sandy dunes for home sites. Brewster’s sponsorship of the seashore bill halted these plans.

Assateague Island is owned and operated by the National Parks Service, Maryland State Parks, and United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

“When Stewart Udall signed his name to the edge of the ‘Save Assateague’ photo, the forward thinking Interior Secretary left a simple message for the bill’s sponsor: ‘Great Work Dan,'” the book recounts.

Have a news tip? Contact Jacques Kelly at jkelly@baltsun.com and 410-332-6570.