THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 17, 1994 TAG: 9407160089
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: This package was prepared by reporters Janie Bryant, Ida Kay Jordan,
Judy Parker and Phyllis Speidell, designer Daniel J. Jones and
Portsmouth editor Joseph P. Banks.
LENGTH: Long : 646 lines
The year's already more than half over. Here's an update on stories that we have brought to you in The Currents since January. JANUARY
ITEM: Trish Pfeifer, the first and only director of the Children's Museum since it opened in January 1980, has resigned. Pfeifer will begin work this week as a consultant with Hands On, the St. Petersburg, Fla., firm that helped design the Virginia Children's Museum, which is scheduled to open late this year in the downtown building that formerly housed Leggett department store.
UPDATE: Pfeifer, who commuted to Florida for six months, began work Monday as development director of the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, a non-collecting art center that has received accreditation from the American Association of Museums.
Pfeifer will be raising money, increasing memberships and doing public relations for the center, which has an annual budget of about $400,000.
During her six-month stint with Hands On, Pfeifer worked on design and exhibits for a $49 million Akron, Ohio, center that will encompass the National Inventors Hall of Fame and an inventors workshop to involve visitors in hands-on projects.
She will continue to live in Olde Towne with her husband, Ken, a Portsmouth public school teacher.
ITEM: The city's new YMCA opened quietly this week with the usual Downtown crowd working out at lunchtime and employees still getting settled into new quarters.
The $700,000 transformation of the 40-year-old Effingham Street Family YMCA has, in effect, created a new building, simply using the original brick shell to cut the construction costs.
UPDATE: An outdoor swimming pool at the Y will open by month's end. Financed by a $300,000 contribution from the Beazley Foundation, the pool will be open for neighborhood children in the early part of the day and open for members in the afternoon.
Membership has almost doubled since the building opened with 184 members, director Eric Nelson said.
The Y anticipates expanding the building with $250,000 promised by the United Way of Hampton Roads from the current capital fund campaign, Nelson said. ``I think we probably will add multipurpose rooms,'' he said.
ITEM: . . . The sign on the building reads: ``London Fog, 25 Years of Quality in Portsmouth.''
Now, after 27 years, the sewing factory is closing.
UPDATE: Several companies have been interested in the building formerly occupied by London Fog. Economic Development Director Matthew James has talked with two good prospects: a manufacturing company and a distributing company.
ITEM: Unless they found shelter, the city's homeless faced severe discomfort at best, and potentially deadly circumstances at worst during last weekend's blast of wet and bitter cold weather.
UPDATE: CARES Initiative, Inc., an advocacy group that hopes to open a permanent, year-round homeless shelter in the city, is negotiating with the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority to obtain a building on the edge of Olde Towne to house 50 chronically homeless single men and women.
``At this juncture, we're waiting on PRHA,'' said the organization's spokesperson Daniel Stephenson. ``There's a building in Olde Towne we're hoping to be able to lease for $1 a year from the authority. I don't think we want to tell the location just yet, however.''
Stephenson, who estimates there are 60 hard-core homeless in the city, said his group is soliciting private donations and has applied for federal grants to operate a homeless facility.
``Plan A is to provide a long-term shelter for 50 single men and women. We're hoping to be able to do that by November,'' Stephenson said. ``Plan B is to provide job counseling, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation for the residents.''
In the meantime, the group plans to continue with providing temporary, nighttime shelter in various downtown churches during the winter months for the homeless.
ITEM: School Superintendent Richard D. Trumble has embraced Police Chief Leslie K. Martinez's decision to put a juvenile detective in each of the city's three high schools. ``We think this is going to be a tremendous adjunct to providing a much safer climate and atmosphere in our schools,'' Trumble said.
UPDATE: The move appears to be paying dividends. A detective based at I.C. Norcom High School, for example, was on the scene in April when a student's gun went off in the cafeteria. Two students received minor injuries. The offender was expelled. A police department spokesman said there are no plans to drop the initiative for the upcoming school year.
ITEM: Unwed. Teenager. Pregnant. In Portsmouth, those three words have almost become synonymous.
. . . In December, Patricia Stauffer was hired by the Portsmouth Community Services Board and the Better Beginnings Coalition to fill the $26,111 (``pregnancy czar'') position.
. . . Stauffer's responsibilities include acting as coordinator among the city's public services, volunteer agencies and independent foundations who work at finding solutions to the pregnancy problem.
UPDATE: Stauffer's responsibilities have increased significantly. Last month, the city's ``pregnancy czar'' gave birth to a boy.
Before maternity leave, Stauffer worked to tighten the structure of the Better Beginnings Coalition by revising the group's by-laws; established a commission to study if there's a link between teen pregnancy and teen crime in Portsmouth; worked to develop a program with the United Way's Planning Council that would make free baby-sitting services available for teen mothers who want to continue their high school educations; worked to prepare a strategic plan to make health services more accessible for at-risk teens; and adopted a semantic change in the language of its educational materials by encouraging youths to ``delay parenthood'' rather than referring to teen pregnancy.
ITEM: School district and city officials are still waiting for the green light to build a new I.C. Norcom High School where the former Harry Hunt Junior High now stands.
But things don't look very promising. That's because Hunt, located at 1800 High St., and its adjoining Frank Lawrence Stadium were built on top of an unregulated landfill used in the 1930s.
UPDATE: Harry Hunt Junior is now rubble. The federal and state environmental officials gave the city the go ahead in April to build a new I.C. Norcom High School on the site. A toxicologist with the federal Environmental Protection Agency said the site is typical of an industrial urban area. While there is some minor contamination, ``it does not pose imminent or actual danger to the public,'' said James M. McCreary, an EPA spokesman, in an earlier interview.
Cost estimates for the new school have risen by more than $2 million and exceed the amount the city's Municipal Finance Commission has said it was willing to spend on the project. City officials received bid estimates for the new, 1,800 student high school after the finance commission recommended that the City Council cap the cost at $25 million.
The latest cost estimates for the high school came back at $32.6 million. City staff members tinkered with the numbers, came up with ways to reduce the costs and then presented those options to the council. Council members reviewed those options June 14, but they didn't vote on whether to change the current plan. The school is expected to open in September 1997.
ITEM: Harry ``Mac'' Hawkins, owner of the Broad Street Cafe in Port Norfolk, recently joined other Portsmouth and Chesapeake business owners in a project with an attention-grabbing name, ``100 Restrooms,'' and a serious goal, getting potentially life-saving help to battered women.
UPDATE: HER (Help and Emergency Response) reached its goal in May and since has gone on to place fliers about domestic violence and abuse in 130 ladies rooms in the Portsmouth, Suffolk and Chesapeake area. HER has received at least 50 hotline calls as a result of the fliers. Several of the calls came from women in rural areas and along the Eastern Shore who had come to Hampton Roads to shop and had seen the fliers here. FEBRUARY
ITEM: The dissolution of a contract with Hands On Inc. and the departure of Museum Curator Trish Pfeifer notwithstanding, City Engineer Richard Hartman predicts that the new Children's Museum of Virginia will open in the former Leggett building on High Street before the year is over.
UPDATE: Construction contractors are working inside the building and Museums Director Betty Burnell said the opening of the museum still is on track for late December. A plan to install an atrium on the second floor of the building and projecting over High Street will not delay construction, she said. Recently, the contractors broke through the first floor ceiling to create the two-story space needed for the planetarium.
ITEM: Twenty-five years ago, Nathan McCall was one of the guys hanging out on Roosevelt Boulevard and Bardot Lane in Cavalier Manor. Today, McCall is a 39-year-old Washington Post reporter who last week began a 15-city tour to promote his book, ``Makes Me Wanna Holler.''
UPDATE: Since McCall's book came out, he has been featured on the TV news show ``20/20'' and on talk shows from ``Oprah Winfrey'' to ``Arsenio Hall.''
And he's developed a new appreciation for television.
``I'm not much of a TV person, but there was a direct impact on book sales whenever I went on one of those shows,'' he said.
He remembers he had fallen off the New York Times' bestseller list but jumped back on after doing the Oprah show.
To date, about 150,000 hardcover copies have been sold. The book will be published in paperback in February or March.
McCall's done two book tours, which he called ``very exhausting and invigorating at the same time.'' He currently is writing the first draft of a screenplay adaptation for a John Singleton film.
ITEM: Mastiffs are big and strong, with drooping, drooly lips, floppy ears and soft hair. And they're cuddly. Definitely, cuddly.
But what do you do with a Mastiff going through a major funk?
. . . Linda Drewry's (aka the Pet Lady) encounter with that particularly depressed canine at the Portsmouth SPCA two years ago is an example of her personal pledge to make unwanted dogs and cats feel good about themselves, and to find homes for as many as she can.
UPDATE: ``We're still plugging away, doing whatever we can,'' Drewry said. ``Karen was down at the SPCA just a couple of days ago and she said it's filled to the hilt with dogs and cats. It just breaks our hearts, because if we could we'd bring them all home.''
Recently, Pet Warehouse offered to help Drewry and Overton advertise their monthly lists of homeless pets by distributing the women's newsletter at each of the store's locations.
ITEM: In the 17 years since the city bought the old U.S. Coast Guard base south of City Hall, many proposals and even some businesses have come and gone.
Now the city is aiming to capture the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration facilities scheduled to move from a longtime docking area on the Norfolk waterfront north of the new Nauticus center and sites in several other locations.
UPDATE: The city has continued to negotiate with several potential users of the property because the federal government has not issued the anticipated request for proposals for the NOAA facilities, Economic Development Director Matthew James. ``It looks like the NOAA move is on hold right now.''
ITEM: Ask any graduate of the Kee Dee Nursery about the big green chair and you probably will get a sheepish smile along with a recollection of long ago moments spent in the ``time out chair.''
On Sunday, it was Katherine V. ``Kacky'' Creecy's turn to sit in the green chair for an extended ``time out.''
After 40 years as the owner/operator of Kee Dee Nursery School, Creecy has retired at the age of 77.
UPDATE: Creecy will be 78 in less than a month. She hopes that she will have adjusted to retirement by then. ``I had a little bit of a bad time there for a while,'' she said. ``I needed a little time to recuperate and catch up with myself.''
She has been catching up on her reading, visiting, resting and house cleaning and plans to be a volunteer with the Children's Museum. ``I just could not jump into retirement,'' she said. ``When you have been in something so long, it is really hard to slow down.''
ITEM: When Melvin S. Hester, 64, leaves the pulpit at Simonsdale Presbyterian Church for the last time as pastor, he'll be making a passage away from a faith community he's been part of for nearly a quarter century.
UPDATE: Hester's full-time retirement from the pulpit only lasted a few weeks. For the past several months, he's been serving as interim minister at Knox Presbyterian Church in Norfolk. He also was one of the coordinators for the baccalaureate service for graduating seniors of Portsmouth's public high schools offered by the Portsmouth Ministerial Association and the Interdenominational Minister's Forum.
ITEM: A disagreement over the quality of drinking water at Tidewater Community College resurfaced Tuesday during a brown-bag lunch among employees and students.
An environmental studies major again contended that the drinking is tainted and unsafe.
The college system's president said the school has done everything reasonable to address the possibility of contaminated drinking water.
And a professor of health said the concern is a non-issue.
UPDATE: Student Margaret Lordi continues to wage a campaign against the school's administration as well as Virginia Community College Systems' chancellor over what she contends is the presence of unsafe drinking water and trinitrotoluene soil contamination.
While the school has been cited on at least three occasions for violating water-quality standards, and the campus has installed bottled water coolers and purifying filters on all outlets, administrators insist there is no present danger to anyone who drinks from the well-water system. Rather, acting provost Dr. Terry Jones said, ``the bottled water was installed more to get people through their (unsubstantiated) fear.''
As recently as mid-June, Marvin Taylor, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' environmental project manager in Omaha, Neb., said, ``right now, to me, there is no reason for worry, as far as the levels of TNT (trinitrotoluene) are concerned. However, we don't have enough evidence at the present time to say its completely clear.''
ITEM: What do you think about tearing down the Leckie Street Bridge? ... If you care, then you should be on the look out for a survey coming your way from the City Council.
The city hopes to gauge the community's feelings about the bridge, which connects Shea Terrace and West Park View, to help them decide whether to tear it down or leave it standing for pedestrian and bike traffic.
UPDATE: Although some residents of Shea Terrace still want the bridge razed, surveys of property owners in Park View and West Park View have presented a different view to City Council. Many residents want to keep the bridge until there is a plan to dredge Scotts Creek to the inlet spanned by the structure. They cited it as part of a bicycle route between Churchland and downtown, used by cyclists seeking to avoid heavy and sometimes dangerous traffic. City Council has not voted on the issue.
ITEM: They've mowed it, watered it, watched trees grow on it and even built decks and garages on it.
. . . Some folks didn't realize they had encroached on the easement that belongs to the City of Norfolk. Others just sort of forgot. After all, the water line that brings water from Suffolk to Norfolk already was there.
But Beth Welsh, construction engineer for Norfolk's utilities department, said the city has decided they need another line in case they should need to pump in more water.
UPDATE: Since then, residents around Hodges Manor and Rollingwood have been busy moving or losing the garages and other amenities they had built on the easement.
Andrew Joseph Fly who lives on Apache got lucky. His garage had touched the easement, but it was spared. So was the shed he thought would have to be moved.
Deborah Boyd lost the shed that had sentimental value because her father had built it for her. But she's pleased that her trees were saved, and so far she hasn't seen any cracks in the house from the heavy construction equipment.
Forty percent of the pipe has been laid, said Gary Heisler, construction engineer.
But residents still have some waiting before the workers will come back and re-landscape yards and re-erect the fences.
ITEM: It appears that the city might have one less grocery store and yet another piece of prime commercial property removed from the tax rolls.
Earl's IGA, a full-service grocery store in the Rodman Shopping Center at the intersection of High Street and London Boulevard, is closing.
UPDATE: Five months after this story appeared, sun-faded signs scribbled in ink saying ``Sorry, We're Closed'' are still taped to the automatic doors of the store.
The city is negotiating with a grocery retailer to occupy the site, one of the most visible and accessible in the city.
ITEM: Three men, who formerly worked together as car salesmen in Virginia Beach, and a local pipefitter have formed a corporation to operate two city landmarks, the Elks Lodge building and the Riverfront Cafe in the former railroad building originally remodeled for The Max.
UPDATE: Although the sale has not been closed, the Global Affairs group is operating in the Elks building with a variety of activities, including a weekly Sunday buffet and gospel singing.
The tentative closing date on the sale is mid-September.
The same group continues to operate the Riverfront Cafe on the downtown waterfront and has hosted such events such as a reception following the change-of-command ceremonies for the U.S. Coast Guard Fifth District. MARCH
ITEM: Residents of Washington Park made it clear to federal officials last week that they believe they are being discriminated against.
... More than 100 people came out last week to comment on the proposed $31.5 million cleanup of an old lead foundry and the surrounding residential areas that became contaminated after lead was buried in sand in the area.
UPDATE: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency missed another deadline Tuesday when it failed to produce an Amended Record of Decision. City Attorney Stuart Katz said he contacted the Philadelphia office, which now expects to finish the report perhaps in August but definitely by Sept. 30.
The Amended Record of Decision became necessary when the city asked permission to buy and raze the private homes built in the Abex Super Fund site. EPA's original plan suggested that the contemporary homes be lifted off the ground to permit the soil to be removed and replaced.
ITEM: Getting young people off the street and into safe and constructive environments during their free time might be the only answer to saving Portsmouth's next generation, Mayor Gloria Webb said in her ``State of the City'' talk Monday.
UPDATE: Although many churches conduct special programs for young people during the summer months, no organized joint effort to keep children off the streets has emerged. Nor has there been any move by the schools to stay open around the clock as suggested by the mayor.
ITEM: The Temple of Love Faith Center on Airline Boulevard has been denied the use permit that would have made their operation legal.
But Maury Cooke, owner of the building, said he will attempt to get the decision reversed.
UPDATE: When the use permit was not granted, the church moved from the building shortly thereafter. The building remains vacant.
ITEM: When Dolores Thingstad first decided she needed a little help around the house, she never expected her helper would be a dog.
But through the Canine Connection Training Center, Thingstad found the ideal helper/companion in Hunter, a 2-year-old assistance dog.
Hunter, an 83-pound black Labrador retriever, is still in training, but already he has managed to capture Thingstad's heart as neatly as he retrieves ringing telephones, dropped keys or a stray cane and carefully brings them to her wheelchair.
UPDATE: After knee replacement surgery and therapy, Thingstad was moving around so well that she found she did not Hunter's help. He was returned to his original owner and is enjoying life in Las Vegas, Nevada. MARCH
ITEM: If Brian Lilley lullabied his pets to sleep, sounds of ``Bye, Bye, Birdie'' in the key of E would waft through the evening air around his Simonsdale neighborhood. Lilley raises and races homing pigeons, a variety of bird famous for its uncanny ability to find the way home from improbably long distances.
UPDATE: His birds took third and fifth place in competition with other racers from the Hampton Roads Pigeon Club.
``We've got a major race coming up in August,'' Lilley said, ``that'll be 239 miles. I plan to race my young birds in that one. I think my birds will have a chance at making a good showing.''
ITEM: One of High Street's more visible buildings will be recycled again.
The Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority board voted Tuesday to lease for $1 a year the former Regina's restaurant building at 606 High St. to the Portsmouth Community Development Corp., a private, non-profit group spearheaded by Maury Cooke.
UPDATE: A private entrepreneur plans to open a new eating place there in the fall. The restaurant will be an incubator for a catering business, rather than a bakery as originally proposed.
Meanwhile, Portsmouth Community Development Corp. has hired Bruce Asbury to spearhead economic development in the group. The non-profit organization also received a grant to hire Mary Ruffin Hanbury to organize cultural activities, including a dance program, to be housed in a building adjacent to the old Regina's restaurant.
ITEM: Spaghetti and Shakespeare are both playing important roles in the lives of 19 Churchland High students who are raising funds to cover the cost of the ultimate field trip: a week's tour of England.
UPDATE: Sixteen students spent eight days in England in June. From London's sights to Stratford-on-Avon, to Bath, to Stonehenge, the trip was worth every penny the students earned to pay their way.
Wesley Knight, 14, saw his first major dramatic production when he was in the audience of ``Miss Saigon'' in a Drury Lane theater. Jaime Borum celebrated her 18th birthday by going dancing in Leicester Square in London. Trip sponsor and Churchland teacher Judy Thompson heard a nightingale sing for the first time.
Everyone loved their stay in an English hotel that could have come straight out of an Agatha Christie murder mystery.
There were a few surprises too: like finding a Pizza Hut disguised as a thatch-roofed cottage in Shakespeare's town of Stratford-on-Avon, working around a one-day rail strike, and learning which way to look when crossing the street to dodge cars driving on the left-hand side of the road.
``What I enjoyed most was seeing how the kids changed, how much more open they became,'' Thompson said. ``I think they are much more aware now of just how big the world is.''
ITEM: ... Marlene Randall is probably best known as the principal who made Lakeview Elementary School one of the brightest, warmest places a child could spend time in.
... And now more than two weeks after her retirement, there is almost a sense of disbelief that the 59-year-old woman colleagues describe as a ``plug of energy'' could possibly stop.
UPDATE: Randall's days have been filled with her share of volunteer work, ranging from helping out at the American Red Cross benefit bingo games or working with her church's Community In Action group.
But she's also had her share of fun, and by that she doesn't just mean the Caribbean cruise she and her husband took.
``I'm really trying to learn how to relax,'' she said. ``I'm enjoying myself in my yard with my garden . . . feeding the wild creatures. ... Really, for the first time, I notice things that are very close to me that I didn't have time to (before retirement).''
She and her husband now have a standing date to the movies.
``I feel like we're courting all over again,'' she said. ``Sometimes I wonder why it took me so long to find out there were other things in life that I could enjoy as much as I enjoyed my professional life.''
ITEM: For Ann Reynolds, creating everything from wooden wall hangings and miniatures to yard art was a labor of love that allowed her to work from her home while adding to the family's income.
The profit from two of the booths she rented at Virginia Crafters Showcase Inc. for just the first two weeks of December was $800.
... And months later, many vendors say they have not seen a check for the last two weeks of sales as promised them by Tamarah Perrine, who operated the business. (It closed in late December.)
Several vendors filed police reports, and Portsmouth larceny detective D.L. Beachler has been contacting the rest for weeks now, trying to gather the facts.
UPDATE: On July 9, Reynolds received the following letter from the police detective.
``On 1-25-94 you filed a police report with this department in regards to Virginia Crafters Showcase. Initially in the beginning of this investigation the facts were shown to Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Will Jamerson by Sgt. Covey and Mr. Jamerson stated we would pursue this matter criminally.
``However due to the volume of victims in this case and time in investigating it, the facts were presented to Ms. Mary Thomas of the Commonwealth's Attorneys Office. She stated it was criminal as well as civil after having confirmed it with Mr. Bullock, our Commonwealth's Attorney.
``Once the investigation was completed, I turned your case over to Ms. Thomas and she called back and stated their office would not prosecute. If you have any questions regarding your case please refer them to Ms. Mary Thomas. .
Thomas has referred questions to Bullock. He could not be reached for comment.
ITEM: Black residents who have organized in defense of I.C. Norcom High School principal DeWayne F. Jeter will ask the School Board on Monday to vote against the administration's recommendation to place him in another job.
UPDATE: Since Jeter was granted tenure about a half-dozen school officials have said privately that the recommendation to deny tenure was part of an effort to hold educators to higher standards before they received tenure.
Without tenure, Jeter could have been reassigned as an assistant principal, a job he had held at the former Manor High School.
ITEM: Kathy Becket helps her daughter, Bridgette, with a bowling ball on a recent outing. Bridgette, 7, has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair.
UPDATE: On May 2, Bridgette died suddenly and peacefully in her sleep. Bridgette, who suffered from a congenital brain malformation, had outlived many of her doctors' predictions. Her family is still receiving condolences, many from strangers. ``Bridgette had touched so many people; people that we did not even know,'' said Kathleen Becket, her mother. APRIL
ITEM: For nearly 14 years, the Rev. David K. Garth has been pastor of the 350-member First Presbyterian Church in Olde Towne. Today, he preaches his last sermon in the 117-year-old sanctuary.
UPDATE: Although he's a self-admitted non-fan of country music, he now says he's indebted to music superstar Garth Brooks.
``This is the first place I've ever lived where people know how to pronounce my last name,'' Garth said.
``I've been called everything from `Goth' to `Gerth' to `Gart.' ''
The long-time and popular Portsmouth minister moved to Murfreesboro three months ago to assume the pastorate of First Presbyterian Church in the middle Tennessee town of 41,000.
``I'm still trying to get myself in place, and my family just arrived last Saturday. But I think this is going to be a very pleasant place to live.''
ITEM: The Help and Emergency Response shelter for abused women and their children has undertaken a fund-raising campaign for construction of a new facility that would enable the agency to nearly double the number of clients it could serve.
... The nine-year-old social service agency hopes to raise at least $450,000 to construct and furnish a new facility that would be located in Cradock and that would replace the present Park View shelter site.
UPDATE: The ``Raise the Roof Campaign'' has raised slightly more than $50,000 in private donations.
The new shelter will provide 42 beds for women and children and increase services for an additional 200 each year. Currently, the shelter has 25 beds and accommodates 451 women and children yearly.
HER also recently hired a new executive director. Sandra C. Becker took over the position July 1. She moved to Portsmouth from Winston-Salem, N.C., in March when her husband, Thomas, was named pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church. Sandra Becker was executive director of a residential program for adults with mental retardation in North Carolina and also has done volunteer work with abused women.
ITEM: A week after she quit under fire as police chief, Leslie Martinez still voices concern about all the things she could not accomplish during the year she held the job.
UPDATE: Martinez continues to live in her Waterview home and still is trying to get $1,200 the city has owed her since last summer. The money represents a six-month raise called for in her contract but never paid during her tenure as police chief. Meanwhile, Dennis Mook, who replaced her, has implemented many of the projects Martinez had hoped to accomplish.
ITEM: A group of residents is circulating a petition asking the City Council to fire the city manager and to review the police chief's resignation.
UPDATE: The petition is expected to be presented to council within 60 days. MAY
ITEM: A lot of good women and a little bit of money are needed to create ``Another House That Jill Built,'' a Habitat for Humanity project that will add another new home to Prentis Place.
... the committee is looking for 300 women workers and $35,000 cash.
UPDATE: Women are ready to raise the roof on the house at 1726 Prentis Ave.
``We're ahead of schedule,'' said Nancy Wren, chairwoman of a local committee working on the project. ``All exterior walls are up and the trusses were delivered Thursday.''
The committee still could use some more money and some more help.
``I think we especially need more help during the day,'' Wren said. ``We're doing OK, but, since so many people work, we have the most help in late afternoon and on weekends.''
ITEM: For 12 days beginning Wednesday, five members of the Fairwood Agape Baptist Church will experience some of the difficulties and rewards of missionary life.
The team will work in the west African nation of Benin as volunteer teachers for children of Baptist missionaries assigned there.
The team also will spend one week walking the streets of the country's capital city of Porto Novo, handing out Bible tracts and retelling the gospel message to anyone who will listen.
UPDATE: Weather and water aside, it was the group's encounter with some voodoo worshipers that probably made the biggest impression and nearly led to a close encounter of the worst kind.
``We had a chance to go inland about 200 miles to the city of Abomey, the ancestral kingdom of the Dahomey people,'' said Charles H. Bowens III. ``We had a chance to visit some restored huts that we were told had been made from bricks mixed with the blood of the king's enemies. It was eerie.
``When we saw some fetish or voodoo worshipers sacrificing goats and chickens, I decided to take a photo, which is really taboo. One of the women I tried to photograph got mad and started approaching the jeep. All I said was `Let's get outta here, fast.' ''
ITEM: ``Navytown, U.S.A,'' a proposed theme park that would capitalize on Portsmouth's naval history that spans the life of this country, was unveiled last week.
The Rev. Philip Parker, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, envisions a tourist attraction that would feature light and sound shows and parts of real U.S. Navy vessels on 60 acres, adjacent to the naval shipyard known as Port Centre.
UPDATE: Parker asked City Council for its blessings on the project and asked that the city set aside the land for two years to give him a chance to find developers for ``Navytown, U.S.A.'' But the city has been silent.
``The city has offered no official response either in regards to endorsement or a promise to make the land available for two years,'' Parker said.
``When people ask me what they can do to help promote it, I tell them to write or call the city manager,'' Parker said. ``I don't know what else to do.''
Parker plans to pursue the project, seeking financial backers to develop it as a tax-paying entity. JUNE
ITEM: It was showtime last week for for-profit, school-management companies seeking a contract to run five city schools.
UPDATE: Schools Superintendent Richard D. Trumble has sent back to the drawing board a plan to allow a private company to manage four city elementary schools and one middle school. For a year, the school district has studied the idea of contracting with a for-profit company in hopes that a different management approach would get better classroom results.
The idea has won few supporters and significant opposition from some civic and education organizations. At a June 13 news conference, Trumble announced that proposals submitted by four school-management companies had all been rejected.
The administration now wants to fine-tune the district's request for proposals. The process will start over and will be concluded by the end of the summer, Trumble said.
ITEM: Enga Davis visited Atlantic City the weekend of the Miss America pageant. She wanted to mingle, meet the contestants and get a feel for what it was like to be there.
She left with one single thought: ``I can do this.''
She gets no argument from Kay Sykes, who has served as director of the Miss Portsmouth Seawall Festival pageant for 14 years.
. . . ``She's the most talented we've ever had.''
UPDATE: Davis won the talent category in the preliminary competition of the Miss Virginia pageant. She was one of the Top 10 finalists who performed during the pageant, but she did not place. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Trish Pfeifer, former director of the Children's Museum, started
work Monday as the development director of the Peninsula Fine Arts
Center in Newport News.
Harry Hunt Junior High is now rubble. Environmental officials gave
the city the go-ahead in April to build I.C. Norcom High School on
the site.
About 150,000 hardcover copies of Portsmouth native Nathan McCall's
book, ``Makes Me Wanna Holler,'' have been sold. He dedicated the
book to his mother, Lenora, and stepfather Bonnie Alvin.
Despite Mayor Gloria Webb's plea to find things for kids to do in
the summer, no organized effort has emerged.
Sixteen Churchland High School students raised enough money to go to
England.
I.C. Norcom High School principal DeWayne F. Jeter was granted
tenure despite the school administration's attempt to put him in
another job.
Bridgette Becket, who went bowling with her mother, Kathy, died in
her sleep on May 2.
Miss Portsmouth Seawall, Egna Davis, won talent category in the
preliminary Miss Virginia contest.
by CNB