Oppenheimer’s Club Comanche Connection

When J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the Father of the Atomic Bomb,” and his family visited St. Croix in the early 1950’s, shortly after he was denied his top security clearance from the U.S. government and accused of being a communist, the Oppenheimer's stayed at the family home of Ted Dale (founder of the Club Comanche Hotel) and his wife Betty, who lived out at Pull Point near Green Cay.

On the days when the two families weren’t out sailing around the Virgin Islands on Ted’s 72 foot yawl, the Comanche, Ted’s son Morgan Dale related that Oppenheimer would regularly go to the Club Comanche with his dad and relax among the island’s splendor. 

The Club Comanche was in its early years of development and Oppenheimer saw the need for a bridge connecting two sections of the rambling hotel up near the waterfront. One day he leisurely went about designing an iron suspension bridge (quite possibly the first of its kind in the Caribbean) and proceeded to supervise its construction so that it would span the airspace between the north end of the swimming pool deck to the roof of the Stag House, which at that time served as an elevated private hotel beach, a number of years before the Boardwalk was envisioned. 

The historic bridge is still in place, and in use, to this day, but it no longer relies on the suspension system for support. It has since been temporarily propped up by scaffold jacks until it can be properly restored to Oppenheimer’s original specifications.

“The roof of the Stag House, now called the Stag Deck, has the best Boardwalk and waterfront views on the Christiansted Harbor,” Jack Pickel, President of Club Comanche told the St. Croix Times as he related the Oppenheimer story. “We currently use it for hotel guests, private occasions and special events.” 

“Do you ever feel Oppenheimer’s presence,” the St. Croix Times inquired.

“Who can forget him.”