ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702100092
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: THE RIDGE
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
RESIDENTS OF THE RIDGE in Bedford County are trying to overcome their community's image as a run-down area plagued by drugs. The new and refurbished homes provided by a federal block grant are helping the neighbors gain a sense of pride.
Back in the pines, in a remote stretch of forest where cars can't make it over the red clay roads, the Witcher clan is waiting for March, when it will have running water, indoor plumbing and electricity.
"It'll make life a little easier than what it is," said Howard Witcher, a 24-year-old timber cutter who lives with his large extended family, including his mother, sister, nephews and his baby son and daughter, in two old green-and-white trailers at the bottom of an incline.
The Witchers heat with kerosene. They use oil lamps for light. They have no phone, but they do have a battery-powered television. On the back of their property is a wooden one-seat outhouse.
"When you live without lights, you have to buy your groceries every day. Fruit can last a day maybe. Meats, you have to buy it fresh," Witcher said.
The Witchers have lived in the trailers for about three years. Before that, they lived in a log cabin until it burned down. At the front of the Witcher property are two large, clean, new white trailers with neat black shutters. Wires hang from a fuse box on an outside pole waiting for an electrical hookup, and space has been cleared for another trailer that's on the way.
The Witchers are one of more than 30 families in a part of Bedford County known as The Ridge that are receiving new or refurbished homes through a $787,500 federal Housing and Urban Development block grant distributed by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. More than 500 Bedford County households were without adequate plumbing at the time of the 1990 U.S. Census.
In the three years since the grant was awarded, about 28 substandard houses and trailers in this low-income community have been replaced or renovated, and at least three more are still waiting for the project to reach them. Roads have been paved, and wells and septic tanks have been installed, as well as electrical wiring and propane gas heat. More than 10 families have received indoor plumbing, running water or hot water for the first time.
Howard Witcher lived with modern conveniences in Martinsville a few years ago, he said, but his 62-year-old mother has never known anything but outhouses and hauling water. "I reckon she's looking forward to it," he said.
The community Witcher lives in is known as Hendricks Store on the map, but everyone who lives there calls it The Ridge, and that's how it's known across Bedford County. It runs along a small stretch of Virginia 655, east of the Shop-Rite in Moneta, and is bordered by a set of county trash bins on one side and an old abandoned white schoolhouse on the other.
It's a close-knit community of about 100 people, the kind of neighborhood where everybody is kin to most everybody else. Teens dressed in urban-looking hip-hop clothes walk beside slow-moving tractors on the country roads, and many generations live together on the same property their families have lived on for the last 100 years.
Neighbors say the grant is revitalizing their community and helping it overcome its image as an area plagued by crack cocaine. In a recent countywide drug sting, seven people were arrested for dealing crack in The Ridge, and it's still a sensitive topic in the area.
"When the project first came through, we were really in dire straits. There was a real need for it, because it's done so much for the morale of the people living here," said John Eggleston, assistant principal of Liberty High School, and a lifelong resident of the Ridge. He's been the community liaison for the grant.
"It's sad in a sense that most people only see the bad side of us," Eggleston said. "When you live in a community like this, I don't know if people really take you seriously. Being from The Ridge sets you back automatically, and that's not fair to the people or this community. We have good, honest people living here."
Eggleston's mother, Lois, had her house replaced last year. "Our old home was a converted barn. We did not have running water until 1984, and that was the year I got out of college," he said. "We would have to tote water, and we had to split wood. We lived by a wood stove, and we had an outside john."
Now his mother lives in a neat, gray vinyl-sided two-bedroom home with red shutters, carpeting and a new wooden front porch. "It's nicer than the old house," she said. "I don't have to worry about [my] children coming by to split wood."
The new homes have brought a sense of pride to the community. Parents are looking forward to a proposed playground. It will be behind the local church on a lot donated by county Registrar Marie Batten. Batten inherited some of the land in The Ridge from her father, who was a cannery operator and farmer in the area. "There have been giant strides made in that community," Batten said.
"It's just so much nicer," said Sue Leftwich, a 62-year-old retired cook. She and her husband, Odell, a retired fabric worker, had their home renovated to include storm windows and gas heat instead of a wood stove. "It made [the neighborhood] look so nice and clean, where before it was junky with old cars and things sitting around. I saw a difference last summer when people mowed their yards, and they didn't let the grass grow up to the porch. You'd have to see what it was like before to appreciate it now."
Many of the residents in The Ridge own their own trailers and rent the land they live on. Others, like Eggleston's mother, are homeowners. Some are working or retired, and a portion are on welfare or workfare.
To qualify for housing assistance through the grant, they had to clean their lots, attend classes on home maintenance and housekeeping, agree to maintain the homes and live in the homes for five years.
Five new homes - all less than 800 square feet - cost an average of $27,500 each plus an additional $3,000 to $5,000 for well and septic systems. Trailers - eight were bought - each cost $16,000 to $18,000. An average of $25,000 each was paid to renovate seven homes, not including well and septic systems. The eight trailers that were renovated each got about $10,000 worth of work.
"It's not a situation where there's any luxury. It's bare necessity and safety," said Bedford County's economic development director, Sue Gilbert, who applied for the grant. "Certain things are excluded - air conditioners, for example. We can give them heat and insulation, but not air conditioning. And we can give them a stove and a refrigerator, but not a dishwasher."
Some families have complained that keeping their propane gas heaters filled has cost more than operating the wood stoves they were accustomed to, and that their heat goes out when they lose electricity during storms. But they also say those are small complaints compared to the shape their homes were once in.
Scherleen Martin's family - which includes her 24-year-old son, Chris, and 9-year-old daughter, Shawkia - is among the last waiting for a home to be replaced. The roof in the living room of their two-bedroom, 23-year-old green-and-white trailer collapsed last year under the weight of snow. Construction workers for the grant project propped it up with braces until the trailer is replaced, probably next month.
Chris Martin works for a paving company in Bedford and sleeps on the living room sofa in his mother's trailer. When the repairs come, he'll be able to have his own bedroom.
"Everybody's happy to have new homes around here," he said. "Everything was pretty much shacks before."
LENGTH: Long : 136 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN STAFF. 1. Thanks to a federal grant, Howardby CNBWitcher soon will move his family into these new mobile homes. For
the past three years, they've been living in two old trailers with
no indoor plumbing or electricity. 2. ``It's just so much nicer,"
Sue Leftwich said of the home she and her husband, Odell, share. The
Leftwiches now have gas heat instead of a wood stove, and storm
windows. 3. New wells and septic systems have helped give a lift to
Ridge residents' health and self-image. color. Graphic: Map. color.