Conway's
Known Name(s)
Conway's
Address
Golden-Thompson Road Colton, MD
Establishment Type(s)
Hotel
Physical Status
Demolished
Detailed History
On March 13, 1937, Mary Golden sold a lot in the Golden Subdivision to Ewell L. Conway, Jr. and his wife, Jessie T. Again in 1939, the Ewells purchased additional lots including Lot 8 in Block D that faced St. Patrick’s Creek, and Lots 1, 2 and 13 in Block B on the west side of Colton’s Point Road (MD 242). Conway was a graphic artist, known for painting movie posters for the Litchtman Theatre Company in Washington DC. By the 1950s, however, he became a teacher at Terrell Junior High School on Eastern Avenue in northwest Washington (the school moved and has since been demolished). He and his wife, Jessie opened a twenty-one-room hotel on St. Patrick’s Creek by the late 1940s. An article about the Association of Former Internes [sic] of Freedman’s Hospital appeared in the Afro American Newspaper on June 11, 1949. The meetings in Washington ended with a day spent eating, swimming and boating at the Shirley K Hotel, which was named after the Ewells’ daughter. The article listed Dr. Charles Drew among the attendees.
It is not clear if Dr. Charles Drew (1904-1950), the surgeon and researcher, regularly visited the Shirley K Hotel with his family while living in Washington, although he did attend an outing at the hotel in 1949. Born in Washington in 1904, he worked during high school as a lifeguard at the recreation center and was a gifted athlete during his time at Dunbar High School. He graduated from Amhurst College in 1926, McGill University Medical School in 1933 and worked with specialists at McGill University and at Columbia University Medical School who specialized in blood transfusions and treating shock. Starting in 1940, he was responsible for instituting procedures and standards for collecting blood to make plasma and creating blood banks. The mobile blood collection centers that are today known as blood mobiles were also part of his program. Dr. Drew was killed on April 1, 1950, when the vehicle he was driving crashed near Burlington, North Carolina, on the way to a medical conference at Tuskeegee University in Alabama. The story that the doctors at the local white hospital refused to treat him is untrue. The doctors recognized and tried to save him, but sadly his injuries were too severe, and he died as a result. Night driving was a common practice for African Americans who sought to avoid harassment by police and others while driving. The ads for the Shirley K Hotel in Colton designated the outdoor swimming pool as the “Dr. Charles Drew Memorial Swimming Pool,” where annual swimming competitions were held in the 1950s and early 1960s.
