THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410280253
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
A City Council discussion Tuesday night over the demolition of Lawrence Stadium and the siting of a new I.C. Norcom High School brought into sharp focus the need to see the school as it will be in the future.
Some council members opposed razing Lawrence Stadium at the end of this football season and scheduling Norcom games at the new Churchland High ballpark. Implicit in their discussion was the notion that the city was behaving in a racist way if it went ahead with the plan to remove the time-worn stadium from a London Boulevard site near the proposed new Norcom school site.
City Councilman Ward Robinett contended that the idea of designing the new campus around a 50-year-old stadium was not very smart. It would be ``insane'' to do that, Councilman Jim Hawks said.
``I asked in August that we not let this old stadium dictate where the school sits on the site,'' Robinett said.
Hawks and Robinett both want to replace the old stadium with a facility large enough to host regional sports events. That makes good sense because the field would be located near the interstate highways and the Elizabeth River tunnels on London Boulevard and the cost of a larger facility could be offset by income from more and larger events.
In addition, a regional field would add prestige to the city's most expensive and elaborate school campus. It is highly unlikely that the city would allow the school to go without a new football field and other athletic facilities, as some blacks have charged.
The solution to the dilemma of the football fields is obvious: Demolish Lawrence Stadium and immediately begin construction of the new football field at a different location on the proposed campus. The school construction will take several years, but a football field surely could be installed in six or eight months to be ready for use by Norcom and Wilson teams for next year's season.
The city manager may have exercised faulty judgment when he announced the stadium would be torn down without simultaneously announcing plans for a new field. But the implication of racism and back-door politics seems off the mark and that is a far more serious aspect of the situation than where a ball game will be played.
Although the new building will be a monument in name to the city's most prominent black educator, Norcom High no longer will operate as a segregated island.
Called by Robinett ``the crown jewel of our education system,'' the school will be the best facility in the city. White citizens who live east of the Churchland bridges undoubtedly will demand that it be operated in a desegregated manner. They will push the School Board to establish magnet programs in the school to ensure that enough white students will attend the school to create a truly integrated student body.
I.C. Norcom played an important part in this city's history. Nothing could honor him more than a school that provides excellent education to both blacks and whites in a peaceful environment. That's not likely to happen as long as charges of racism surround the development of the new school campus.
Black citizens, most especially alumni of I.C. Norcom, need to face the reality of the school's future. And the city needs to get beyond frivolous charges of racism before it assumes a back-breaking debt of more than $40 million to build a new school it doesn't need.
KEYWORDS: PORTSMOUTH CITY COUNCIL LAWRENCE STADIUM
by CNB