Ramon Armstrong grew up in the Port Penn area around Augustine Beach. In the 1940s, he attended the small Port Penn school, where about 30 students of all ages attended. Over 50 years later, he still remembered his teacher well: "Mrs. Burris, lovely lady. She just died here recently within the last four or five years. But I can still see her first thing in the morning cooking, stoking out the old coal stove." The children would arrive at school on foot, enter the cloak room and then sit in the classroom according to grades. "Some classes consisted of one row of seats and that was it," Armstrong noted.

The teacher, Armstrong recalled, was a "pretty unique woman" and taught a wide variety of subjects

Just across from the schoolhouse was a cannery, so that both children and adults would be coming and going through the center of town throughout the day. The two-room Port Penn School was built in 1886 and served local children through the 1950s. In 1974, it was purchased by the local historical society and today is operated as an interpretive center by the Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation.

Armstrong remembered his childhood fondly. Children had chores like weeding and gathering firewood, but they could also fish, hunt and trap rabbits. There was even a small amusement park at Augustine Beach owned by Tommy Texas, where he remembered swimming, riding the merry-go-round and train, playing in the arcade and batting balls. "But far as an ideal place to live when you was growing up as a kid you couldn't beat it, 'cause there always something to do."