DOES ANYONE AROUND HERE
REMEMBER
VIRGINIA CULLEN ?
William Frank, Wilmington
New Journal , said “ I guess very few have ever heard of her skill
,
but let me state that she
was a journalist of tremendous energy, resources and determination”
.
For years, Virginia Cullen,
was the chief, often the only, News journal correspondent down in
Rehoboth Beach, Lewes, Fenwick Island area.
When it came to a critical
period, such as a hurricane, severe nor' easter or such, News Journal
editors would depend on Virginia Cullen to come through with a mass
of detail.
Remember the big blizzard
of 1934 that isolated Lewes and Rehoboth and all the other little
towns down there. She was there and covered it. No telephone nor
telegraph lines were in service, highways were totally closed, but
Virginia Cullen wasn’t stopped. Somehow she got to Lewes, made an
abandoned chicken shed house headquarters with an amateur radio
station. She scurried around picking up news items here and there.
Plowed her way back to the old chicken shed house and relayed
her news to the News
Journal newsroom via the improvised broadcasting station.
In 1961 the Salisbury Daily
Times reported : There is a sign over a mail box on a modest cottage
on Maryland Avenue that simply says 'Virginia Cullen – News
Reporter'. A sign has never said so much so quickly.
Virginia Cullen, some know
her as “Din”, is 'THE' news reporter on the Delaware coast
and has been gathering and writing news most of her adult life.
In Rehoboth Beach , an
upper crust resort , Virginia handled 'straight' news,
organizations events, and society tidbits of members of the
Washington diplomatic corps , the upper echelon of
capital officials, and
leading socialites from throughout Delaware.
There are some metropolitan
newspapers that pay more than usual attention to such goings on, a
fact that keeps Cullen pretty busy in the social season.
Mrs Cullen is author of
“The History of Lewes”, a booklet for the DAR 1956 for the 325th
anniversary of this salty
old town, benefit, restoring Lewes ancient landmarks. She came to
Lewes in 1932 to write about the towns tercentenary, liked it so well
she stayed. She moved to Rehoboth in
1943.
Virginia Cullen is a
native of Charlottsville, Virginia, born 1893 on Montville Road to
Broadus and Lottie Goodyear Flannagan. Her father was a traveling
saleman, she had thee brothers and two sisters, was first on the
staff of the Savannah Georgia, Morning News, and as never lost her
Dixie draw. She had married in 1913 to Joseph F. Cullen but
divorces eleven years later.
She feels the story of the
1945 surrender of the Nazi U-boat as her greatest news work. She has
a grown daughter, Mrs Thomas John Ryan, of West Chester, and two
grand children.
Virginia Cullen died in
1969 at the age of 76 in West Chester at Brandywine Hall, near her
daughters home and was still
writing Sussex County news for the Wilmington newspapers.
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