in this home for five years. His bedroom was the room, according to family lore,
called Cousin Alices Room.
This room was way in the back of the house next to the attic stairs—probably
because Alice’s visits were infrequent, although highly prized, and all of the other
rooms were taken by those living in the home. Alice was the important, wealthy,
colorful relative. Stories of her exploits, prestigious contacts, travels, real estate
holdings and litigations made for much speculation, comment and curiosity, lead
ing to heightened anticipation of a visit from Cousin Alice.
An important member at the family reunion Sanderson attended two years ago
was John Matthias, a professor of literature at Notre Dame University, who is also a
prose writer and poet. In 1994, Kathleen Guthrie from Salter Path contacted John
when she was a student at East Carolina writing her thesis, Alice Hoffman: Queen
ofBogue Banks, for her master of arts in history. This request for information about
Alice Hoffman evidently prompted family memories, and John decided to write
about Alice.
John Matthias’s father had left behind a box of memorabilia pertaining to Alice
because he had been Alice’s attorney for a while. In the box, among other things,
were a photo of a very young grandfather Matthias and his wife on the porch of
Alice Hoffman’s Bogue Banks home and an article describing Bogue Banks as “a
thirty-mile-long sandy spit, running east and west and separated from the main
land—or ‘country’ as the bankers called it—by Bogue Sound. For generations SaUer
Path remained, for all practical purposes, isolated from the rest of the world ... so
isolated that their very speech retains the flavor of Elizabethan pronunciation. Not
even the oldest resident knows how long the settlers have been here.”
John Matthias, the professor and writer, was Alice’s distant cousin. Growing up,
he would visit his grandfather’s large, dark Victorian house where the bedrooms
were named for family members. Working on becoming a poet/writer, he decided
to write about Cousin Alice in a piece that he admitted to fictionalizing a bit. His
“Who Was Cousin Alice?” is in print in the Chicago Review, Spring 2009. It con
tains many family impressions of Alice and her visits to the Matthias home in Ohio.
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Alice’s Ohio relatives in 1925.
As I sat at the computer reading his amusing family descriptions and anecdotes, I
just laughed out loud. This John Matthias is indeed a very good writer.
Ed Sanderson is coming again to Pine Knoll Shores to speak to the ladies of Pine
Knoll Shores’ Women’s Club at the September meeting and to read some of John
Matthias’s memoirs. Sanderson will talk about his connection to Alice, the Green
family’s relation to his family, and Fanny the cook’s impression of Alice Hoffman.
He will also read some amusing excerpts from Cousin John Matthias’s article Who
Was Cousin Alice?”
Ed Sanderson is not the only person who contacted me with information about
Alice Hoffman. Pine Knoll Shores resident Dave Huffman worked for Don Brock in
the early to mid-80s as Sales Manager at Beacon’s Reach. Since it was known that he
always loved the history of the area, Alice Hoffman and the Roosevelts, Dave Huff
man was invited to cruise Bogue Sound with Brock, along with Teddy Roosevelt
III and his wife Ann, on Brock’s 21-foot boat during one of the Roosevelt family’s
annual visits. By Huffman’s account, it seems as though it was a very congenial visit
all around. Perhaps there are other residents willing to share similar stories that will
help us to understand and appreciate the legacy of Alice Hoffman and the Roos
evelt family and their influence on our community.
People new to Pine Knoll Shores may be unfamiliar with its history, with the
Roosevelt and Hoffman connections and their impact on the development of this
environmentally preserved and protected community. Those interested may obtain
the booklet Ihe History of Pine Knoll Shores and the compiled series written about
Alice Hoffman entitled Queen Alice, at town hall.
In a serialized story A Woman in a Mans World, pubhshed in 1973 in The News
Times, author Jan Rider explains Alice’s love and respect for nature and its preserva
tion by describing a conversation Alice Hoffman had with Ira Guthrie, one of her
employees:
“’Ira,’ Mrs. Hoffman said, ‘you have children, don’t you?’
‘Yes ma’am,’ Ira said.
‘Do.you love them?’
‘Well, yes ma’am,’Ira answered.
‘Well, I love every tree, every animal and every grain of sand on Bogue Banks
just as much as you love your children. I don’t want to see them destroyed or
harmed. Do you understand?’”
While Pine Knoll Shores has changed since Alice’s day, changed since it was en
visioned and developed by the Roosevelt family, and many feel even more changes
have to be made to accommodate modern living conditions, most of us here in Pine
Knoll Shores.do “understand,” Alice.