ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611040076
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTINA NUCKOLS STAFF WRITER
NORMA Smith walks down 12th Street visiting the memories of friends long since dead, in houses that were torn down decades ago.
"Over here where this fence is is where William Avery lived, and where the window on this church is is where Miss Mary Payne lived, and down the street you get Lydia Lyles. This is where my grandmother was."
She recites the names with the reverence reserved for a favorite poem or Bible verse. The lyrics she writes are sad, but they are softened by her laughter, which bubbles up every few minutes, touched off by some childhood memory.
* * *
Smith has lived on 14th Street in Highland No.1 precinct all her life. She has become a neighborhood activist, making sure local officials address needs in the community, and it bothers her to know that the precinct has the lowest voter turnout in the city. It's just one more sign that everything she has fought for in her community has been slipping away.
She grew up within sight of the Norfolk and Western railyard, which forms the northern border of the precinct and serves as a mental barrier for prejudice. In the 1940s, children from the West End went to schools in Northwest Roanoke. Because their families rented, they were treated with contempt.
"Since you were on this side of the tracks, you were not cool," she said. "We were told we would never amount to anything. For most of us, it was a matter of 'I'll show you.'''
And they did. After World War II, most West End families bought their homes and transformed them from apartments into single-family houses.
"There were a lot of them substandard, but we didn't know they were substandard," Smith said.
"Since it was the only neighborhood I knew, it was nice. I knew everybody around here. There was always a lot of children. My best friend lived two doors down the street."
* * *
As Smith wanders past Rorer Avenue and around the corner onto Patterson, her pace picks up.
"This was the best sidewalk for rollerskating," she says. "I'm talking about the 1940s. It was really smooth. I look at kids with those in-line skates and I say, 'Gosh, I wish I could try them.' I just might."
Rorer and Patterson were all-white when Smith was growing up. Black children from 14th Street weren't welcome there, but they came anyway. They did not wander any farther south, however.
"I guess I was grown before I found out Campbell Avenue was over there," Smith says.
Patterson is now lined with apartments and an odd assortment of businesses, including a used furniture store, an ice cream parlor, a coin laundry and a seafood market. The Commodore Inn is one of the oldest businesses on the street. Smith can remember when blacks ordered hot dogs and sodas through a window because the restaurant was segregated.
* * *
Businesses and small manufacturing firms began spreading down Salem and Patterson avenues in the late 1950s. Houses were torn down to make room for them. More houses came down for the Hurt Park public housing development in 1967.
Even when houses were replaced by a school, a park and a day care center, Smith's pleasure at seeing community needs answered was tempered with a feeling of loss.
"The whole area has taken on a whole new look, and it doesn't make you feel too good sometimes," she said.
There are still many homeowners in Highland No.1, but they are gradually moving to nursing homes or dying. Their houses stand vacant because their children and grandchildren don't want to live in the West End. Most young people in the precinct live in public housing, and they leave as soon as they can.
Smith used to take her camera on walks so she could document the deterioration of houses in the neighborhood. Friends warned her to stop.
"I found we've got a lot of substance abuse in this area, and I didn't know it," she said.
* * *
Smith is standing on Salem Avenue looking at a house with a sagging roof. Mounds of ivy have nearly flattened the surrounding picket fence. A message over the door reads "HOLINEZZ BECOMETH GODZ HOUZE."
"It seems real funny when you come through without a camera and take a real hard look," Smith says. This time she isn't laughing.
"They're just not cool," she says. "They're just real uncool. When you walk through here, it makes you feel really bad. It used to look really nice around here."
Smith's own street is blocked by two tractor-trailers waiting to haul away debris from the latest house to be demolished.
"His children grew up and left in the early 1960s," Smith says as she walks past.
* * *
Smith got her earliest lessons on voting while sitting in a pew at Jerusalem Baptist Church. The teacher was the Rev. W.N. Hunter.
"If this was the year for councilmanic elections, he got you briefed," she said. "He briefed you on it from September to November."
Church members, like everyone else, paid $3 to $5 for the privilege of voting.
"It wasn't very much, but if you didn't have money, it was a lot," Smith said.
As recently as the 1980s, then-Rep. Jim Olin, D-Roanoke, attended church services there every fourth Sunday of October. Today, the black-majority precinct is still bedrock Democrat, but you can walk for blocks without spotting a political yard sign. City officials still campaign there "because I call them," Smith said.
But she can't call every one of the 772 registered voters and remind them to vote. Many will not.
"I don't vote. I don't know why," said a young woman wearing a fast food restaurant uniform as she hurried to her car.
She said she picked up a voter registration form, but never sent it in.
"I guess once I do that, I'll probably start voting," she said.
"I've got other things on my mind right now," said a man in a mechanic's shirt, his baseball cap turned around backwards. "I don't have no property to mind."
"I vote every year," said an older man, smiling and rocking on his front porch. "Who's running?"
After listening carefully to the names, he said, "I'll vote for Dole or Clinton. I vote for them because you have to have someone in there."
Unlike Raleigh Court No.5, the city precinct with the highest turnout over the past five years, Highland No.1 doesn't have a distinct focal point, said Sandra Ryals, chairwoman of the Democratic City Committee. Wasena School serves as a community center for its Raleigh Court neighborhood and also is its voting place. Highland No.1 is a long, skinny precinct. Its voting place, the Jefferson Center gym, is at the far eastern end.
Smith wasn't sure that the precinct's odd shape affects voting.
"If it's something you want to do, regardless of where it is, you're going to do it," she said. "They probably haven't been taught from the ground up that it's important."
* * *
Smith is standing at the corner of 12th Street and Salem Avenue near a Volvo repair shop. The corner was once an open-air market where she would pick out a tree on Christmas Eve after saving for weeks to scrape together 25 cents.
Nothing comes easy for her or her neighbors. They had to fight their way to respectability back in the 1940s, and now they've lost much of what was so hard-won.
"I'm looking at this being the All America City, but nobody is looking at this neighborhood," she says.
There are signs of hope. Mayor David Bowers toured Hurt Park this summer to talk about the problems that exist there. Habitat for Humanity is planning to build new homes between 10th and 11th streets. Surrounding homeowners are already making improvements.
Smith hopes this will be the beginning of an "all-out pride campaign." When pride left her neighborhood, despair moved in. When pride returns, she is convinced, people in West End will return to the polls.
LENGTH: Long : 151 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON\Staff. Norma Smith, a longtime residentby CNBof 14th Street, isn't sure that the precinct's odd shape is to blame
for its historically low voter turnout. color. KEYWORDS: POLITICS