Edward Hoak

Sandy Hook, Gateway NRA, NPS
An Oral History Interview with Edward Hoak
Pharmacist at Fort Hancock Post Hospital 1918-1919
Interviewed by Elaine Harmon and Tom Hoffman, NPS December 3, 1979
Transcribed by Mary Rasa, 2011

Editor’s notes in parenthesis ( )

(Editor’s note: The Fort Hancock Post Hospital was destroyed by arson in 1985. The above photos from 1979 are some of the last taken before the fire. From the 1960s until the building burned it served as offices for NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

Harmon: We have had the pleasant surprise and privilege of having a veteran walk into the Museum on a standard tour this afternoon who was here in September 1918 to February 1919 as a Post Pharmacist who worked at the Hospital. His name is Edward H. Hoak. H-O-A-K and was born April 26, 1893. He is the Past Commander of American Legion Post 361 of McKeesport, Pennsylvania. He served at the Flu epidemic at Fort Dix which gradually subsided and then the flu epidemic broke out here at Fort Hancock in September 1918 and so he was sent in September of that year to assist with the soldiers who became ill. He recalls that he lived in the Hospital Building 74. (Building 19, not 74) Slept on a cot on the 2nd floor with ten or twelve other men in the same room. We will be recording him as we walk through the Hospital. (Tape stops) Buck Private.

Hoak: Yeah. I was a buck private and I was in the Hospital Pharmacy and there was two of us and we had help. And we filled the prescriptions and we helped fill the Epson salt and things like that. We had to oversee it. We kept the records. We filled the doctor’s prescriptions. There were only two doctors, I think in the hospital at that time. Now, there may have been more but I only remember two of them and I can’t think of their names. I can remember one was from Oklahoma.

Harmon: You remembered Major Norman?

Hoak: Well, he was Commander of the Hospital.

Harmon: In charge of the Hospital. And then you remember Sergeant Havocore

Hoak: Havocore. Right. That’s the only two that I remember. If I was home I could definitely find some names because I had a menu of Thanksgiving dinner.

Harmon: That’s great. I showed him the 1914….

Hoak: It was only printed on a napkin.

Harmon: Really? Is it the same type that we have here?

Hoak: No.

Harmon: Typed right onto the paper napkin?

Hoak: On paper napkin. Harmon: No decorations?

Hoak: No decorations.

Harmon: And how many people attended that dinner?

Hoak: Oh my goodness, it was one, two, three long tables.

Harmon: Were you ever there at Christmastime?

Hoak: No. It was past Christmas time.

Harmon: Oh.

Hoak: I went to Red Bank.

Harmon: Where did you go in Red Bank?

Hoak: People the name of Conklin. My wife, girl then came to Red Bank and I went from Fort Hancock to Red Bank.

Harmon: That’s Coughlin? C-O-U…

Hoak: Conklin.

Harmon: Oh, C-O-N-K. Alright.

Hoak: They are an old family in Red Bank.

Harmon: Yes. They are.

Hoak: Red Bank, New Jersey. She went to their house because her father stayed with my mother-in-law, future mother-in-law’s house and he came and he was the superintendent of an insurance company. He stayed there until he got a house for his wife and family. And of course, became friends and when I got here to Sandy Hook they the brother and wife to visit them and I visited them when I got a pass. I went to Conklin’s.

Harmon: How did you get to Sandy Hook from Red Bank?

Hoak: There was a boy who was studying dentistry. He was in the Hospital Corps and I can’t remember his name but his father came for him in automobile and he lived in Red Bank. So, when he found out I wanted to get to Red Bank he invited me to go to Red Bank with him so they hauled me to Red Bank. And then when I went back, Mr. Conklin took me to New York.

Harmon: With what an automobile, or train?

Hoak: Train.

Harmon: By train.

Hoak: And I went down to Pier A.

Harmon: Pier A and took a ferry back.

Hoak: It wasn’t a ferry it was a boat set sail for Sandy Hook.

Harmon: Really?

Hoak: You had to be back at a certain time.

Harmon: But you had to stay on the lower deck? You couldn’t go on the upper deck?

Hoak: No. It was like a submarine chaser. You stood on the outside mostly. There was an inside for steering. Not a lot there. We sat on floor of the second deck, you know there.

Harmon: Were the officer separated from the enlisted people?

Hoak: Oh, yes. That was the business. You couldn’t talk to them. You felt like kicking them in the pants.

TH: I have a question. I don’t know if anybody asked it yet, but we have had stories about a German submarine.

Hoak: That reminds me. I know about that.

TH: Okay.

Hoak: I was here at the time. There were stories about a German submarine because they found a yawl abandoned here. The stories at the time that German sailors even in uniform walked the streets of New York and nobody paid attention to them at that particular time. That was in November I think. It was before Christmas. And they claimed that they made, they came here and they got in a fight in the vicinity and they sent a gasoline motorboat to pick them up but the yawl drifted in here and found it right beyond where they tested the guns. That was the story. Now, I didn’t see the yawl.

TH: Was this in…?

Hoak: It was scuttlebutt, you know.

TH: You mentioned November. Would this in 1917 or 1918?

Hoak: 1918.

TH: That’s about the time that the War was ending.

Hoak: Yeah.

TH: At that time. We had heard….

Hoak: But they had had it before. They had heard Delaware Bay. I have a book at home that was written by a German officer. They said they came up the Delaware Bay. They also said about coming to New York. That scuttlebutt that they had come here.

TH: ‘Cause the stories that we had always heard was that sometime in 1917 or 1918 a German submarine had shelled Fort Hancock.

Hoak: Oh, no. No. I would have been here then. No there was no activity outside of, the, that I know of outside of the testing of guns.

Unknown voice: Edward honey, sit down for a little bit.

Hoak: I don’t remember of anything being said. It’s spread pretty well at that time, you know if anything like that would have happened. We weren’t allowed from up here at the Hospital to where they tested the guns. They had a big fence around the thing. We’d go down and talk to the fellas through the yard, or through the fence. Whenever any of them got hurt we heard things because some of them, one of those guns that they tested the breech blew out and I remember that the fella was brought to the hospital. We had very, how should I say, accessors to take care of any major injury. First aid and sickness and stuff.

Harmon: Would a case like that be taken somewhere else?

Hoak: Oh yeah. Well, I don’t know. New York Hospital or someplace like that. But he was pretty badly maimed.

Harmon: I am interested in this fence that you say was near the Proving Ground. That cut the Proving Ground off from the rest of the base. How far south did it go from the Proving Ground.

Hoak: I don’t know.

Harmon: You don’t know?

Hoak: You know where the laundry was?

Harmon: Yes.

Hoak: If you went down that road and you come to the fence and then the gate.

Harmon: I see.

Hoak: And I talked through the fence to the guard there you see. We weren’t allowed down there. We didn’t explore very much either. Only the road you see there wasn’t anything to explore.

Harmon: What was it like to be notified that you were being sent here from Fort Dix? How did…?

Hoak: They called, got you out of bed. Said dress and we are going. (laughter)

Harmon: Was it a preferred Post to be? Was Sandy Hook…

Hoak: For me it was. Sure. It was better than Camp Dix. Every time it rained we drove in little trenches down there. Every time it rains we got wet. Our feet got wet. It got cold. Your shoes were all over mud. It wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t like going into action or anything. When you don’t know what the heck it’s all about and you go into a camp like that it was pretty bad.

Harmon: Where did you go from Fort Hancock?

Hoak: Home.

Harmon: Oh really?

Hoak: Went to Fort Dix and I always said I fought the battle of the flu. (laughter) Fort Dix.

Harmon: Did you call it the Black Flu?

Hoak: Yes.

Harmon: Is that what you called it? I wondering if we should go over to the Hospital because its getting pretty (inaudible).

Unknown voice: Yes.

(Tape stops and location of interview changes.)

TH: I was just wondering what the Parade Ground was called? Was it called Pershing Field when you were here? Because now there is a sign out here dedicated in 1961 saying they dedicated it Pershing Field.

Hoak: Well, all I ever knew it. I didn’t even know it had a name. All I knew it was the Parade Ground.

TH: Ahhuh. That’s what maps back in World War I would say it was.

Hoak: Yeah. Parade Ground. And this is Officers’ Row.

Harmon: Right. Would you happen to remember when there was a parade ongoing on the parade field, did the commanding officers’ use his back porch, House #12?

Hoak: No. They didn’t have any, when I was here they didn’t have and parades whatsoever. They didn’t even have any drills. The first formation that I saw was when the formation that took us to New York. There was no drilling at here at all.

Harmon: No marching or parade. Maybe we ought to be….

TH: Okay.

(Tape stops.)

Harmon: I don’t think any structural changes have been made here.

Hoak: Where was a kitchen?

Harmon: Oh dear, maybe in the back. Do you know where the psycho ward was?

Hoak: That was in the second floor.

Harmon: That was in back. Was that where the kitchen was?

Hoak: That’s where I slipped up there. That the big room to the side. It was a big room there.

Harmon: That’s back this way?

Hoak: Yeah. And only one cell, two cells up there.

Harmon: I see.

Hoak: They had a man in there.

Harmon: Oh yeah.

Hoak: I remember that.

Harmon: I guess that would be something memorable.

Hoak: I remember coming in here. The Pharmacy seemed to be closer to the front door.

Harmon: Well, maybe this office or down here? (Shuffling as people are walking inside the Post Hospital) We are in Building 19 near the front entrance and Mr. Hoak is sort of refreshing his memory. Trying to get his bearing and has been filling us in on just a few events that he recalls. Librarian Mabel, what is your last name?

MT: Trafer.

Harmon: Trafer is guiding us.

Hoak: Well, that room there is where they had eight or ten cots and we slept up there. Then the Non-Coms (Non-Commissioned Officers) slept on the second floor but they had rooms.

MT: Yeah. We’ve got, there is one room at each end that looks just alike upstairs. Yeah. If you want to go in you can see. I don’t know.

Hoak: There was a lavatory here.

Harmon: Right here. See there was a window here and they have blocked it off. I don’t know if we did that or it was like that. On the outside were solariums and porches. Well, these were closed in kind of. (inaudible talking and noise in background)

Harmon: Did they have bars?

Hoak: Yeah. That was on the other side. (laughter)

Harmon: Which side? Is that true? Was it like a gate?

Hoak: Huh?

Harmon: Mr. Hoak was it like a gate?

Hoak: No. It was a door just like a prison door.

Harmon: Really? In this particular room?

Hoak: Well, with all this in here….

Harmon: It’s hard to tell. Hoak: It’s hard to tell.

Harmon: Do you want to sit down Mr. Hoak?

Hoak: No. No.

Harmon: Okay. Are these the rooms where they kept the inmates?

Hoak: It was only one room.

Harmon: Oh, just this one room.

Hoak: And it was a big hall where they put the cots. Just big enough for that. Is this the ward where they had the prison?

Harmon: No. This is we thought was the psycho ward.

MT: The people who were a little bit insane.

Hoak: ‘Cause I remember they set a tray up to pass the food.

Harmon: Well, if there were bars they would have probably taken them down.

Hoak: Oh yeah. Then these look like old doors.

Harmon: Yes.

Hoak: These are old doors.

Harmon: Yes. That’s right.

MT: Well, maybe they had bars that went inside the doors.

Hoak: There was a big room where they had a line of cots around here where we slept.

Harmon: Okay. (inaudible background talking)

Hoak: And then on the front stoop, I think it was toward the back, you know where the kitchen was?

Harmon: I don’t know where it, you know I think it was downstairs, I think in the southeast corner of the building.

Hoak: Well, it was past the stairway. Was there a stairway down there?

Harmon: Was the kitchen upstairs or downstairs?

Hoak: Downstairs.

Harmon: That was probably it. Downstairs back that way.

Hoak: Downstairs the dining room faced the Parade Ground.

Harmon: Yeah. Maybe that’s it downstairs because there is a room down there that is tile all the way around the wall.

Hoak: That’s where the Pharmacy was downstairs right inside of the front door and they had offices on the other side.

Harmon: Ah huh.

Hoak: And the wards of the Hospital was on that side too.

Harmon: Yeah. On the side where the Pharmacy was?

Hoak: No. On the opposite side.

Harmon: The other side.

MT: Oh. You know we put in a big huge fish tank over there now. It goes all the way down to the basement and its you know two floor deep and it doesn’t look anything like it looked. Hoak: Maybe that’s the place where this big room was.

Harmon: Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. But I think right down below here was maybe the kitchen and the dining room. I think if you see it you will recognize it.

Hoak: Maybe.

Harmon: Do you want to sit down and rest for a minute?

Hoak: Oh, I’ll keep going until I stop.

(Break in tape.) (Tape starts with lots of background noise.)

Hoak: And I can’t remember much. Everything has so changed.

Harmon: Did you ever here if this was the kitchen or anything?

MT: I am fairly certain it was. It had a plain tile floor.

Harmon: Yeah.

MT: It is the only part of the building that has a plain tile floor.

Harmon: There have been additions put up here. This is a larger room.

MT: Yes.

Harmon: And that was the dining room out there?

MT: I think so.

Harmon: Overlooked the Parade Ground. The kitchen would have been a corner? Do you remember it from here a corner room facing the Bay?

Hoak: It faced that way and back in the kitchen this way it sort of went this way.

Harmon: Looks like the original tile floor.

MT: Yeah. The floor is the same in this room.

Harmon: Right.

MT: And in this office.

Harmon: I guess these walls were put in.

Hoak: Put in yeah, these walls here.

MT: It must have been one big room.

Harmon: One two were connected and at some point were divided up.

Hoak: The heat was steam.

Harmon: Was it coal?

Hoak: Coal.

Harmon: Coal and steam.

Hoak: The Irishman was the fireman.

Harmon: The Irishman was the fireman for you?

Hoak: Yeah. He come from New York and we couldn’t understand him.

Harmon: The floors have been covered up but it looks like the original floor would have been in that corner room for the kitchen.

Hoak: Yes. That was that.

Harmon: What about the dentist office? Do you know where that was?

Hoak: Yeah. Oh the second floor.

Harmon: Oh it was.

Hoak: We had a chair and a drill in it.

Harmon: I think he went to get the blueprint for this building. I’m not sure let’s see that’s…

(break in tape)

Hoak: Seems to me that (inaudible) (Looking at blueprints)

Harmon: We are looking at Room 105 and it seems to have an original fireplace and Mr. Hoak thinks it was probably a main office for the hospital at the time he was here in 1918.

(Break in tape)

Harmon: We are looking at Room 107 which is directly to the right of the main entrance, front entrance of Building 19 and we are wondering if that would have been the pharmacy room but it seems like it should have been larger according to Mr. Hoak.

Hoak: This should have been larger. We had a long counter. Of course, things have changed in the years. Harmon: Yeah. You know there are counters and desks in here that would make it look smaller.

Hoak: Yes.

Harmon: I remember when I went away to college….

(break in tape)

Hoak: I remember the dining room was about as big as that room.

Harmon: Maybe but that doesn’t face the Parade Ground. That would have had to have been on that side.

Hoak: I know that the table was (inaudible)

Harmon: That was probably that room back there.

Hoak: The Lighthouse you could see the Lighthouse.

Harmon: So, the dining room gave you a view of the Parade Ground and the Lighthouse.

Hoak: It seemed to be right in the middle of Officers’ Row and the barracks on this side.

MT: Yeah. That would have been that room that we were just in back there.

Harmon: Near the kitchen.

MT: yeah sure. Near the kitchen.

Harmon: That would make sense. A dining room would be near the kitchen.

MT: Do you want to go upstairs?

Hoak: No. I don’t want to climb that stairs.

Harmon: Okay.

(break in tape)

TH: The isolation ward was over up there.

Hoak: This was one story over there but this room that we are in I don’t know what it was used for. It wasn’t a dormitory. They put just cots in it. They had the Non-coms got all the good rooms. We didn’t. It was just real cots.

TH: There is the kitchen and there is the mess hall and the parade ground would be right over here.

MT: Where did you get this?

TH: National Archives.

MT: Isolation ward. So there were on the door, yeah right by the stairs would have had bars on it because it was a prison ward. Sure and there were two bathrooms. That is interesting that there were two there is only one up there now.

TH: Here’s the see, that part is the annex right here. This part of the building is the original hospital.

MT: Yeah.

TH: And we’ve got additions and alterations to Post Hospital. We’ve got this building right here in the basement there are a lot of alterations on the first floor.

MT: What’s that?

TH: That’s the ward.

MT: That down there.

TH: I’m trying to see. That’s the front.

MT: No, that’s the front. So that was the ward down there.

TH: Want to go out front?

MT: Interesting.

TH: We better get it because the sun is going to go down.

Harmon: Yes.

(break in tape)

Hoak: Standing in front of the Lionel Walford Library and Tom Hoffman is consulting some floor plans.

TH: So this is the ward. You can see where the beds were laid out right here. Harmon: And the floor plans shows a series of beds. (inaudible talking)

MT: What was in the attic?

Hoak: I don’t know. I never went up there. (laughter) I went as far as the second floor.

TH: It’s got to be the same. It’s got to be the same layout.

Harmon: Right. It should be a ward for beds more than likely.

TH: Its 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. 12 bed ward.

Harmon: For twelve beds.

(break in tape)

Hoak: The American Legion does the math and a star for every five years of membership and I was 12 on there and that is 60 years of continuous membership.

Harmon: Really?

Hoak: I was Past Commander of the Post.

MT: When were you in the Army?

Hoak: I wasn’t in the Army very long. September til about March or May.

MT: There wasn’t a war going on?

Hoak: Yes there was.

MT: 1918, oh I was thinking 1912. 1918 yeah. The end of the war.

Hoak: I don’t have any active service except the flu.

MT: The flu is still going on, that one.

Hoak: That’s how I got to Fort Hancock.

MT: Oh you got the flu?

Hoak: No. I was in charge of two hospital tents in Camp Dix when flu broke out and I was in the Infantry and they called me a medic and then (inaudible) that solution with salt.

MT: They sent you to Sandy Hook?

Hoak: They put me in charge of two hospital tents. And two orderlies for each tent and round (inaudible) tablets. That was all I had. (inaudible) And that is how a lot of it spread.

Harmon: Oh sure.

Hoak: (inaudible) But see the Hospital in Camp Dix when I was there was nothing but a field and barracks and hospital. It wasn’t big enough to care for anybody. The dead house was the icehouse there.

Harmon: At Fort Dix, right. Hoak: Fort Dix. I think I when I first went there our tent area we had to put it all in (inaudible) I was sleeping in tents until I left there is September. It got cold there and damp.

Harmon: Oh, I bet it did. Yeah.

Hoak: And when it rained it was terrible.

Harmon: Did you know of a dead house here at Fort Hancock?

Hoak: No I didn’t. There was one here though.

TH: Yeah. It’s out back.

Harmon: Right out back. Yeah.

Hoak: They would bring the ambulance there. There was only one fella that I know of that died. I didn’t know him but he had an accident down at the testing ground.

Harmon: In the testing ground he had an accident?

Hoak: In the little house. He was the only one that I knew of that died. Nobody died of flu here.

Harmon: Really?

Hoak: No. We had all the drugs to treat them with.

Harmon: Right. Was this considered a pretty good hospital?

Hoak: Yes.

Harmon: Was it?

Hoak: Yes. I can’t remember, there was another doctor that was here that was wounded over in France and shipped back here to recuperate and he was from Iowa. He was a good fella. I know he is a dentist today and I can’t remember his name. He married a daughter of my preacher’s.

Harmon: Really? Hoak: We got to talking one day he asked me where I was from and I told him (inaudible) and he says, “Oh my father-in-law is from there.”

Unknown voice: Was the name Bailey?

Hoak: No. Harmon: Would you like to sit down? I don’t mean to make you stand.

Hoak: No. If I sit down it will take me time to get going again. (laughter) I am like an old Ford Motor. What was his name? He was a captain.

Harmon: The dentist. Hoak: The dentist.

Harmon: I don’t know.

Hoak: He was a tall fella. Black hair, good looking. This guy I can only remember Major Norman and (inaudible)

Harmon: He must have been pretty young when you were here?

Hoak: Oh, I was in my twenties.

Harmon: Really? What would be a typical day for you if you could reconstruct a typical day here?

Hoak: Get up early in the morning. Dress, come down for breakfast and go into the Pharmacy and stay to four or five o’clock eat your supper and then come back into the Pharmacy and stay until about nine o’clock and then go to bed.

Harmon: Really? You didn’t have any…?

Hoak: No recreation.

Harmon: No recreation at all?

Hoak: No. Not even a baseball game out here.

Harmon: There was, when the Army was here like ten years ago there was an Officers’ Mess and a Non-commissioned Officers’ mess.

Hoak: I was, there was an Officers’ Mess and the Non-commissioned Officers’ ate with us. The officers didn’t eat with us. No they had their own houses. We walked from the end of the Hook up here. See when we went to New York we walked down there. There used to be an observation tower with a telescope right at the end of the Hook where they used to spot ships coming in.

TH: The Marine Observatory tower. Yeah.

Hoak: They would relay the message by telegraph or telephone, telegraph.

TH: Western Union Telegraph.

Hoak: To New York and we used to go out there and sit on Sunday and watch the signals and watch the boats and that is where we landed when we came from New York and we walked from there.

Unknown voice: Are you getting ready to fade?

Hoak: I am ready to fade. (laughter) (break in tape)

Hoak: Tents, heated, and there was not much discipline. You would get a square around when an officer come around but in between time a sergeant didn’t mean anything to you.

Unknown voice: Sure beat anything I had it World War II. (laughter)

Harmon: Was considered a lush place to go?

Hoak: But we were in tents all the time at Dix. But the thing is this, we never had a complete uniform. We had a coat one color and pants another color and shoes another color. I had tan shoes and they were dress shoes and they were a pretty bright red, tan you know.

Harmon: Cordovan maybe. I guess the army mobilized pretty quickly didn’t it?

Hoak: Oh yeah.

Harmon: They brought a lot of people in pretty fast.

Unknown voice: Do you still have those shoes on?

Hoak: No. No. I’ve got everything else though. I’ve got I had canvas leggings.

Harmon: Oh yeah.

Unknown voice: You still have those?

Hoak: They are in the thing down in the cellar.

Unknown voice: Do you want to send those down to the museum here?

Hoak: They are probably moth eaten.

Harmon: Never can tell.

Hoak: Probably moth eaten. 20

(break in tape)

TH:…when you were here?

Hoak: Oh it was quiet except for the guns going off. (laughter)

Unknown voice: Oh you know to be able to orient yourself to a place that has other building tucked in.

TH: That’s right.

Harmon: We are facing Building 326 and Mr. Hoak was saying that he remembers that it was the morgue and behind it were barracks.

TH: The Army altered it.

(break in tape)

Harmon: This concludes an interview with Edward Hoak who stopped into the Museum on December 3, 1979 and who lives at 641 Versailles Ave in McKeesport, Pennsylvania and was accompanied with his niece, Mrs. E. K. Chaffey, 301 Myrtle Avenue, Mahwah, New Jersey. We are grateful to have had him come in today.

END OF INTERVIEW