A Conversation With... Jim Cross: Laurel’s Mr. Do-Everything
- Kevin Leonard
- Oct 12
- 17 min read
Raised in Laurel since 1953, Jim Cross was a member of the last graduating class (1965) from the old Laurel High School on Montgomery Street. Since then, he has worn a variety of hats in community service: Laurel City Councilman, Board of Trade chairman, Ivy Hill cemetery board member, and many more. We started by talking about his childhood.
Jim Cross: I lived beside the fire department on Montgomery Street. That’s where I grew up. 911 Montgomery Street where the old fire department is now the HVAC. There was actually a school that was on that corner. And my great Aunt Edith taught at that school.
Kevin Leonard: I’ve never seen a photo of that.
JC: I’d love to find one. Apparently, she taught there like her sister. My great Aunt Hattie would take a train from Baltimore to the sanitarium, where she worked as a secretary from about 1912 to ’17 or so. I can’t find any records of anything there. That’s all gone, basically. My great-grandfather was the manager of the Ober farm, which was on 197 where Greenview, all the Greenview businesses and the golf course and all that stuff was. Well, that was the Augustus Ober farm. My grandfather was born there in 1881. But I have lots of roots here in the city. We moved here in 1953. My dad worked for C&P Telephone Company, which was Chesapeake and Potomac. Well, if you worked there it was called “cheap in particular.” [laughs] I actually worked with them for a year or two. Anyway, we moved here in ’53 and I started first grade at OW Phair Elementary School. That opened in ’53.
KL: Its first year?
JC: Yeah. So, I went there and then I went to junior high. And then I was in the last graduating class out of Laurel Senior High.
KL: In ’65? So, you were the last class to graduate from Montgomery Street?
JC: Yep. We just had our 60th high school reunion, and I was in charge of that, sort of.
KL: What was it like going to school there? What I mean is, at that point, it was a pretty old school.
JC: It was built in 1899. And then it had been added on for the gymnasium and the auditorium. When I was there, all of that was there. I was in the band, I played trumpet. I occasionally do stuff at church, with the choir or something, and “Taps.” I play “Taps.” Not a lot. It’s the 24 hardest notes ever written. Not that it’s that hard to play, except that when you play it, you’re usually playing it for a friend or family member or something like that.
KL: Hard to get through?
JC: Yeah. We had a guy named Bill Snyder I’d known for years since we moved here, and he asked that I play “Taps” for him when he passed. I said, “Sure.” He was up in Carroll Lutheran home in Westminster. He moved in there with his wife and all. So, he passed away and I went up, and I was standing in the back of the chapel and they’re getting ready to do it. And the chaplain says, “Would any of the veterans like to come up?” So, like 15 old guys hobble up. They’re all standing up there. I’m afraid I can’t make a mistake.
KL: Also, this was indoors?
JC: Yeah, it was in the chapel. And so, the military guys went over, picked up the flag, and I stood back there and played “Taps,” and my legs were shaking, and I got through it. When I did my dad’s in 2001 at the cemetery, I said to the people, “I just had read that Winston Churchill said, ‘When you bury me, I don’t want you to play “Taps,” I want you to play “Reveille” as a new beginning.” I said, “I think that’s pretty cool.” So, I played “Taps” and I played “Reveille.” That’s the only time I’ve done that. Anyway, so where were we? Oh, class of ‘65. It was really great to see our classmates.
KL: How many were in your class?
JC: We had 158. Forty have passed away. We had about 38 or something like that showed up. Tony Woodward lives out in Wyoming, and he makes car parts and stuff. He didn’t remember this, but I distinctly remember this was in Miss Stanton’s English class. We had to do book reports every two weeks, and every third one was an oral book report. So, she says, “Okay, Tony, come up, do your oral book report.” And he was like [makes a scared face]. So, he goes up and he says, “The name of the book is the Bible. The main character is God.” Miss Stanton said, “Sit down Tony.” [laughs]
KL: Did you have a sense that you were in this old school that—
JC: Yeah. Because the teachers were all—basically most of them were getting up there.
KL: Doc Weagly was there.
JC: Yep. He was. He was our science teacher.
KL: What about Miss Fisher?
JC: Yeah. Miss Fisher. I played football, so I didn’t have to be in a marching band.
KL: They used the 8th street field for all the athletics, right?
JC: Yeah. I was quarterback for 11th and 12th grade. I worked at the Valencia Motel when I was going to college. I started college after I graduated and I tutored the son of Ida Fisher, who owned the motel, in math. So, she asked if I’d like to have a job. I said, “Sure.” I worked three shifts on the weekend and went to school during the week. Then I met my wife at the motel. She, her mom and dad, and her friend Judy had come down to help her sister and brother-in-law move from one apartment to another apartment here in Laurel. Next morning, they are in the car heading back to Rochester, New York, so she can go back to nursing school. But eventually she was coming down to visit her sister during a break in November. She came down and we got together and went down to DC because you could drink a beer at 18 back then. And went to a place called Basin’s. I drank a few beers and threw up. She wouldn’t kiss me that night. [laughs]
KL: Fill me in on all the different roles that you play within the city and all the different organizations.
JC: Where do I start? Okay, first of all, I’m chairman of the Board of Trade. I’ve been chairman for five or six years now. Marilyn [Johnson, who passed away this past June] was president. I’m chairman. Right now, we’re working on trying to get through all of the stuff that Marilyn was doing.
KL: I really want to talk to you about the Main Street Festival. We’ve been in it for three or four years now and it’s always been such a calm, friendly, nice day.
JC: Forty-four years of no problems until this one.
KL: Did they ever figure out why that tank exploded? What happened?
JC: Apparently, there’s a hose that went to the grill or something, and the hose came loose or something, and I think he turned the thing the wrong way to try to turn it off. I think he’d already started his grill, too. So somehow the fire got going. I was just down the street and it was like, “Oh my God.” I ran into the Woman’s Club and grabbed a fire extinguisher. Everybody’s going, “What are you going to do with that?” Fortunately, the fire department got up there and hosed it down real good and got it stopped, and the McCeney house was sitting back far enough.
KL: But I understand it burned one of the trees in the yard, right?
JC: Yeah. It’s a pine tree right there in front where he was set up. It’s still okay. But there’s some stuff burned up. I mean, it just went crazy.
KL: He was the owner, right?
JC: He was the owner. And they had to take him off to the burn unit at Johns Hopkins. He got checked out, and apparently he really got a lot of burn problems. Anyway, the city came in and they had to close off the street there. And then you had to get BG&E to come in and fix the wires and all that gas, and Verizon. So, I met with the Mayor and Police Chief and several officers. We had a little talk about, “What are we going to do?” We obviously had to cancel the parade because they couldn’t get past Fourth Street. We did that, but then said, “everything seems to be going okay, maybe we can keep it up.” The police said, okay, we’ll just have people go up the street and down Prince George, come down Fourth and then they can go down the other side. Well, this is a private property. They can’t be walking through there and all that. So, we got through all of that, and people were on the street. There was a lot. And this was about 7:15 when we were just starting to set up.
KL: We didn’t know what was going on. We were too far up, but the word traveled very fast.
JC: Then you had the lady that decided she wanted to drive.
KL: That’s another whole thing that happened right in front of us.
JC: That was right in front of you? You all saw that?
KL: Oh, yeah. I’ll tell you, we’ve always been admirers of the Laurel Police Department, and their response was just amazing. It could have been so much worse. Although, clearly, she wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, but that’s not the point.
JC: You’re driving down the street, there’s a lady pushing her little kid in a walker, and—
KL: —and here come the cheerleaders, who were in kind of an impromptu parade. We can’t say enough about the LPD. They were fantastic. Beforehand, you probably sat down and went over contingencies. You never thought about something like that, did you?
JC: What I did do was after it was over, I looked at our vendor list because one of the things that I do is—because I’m lucky to be able to do it—is set up. All of the vendors get their spots and that kind of stuff. And you got to think about stuff like, I don’t want to put the lady selling the dresses next to the barbecue guy.
KL: So, you’ve got to spread out the food vendors and stuff like that.
JC: Yeah. I have a routine that I do when I set it all up. I went back and looked at the food vendor list and of the 35 food vendors we had, 15 of them had propane tanks. And now I’ve talked with Chrissy up at city hall. We’re going to get together and meet with a fire marshal and all these folks to sit down and say, “All right, what do we want to do about propane tanks?” Because fortunately, where I had parked the guy where he was, it worked out okay. Had he been down the street and in front of some old buildings—
KL: I never thought about that. Yeah, like the old playhouse—that would have gone up.
JC: Yes, it could have been a real issue there. So, I want to think about what to do. I’ve been thinking, well, we can put them right there in front of the entrance to the parking lot to the apartments. No, you can’t do that because if the Rescue Squad has to get in there, you can’t have them sitting in front of it. You’ve got to leave that open, all that kind of stuff.
KL: As a vendor who doesn’t do food, I remember when we saw—I guess it was two years ago—when all the canopies had to be fire retardant. And we were thinking, what’s this all about?
JC: That’s what it’s all about. People that were set up there, stuff was coming off of the tree hitting their tent. Burning through the tent but not setting the tent on fire. That’s why we do that. That’s a good idea from the city.
KL: So, back to the woman. Did you do a what-if-something-like-that-happened? Did that ever come up?
JC: Not yet, but we’ll be talking about that. Obviously, they need something. We’ve got city trucks, police cars, everything blocking Fourth Street coming in Fifth Street. All that stuff is done. But now this was a parking lot, right? With a piece of yellow paper. But we don’t want to really block it. But we may have to, I don’t know.
KL: Well, they can’t leave, so why not?
JC: But you also have to make sure you can get somebody in the car in case an ambulance has to go in and get somebody, because they’re no other way in there.
KL: Let’s move on. Ivy Hill.
JC: I’m on the board of directors of the Ivy Hill Cemetery. I’m the historian, which means I basically got a bunch of boxes of stuff out of Maurice Harding’s attic. He was on the cemetery board. I’ve gotten all his boxes of that stuff to try to go through and sort out what’s relevant to make sure we keep digitizing whatever.
KL: And this all pertains to the cemetery?
JC: This is all cemetery stuff. At the last meeting I said, “You know, I can’t be buried here. And they said, well, why not? I said, I’m not dead yet.” [laughs] A lot of bad jokes.
KL: What’s in the boxes?
JC: Some letters going back and forth with people and that kind of stuff. That’s my thing. I like to digitize stuff and get it.
KL: Who owns the cemetery?
JC: There’s a company, I guess. It’s Laurel Ivy Hill cemetery. And then there’s a board of directors that manages this.
KL: So, it must be incorporated.
JC: It’s incorporated. And it started around 1850 and then I guess the corporation kind of got in there somewhere. I got to have to go back and really look at that stuff. But, it was it was about 1850 because that’s where—see, there was a church on Ninth Street, and those were transferred over there.
KL: The graves?
JC: Yeah. There was a cemetery behind it. It was a Methodist church or something. And then it moved over to Main Street. Speaking of—this is apropos of nothing in particular. Years and years ago I worked for the county for Winnie Kelly as the County Executive, and I would take calls from people that had problems, and then I’d see if I could solve the problem somehow. So, this lady called in and said, “I live in an apartment and my neighbor has got cancer and he really needs some help.” I said, “Okay, we’ll see what we can do.” So, I called Social Services, and they sent somebody out to interview him, do all that stuff, and then they called back. I said, “How’d it go? Did you get him some medication?” But the problem was it couldn’t get him something because he owned property. He has to sell the property. I said, “He lives in an apartment. What’s he got?” “Oh, he bought a burial plot a couple months ago. That gives you the property. And he has to sell it.” I said, “He’s going to use it in six months. What are you talking about?” So, I called the department head and I explained it to him. He said, “I’ll take care of it.”
KL: What else?
JC: I’m on the board of the Laurel Amateur Radio Club. I’ve been a member of that since 1990. I guess I’ve been past president and editor of the newsletter and blah, blah, blah and all that stuff. I’m very active with that Laurel Radio Club. Because of that, I also have a badge that I can swipe in any of the city buildings and get into because we have a radio station there set up beside the emergency operations center.
KL: Where is that?
JC: In city hall. And if you look back there—I haven’t put it up lately—but we have a 71-foot tower with a bunch of antennas on it and all that in the back between the two buildings. Lately I’ve had it down because every time I think about putting it up, oh, we’re going to have a wind up to 60 miles an hour, and it only works up to 45 miles an hour. I originally got an amateur radio license in 10th grade back in 1963 and had to have my mom drive me down to the FCC to take my general class license test. I’m very active in that. We just did our National Night Out over here.
KL: That was with the city, right?
JC: Gude Lake, yeah. The city has a number of different groups that will set up in a little area down there by the Lakehouse. I was on the City Council for—back when I was a little kid—for ten years. Five terms.
KL: What years were that?
JC: 1974 to ‘84. That was kind of interesting.
KL: Who was Mayor then?
JC: When I went on, it was Leo Wilson. And then Bob DiPietro came on. One of the things that I was very happy to have done, I went to—trying to remember. It was Winnie Kelly, maybe Parris Glendening. I don’t know. Whoever the County Executive was at the time, I said, “I think because we’re in the city and the city provides police, fixes the roads, does all this stuff that the county does in the county. I think we should get a lower county tax rate to the people in the city to recognize the fact that we’re doing all that work.”
KL: And you’re not getting services.
JC: Yeah. So he says, “Oh, well, we can’t do that because there’s no law that says we can do it.” I said, “Well, if there’s not a law that says you can’t do it, you can do it.” “Oh, no, we have to have a law.” So, I was working with the Municipal League on this, and then we got it set up. We got a bill. And the Judiciary Committee was doing the hearings on the bill. So, what I did was set up a little play, basically. When you go testify for the state, “Hi, I’m Jim Cross and I’m for this bill because blah blah blah blah. Thank you. Goodbye.” Well, what we did was we had somebody playing the role of County Executive, County Council, city Mayor, City Council. We sat there, we had script, and we went through the whole thing and they passed the bill. And now we have a drop [in taxes]. Well, they’ve nibbled away at it over the years, but there is a differential.
KL: Enabled the Laurel residents to pay lower county tax?
JC: Yes. And residents of any other city and county that provides their own services. So that was kind of fun.
KL: Tell me more about this play. So, that was your time at the microphone basically?
JC: We had several of us sitting around doing our little talk. The County Executive said, “blah, blah, blah,” but no, the City Council said “blah, blah, blah, blah.” We went around and did all that and they passed it. They passed it out to the Judiciary Committee and then it got passed in. When I ran for City Council, I was knocking on doors across the city. This one lady says, “My dad was the Mayor of Laurel and all they did was name an alley after him.”
KL: Tolson?
JC: Yeah. She was pissed. Well, at least he got an alley. [laughs] And Dani Duniho. I ran her campaign for her in ‘84, I think. She was really great. Her son and my son were in high school together, and we got to know each other. Mickey [her husband] ran for County Council or City Council back when I was running. And he lost by a short amount of votes to Peggy Anderson. I was President of the Council and then I was doing the budget hearing. This one always stands out in my head. A guy gets up and says, “Hey, my taxes are too high. You got to lower my property taxes.” I said, “What do you mean? Your property taxes are too high?” “I got a friend that’s got a house the same value as mine, and he’s in Virginia, and his property taxes are like 15% less than mine.” I said, “Okay, you have a personal property tax here or what? Personal property tax. They have that in Virginia. That’s how they make up that 15% difference.” Because when you got to fix the roads and you got the pothole, I know you’ll call me. That’s how you do it. I said, “We had budget hearings. The public was invited. We’ve spent 50 hours meeting with department heads down to how much the bullets cost for the target range. Nobody was there.” Just us. So, if you want to come out and yell at us, fine. But, you know, but we gotta fix your potholes.
KL: Did you enjoy campaigning?
JC: Yeah. Because we’d get out and knock on doors.
KL: Laurel was a very different place in ’74. So, I assume knocking on doors was enjoyable because you got to talk to all these people. Did you get the door slammed in your face?
JC: No, just the Tolson lady. She didn’t slam it, but she was pissed.
KL: If you had to point to one or two things in that ten-year period when you were on the council, what changes really caught your eye?
JC: It was growing a little bit, taking on a little bit more, getting more people in there, annexing.
KL: What’s with Laurel’s city borders? It’s crazy. I’d like to know, why was this parcel annexed and why was that one? I’m sure it was all about the taxes, but when did all this happen? And because Westgate isn’t in the city limits—that’s crazy.
JC: That’s called a boot up Laurel’s ass. If you look at what it looks like. Check the map. See, here’s the thing. The city can’t just annex anything. It has to be requested by the property owner to be annexed. I didn’t realize that the city cannot reach out and say, “Oh, let’s just put this in the city.” Boom! Can’t do that. It’s the property manager. Whoever owns the property wants to have it annexed. Basically, the reason a lot of these places want to get annexed is it’s much easier to work with the city on zoning and building permits and all the rest of that stuff, than trying to deal with the county. County is a whole ‘nother thing.
KL: All right. Last question then about the City Council. Why did you not run again? What made you stop?
JC: Well, you know, I was sitting at home and I looked up and I saw these two young guys, tall guys. Oh, my God, that’s my kids. I’ve got to spend some time with them.
KL: Good reason.
JC: My church is a member of a group called PLAN, which is Prince George’s Leadership Action Network or something. Anyway, it’s a bunch of churches that got together trying to come up with some way to get some affordable housing in PG County. So we’ve gotten involved in that. I’m on the property committee and stuff like that. Just painted a couple of rooms up there. Oh, and then I got called by Amy Knox [of Laurel Resist] about a group called We Are America. They’re going to have probably about 60 people marching from Philadelphia to the Congress to give them the constitution.
KL: When is that going to happen?
JC: They will be in Laurel on September 17th and they’re trying to find someplace to stay. So Amy called me.
KL: For the marchers?
JC: Yeah. I said I’m working on our church right now. I think we’ll be able to say okay. They’ve got air mattresses and compressors to fill them in. And I think they’ve got a truck carrying all that stuff. So anyway, the point was they were going to stop in North Laurel at the senior center for dinner but that’s been booked or something. We’ll just have them come to our church, maybe have dinner there, sleep there. Maybe we’ll give them breakfast there, and then they can go march the next day down to Colesville where they’re going, and then to DC. I’m working on that right now. Anyway, the website will tell you all about it and what they’re doing. They’ve reached out to kids all around the country. I’m not sure what they did, but anyway, they’re taking it down to Congress.
KL: What are their numbers?
JC: Well, they’re going to have about 60 people doing the march. That’s the plan. But that’s another little logistics that I’m dealing with. I’m good with ten years for stuff, generally. So, I’m going to back off. The Board of Trade stuff in ten years is kind of up now. With the amateur radio stuff, we have a national organization called the ARRL, which is the American Radio Relay League. I have been the emergency coordinator for Prince George’s County. I was the section manager for ten years for Maryland and DC. I did that from 2006 to 2016 and it was like ten years.
KL: When do you sleep?
JC: I usually turn the light off about 3:00. And then this morning I woke up at 8:30 and ate breakfast and gave myself plenty of time.
KL: I always like to end with this. What would you like people to know about Laurel that you don’t think they already know?
JC: It’s grown from a very small mill town to a rather vibrant, large city. I mean, we’ve got 30,000 people here now, basically. Back then, it was not much. Over the course of years, they’ve done a lot of very good things for the city with Parks and Rec. So, there’s been a lot of things that have gone on in the city that are very good for the people of the city that a lot of people don’t realize. Most people don’t realize all of this stuff that goes on and gets done. I mean, with the Board of Trade, our major event is the Laurel Main Street Festival. That’s how we make enough money to pay the rent and pay a coordinator and all that stuff. But if it wasn’t for the city, we probably would spend as much money as we make on overtime for the police and fire. It’s amazing what they do. It’s a really great city. I’m going to stay here. I’m not going anywhere.
[This interview was edited for clarity and space.]
Kevin Leonard is a founding member of the Laurel History Boys and a two-time winner of the Maryland Delaware District of Columbia Press Association Journalism Award.
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