THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 18, 1994 TAG: 9412160208
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
There's a lot of political chatter about orphanages these days, but it's more than chatter to Carl Burns. It's a prod to his memory. He spent 12 years in the Methodist orphanage in Richmond.
A 74-year-old Great Bridge resident now, Burns was 5 when his father died. His mother was left with no money, no job and four sons to raise. Though she had family in Norfolk and they helped a lot, she figured she was fighting a losing battle. Finally, she made a decision: one son had died of typhoid, still a killer back then. She would keep the youngest with her. Carl and his older brother would go into the orphanage.
It was 1927 and Carl was 6. ``I remember being scared when we got there,'' he says. ``It was driving out and saying, `Hey, you're here.' There was no explanation, or if there was, I don't remember it.''
There's not much that he does remember about his first three years in the orphanage. It's clear that he does not want to remember. Ask him to talk about it and he looks away, silent for a moment.
``It was a big institution, a tough place, like you see in the old movies. There were about 150 kids, boys and girls, and my brother and I were the only ones who had shoes in the dead of winter because we already had them when we got there. The orphanage was too poor to buy shoes for the others.
``We slept in big rooms, 10 kids to a room. Heat was from a fireplace. If you had any personal stuff, it went into a box in the attic. The matrons sewed our clothes out of khaki left over from World War I Army uniforms. The boys wore knickers with high black stockings. Breakfast was a lot of oatmeal, hot biscuits, peanut butter and molasses. Saturday breakfast was navy beans and stewed tomatoes.''
Plain food - and stern discipline. You might be made to stand on one foot for a very long while, but there were whippings sometimes, hard ones with a rubber belt. The boys saw their mother very infrequently. Burns remembers that the rail line ended about three miles short of the orphanage, and his mother would have to walk because she had no car or money for a cab.
``I was trying to figure if you found any love at the orphanage at all,'' Burns says. ``I don't like to think about it.''
But then, after three years, the atmosphere changed like sunshine after a storm. ``The Methodist board found out how bad things were, and they cleaned house,'' Burns says. ``After that, it was pretty good.''
To survive in the Depression that began with the 1930s, the orphanage raised its own vegetables and had its own dairy herd. When he was about 12, Burns would rouse out at 5 a.m. and milk cows.
Another cost-cutting measure for the orphanage was a happy time for Burns. For three summers, he and the other kids were sent to the homes of Methodist volunteers across the state. His first summer was with a doctor's family in Northern Virginia, and the warmth in Burns' voice is unmistakable as he talks about how nice the family was to him.
The next two summers were spent with a farm family, and they were good, too, Burns says. ``I learned all about farming,'' he says. Then he grins and tells you that he could catch a rabbit running barefoot through the wheat stubble.
``Really?'' I ask. ``Absolutely,'' he says. ``I was fast in those days.''
He was also comparatively flush, financially. He got a 25-cent-a-week allowance of which 15 cents went for a newspaper subscription. ``Always been a nut about newspapers,'' he says.
Another especially fond memory of the orphanage involves an elementary school teacher named E. LeClare Batten. ``A real caring person,'' Burns says. ``She inspired you with her concern for you and your future.''
Burns' older brother had gone into the Army, but Burns himself graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1939. His yearbook picture shows a confident-looking, handsome young man who had already had some training as a welder. ``And the Methodists were real good people,'' Burns says. ``They got me a job at the shipyard, and I lived with my mother in Norfolk.''
He served a hitch in the Navy during World War II and mostly worked as a credit and collection manager until his retirement several years ago.
Ask Burns how his years in the orphanage affected him and he says, ``Positively. Very definitely positively. The orphanage was better than a bad family, and I was better off than a lot of kids I saw at school.''
But I couldn't help being curious about Burns' current image as a guy who comes regularly to Chesapeake City Council meetings suspicious of just about every move they make. Did the orphanage somehow damage his faith in people, I wonder.
Burns laughs. ``Oh,'' he says, ``I'm a trusting soul, but politicians are different.'' by CNB