THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 28, 1995 TAG: 9506270137
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SERIES: LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DENDRON LENGTH: Long : 203 lines
DAROLD HART'S MODERN, big-screen TV in the front parlor of his stately home on Church Street looks a little out of place among the family portraits, the patina of old wood and marble, antique piano and the hand-quilted pillows on the time-worn Duncan Phyfe sofa.
But together, the pieces blend warmly into all the trappings of home.
``We don't have cable here,'' Hart says with a friendly chuckle. ``We've been trying to get it for five years, but not yet. I usually watch the news. Then, I go out and sit on the front porch.''
At 74, the retired school principal, youthful in appearance, spends a lot of time on his porch. He enjoys traveling, he says, visiting friends. But maybe he most enjoys home.
Like so many natives of this tiny town on Virginia Route 31, about half way between Surry Courthouse and Wakefield, Hart left Dendron when he was a youth. He taught in the U.S. Army for a couple of years. Then, in 1954, he went to Middleburg, near Warrenton, and stayed there for 30 years as an elementary and middle school principal.
In 1984, Hart came home to Dendron.
``I had retired. My mother was still living. I thought she needed help.''
Carrie Elizabeth Barrett, affectionately known locally by the title she earned while spending 30 years in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps - Col. Barrett - did the same thing. She joined the Army, saw the world, lived in large cities all over the globe - and decided she liked Dendron best.
``It's a little town. There's nothing exciting about it,'' she says. ``But it's home.''
And Henry Bailey, somewhat of a local hero since he reopened the town's only store after it had been closed for about six months, agrees. Dendron is home, he says, and there's no place quite like it.
Bailey has lived and worked in Williamsburg for 30 years, but he never completely left Dendron.
``I'd always ride over here, just to look around. You never forget home. When I came here and couldn't get a pack of cigarettes or a soda, and the lady who lives next door to my mother couldn't get a loaf of bread because she doesn't drive, I told her I was going to open the store for her.''
Today, Bailey's Convenient Mart holds the only business license in this town, population of about 350.
But that's not the way it once was.
Where Bailey's store is now, there once was a full-fledged grocery. There also were several general stores, fashion shops, hat shops, an ice cream parlor, an auto dealership, a movie theater, banks.
``I tell you, we were quite the city,'' Barrett says.
That was in the early 1900s, when the Surry Lumber Co. was thriving. Its supporting railroad ran from Southampton County to Scotland Wharf on the James River, where the lumber was shipped out by barge.
Until the lumber mill opened in the late 1800s, though, there basically was no town, Hart said. There was just a post office named Parker's. When the mill moved in, people and businesses followed.
The town was incorporated in 1906 and dubbed Dendron, a Greek word meaning tree. Hart says the mill was built by a Baltimore concern, Waters and Co., and was managed by two brothers who moved to Virginia from England. Edward Rogers was the general superintendent, and his brother, Ernest, was the yard superintendent.
``This was probably the largest milling town east of the Mississippi,'' Hart says.
The timber rush brought nearly as much prosperity to Dendron and other small towns along the rail line as the Gold Rush brought to the hills of California. Stores, banks, auto dealerships, houses and a three-story hotel popped up almost overnight.
The population of the town that didn't even exist before the lumber mill grew to between 3,000 and 5,000 people, depending on who is recalling the facts.
And then, it was over.
The Surry Lumber Co. abruptly shut down.
``It was overcut,'' Hart says. ``They had cut everything for 30 miles or more. No conservation. No replanting. They only took the best.''
Nine of 10 of the town's residents packed up and moved out. Faced with the Great Depression, the people remaining in town farmed or went to work in area shipyards.
The final hour of the town named for trees came one frightful night in 1931, when a fire started, probably from ashes left after a late-night poker game. Twenty buildings were destroyed. Time eventually erased the remains of the mill houses, built for the workers that were no longer there.
Today, there are few traces of the old Dendron. Any surviving rails are overgrown with weeds. Three small stone buildings that were banks, spared by the fire, are filled with junk and abandoned.
But the streets of the town, which covers almost 3,000 acres and is bordered by the Blackwater River and creeks filled with cypress trees, are haunted by ghostly sounds that some say they hear when they talk about what was: click-clacking rails, the blast of train whistles, shouts of mill workers.
``This was a big town,'' says Guy Ingram, 89, his eyes bright with reflection. ``You could drop Waverly and Wakefield in, and you wouldn't even miss 'em. My father was the railroad engineer. Papa learned me to run the engine, and I could run it as good as he could.''
The Dendron that exists today is the view from Hart's front porch. One store, neat houses, lush lawns, lilies in bloom. Three churches. The Baptist and Methodist churches hold Sunday services twice a month. The Congregational Christian Church meets monthly.
The only sounds you hear are occasional cars or a truck zipping past, birds chirping, whistling to one another.
``I've been in love with Darold's front porch for 30 years,'' says Frank Fisher, a retired teacher visiting Hart from Chicago. ``This is a quiet, serene, tranquil environment. I do appreciate it.''
Most of the town's permanent residents do, too, says Ben Muncy, mayor since 1980. And that's what attracted him and his family.
Muncy is a Suffolk native. When his sister married and moved to Dendron, he visited and fell in love with the town. He likes to hunt in the fields and woods, fish in the river. In 1960, he moved his family here and opened a garage.
Muncy, 68, ran for the six-member Town Council in 1978; he was elected mayor in 1980. Elections are held every two years.
``I like to help the town,'' he says, leaning against a lawn tractor in his 100- by 50-foot, aluminum-sided garage on the side of Rolfe Highway. ``We've put in a new water system. We got it through a grant. We've cleaned up the town. Right now, we're working on a sewer system.''
If that comes through, Muncy sees growth for Dendron. Already, there is some talk about a housing development.
And that would be nice, Fire Chief Eddie Curl says.
``There are a few young people moving into town. It's a nice place to live.''
The 20-member volunteer Fire Department works about three calls a month, Curl says, mostly brush fires in the spring. Much of the town's social life revolves around the Fire Department. There's a pig picking in May, a shrimp feast in June. In July, the department participates in the Surry County Peanut, Pork and Pine Festival. In the fall, there's another pig picking or a chicken fry. The Fire Department has both a Thanksgiving and a Christmas dinner.
The most exciting thing Curl can recall happening in town was yet another fire, the night the 100-year-old mill commissary burned.
``I think the whole town turned out that night - to watch it burn,'' he says. ``As far as crime, we don't have a lot of crime.''
A few years ago, though, the Town Council thought there were too many speeders going through town, Muncy says, so they hired a town sergeant - a man who worked in a Newport News shipyard full time, for the town part time.
``We had our own Police Department for a while,'' the mayor says. ``We had a police car, radar. But he didn't have time to attend the schools. It was compulsory for him to go to police training.''
That was six or seven years ago, for just a couple of years. Since then, the town has been policed by the Surry County Sheriff's Department.
Dendron has an operating budget of about $15,000 a year. It comes mostly from water proceeds and from the sale of town decals, which bear the image of grazing horses. No special reason, Muncy says. The council members just liked the picture.
Dendron is a neighborly place, says former Mayor Alma Gibbs, the first black to serve on the council.
``I like the rural atmosphere,'' she says. ``It's a pretty nice little town, where everybody knows everybody.''
Since Gibbs broke the racial barrier on council, several other minorities have served. There are two blacks on the current council, Gibbs says. The retired teacher, 81, still keeps track of the town's business. Others still call her for advice.
Whenever she leaves town, even for a short while, she says, she misses the birds the most.
``A few weeks ago, I was visiting in another city. I soon said to them, `Oh, I just miss home. There are no birds here - and all this traffic.' ''
Dendron's rural atmosphere is exactly what attracted Rosemarie Whiteman, 32, and her husband, who grew up in Dendron. The couple was living in York County, but she says they didn't want to raise children there.
Whiteman works four hours a week at the post office and fills in for the postmistress when she's out.
``The rest of the time, I take care of my children,'' she says, smiling. ``We can get to Petersburg or Hampton whenever we want, but I wouldn't want to live in the city again. My mother thinks I'm crazy, but I love it.''
In Dendron, people garden and can or freeze the bounty. Many are active in the local chapter of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, says Corinne Muncy, the mayor's wife.
There's not much else going on.
``We don't have any excitement, not much,'' she says, smiling as she wipes her hands on a dish towel.
``That's what makes it nice.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by John H. Sheally II, Staff
Dendron Mayor Ben Muncy...
Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Joe Hargrave cuts the grass at the Dendron Municipal Building. In
the early 1900s, when the Surry Lumber Co. was thriving, the town
supported several general stores, fashion shops, hat shops, an ice
cream parlor, an auto dealership, a movie theater, banks. Now, in
this town of 350 souls, there is just one store. Dendron has an
operating budget of about $15,000 a year.
Carrie Elizabeth Barrett spent 30 years in the U.S. Army Nurse
Corps. She lived in cities all over the globe and decided she liked
Dendron best.
You can stop and buy sweet potatoes on the main street in Dendron.
Henry Bailey became somewhat of a local hero when he reopened the
town's only store after it had been closed for about six months.
Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
A logging truck drives down main street in Dendron. Once, logging
turned the town into a bustling community.
At 74, retired school principal Darold Hart spends a lot of time on
his porch in Dendron, where he grew up, left and then returned.
Map
by CNB