THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603270137
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Discover, part 2
SOURCE: BY DAWSON MILLS, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
Our last Discover column looked at the history of Crittenden and Eclipse in Suffolk's northernmost corner. This week, we complete our exploration of this charming area with more of Burnice Bush's recollections and comments, as well as those of others familiar with the area.
The bridges over the James and Nansemond rivers and Chuckatuck Creek weren't built until the late 1920s.
Earlier, the same J.Q. Adams who had run the general merchandise and passenger ferries started an auto ferry line with three boats. There were landing docks at the end of Dixon Road and Point of Marsh in Isle of Wight County. The ferries sailed to the little boat harbor in Newport News.
Able to carry 12 to 15 cars at a time, they were quite successful, according to Eclipse resident Burnice Bush. When the bridges came, the ferries moved up to Maryland.
Adams, Bush recalled, had a brother, Charles Graves Adams, who owned more oyster boats and private oyster beds than anyone in Nansemond County. He also owned most of the houses in the neighboring village of Hobson; most of the residents worked for him on the water.
At one time, said Bush, there were three post offices within a two mile area. John Brough's store had one in it in Crittenden, as did Bud Johnson's store in Hobson, and S.Q. Bunkley's in Eclipse.
Crittenden and Eclipse, primarily white, and Hobson, primarily black, were once independent villages. They adjoin each other; at times it's difficult to tell where one ends and the next begins.
Both Wright and Bush explained that an area known as Possum Hollow separated Eclipse from Crittenden. Bush laughed recalling the name, adding that a part of what is now Eclipse Drive was once known as Devil's Gorge. The entire area, extending to Chuckatuck, he said, at one time was known as Barrett's Neck.
Over the years, despite the decline of the seafood industry, the area gained in population as neighboring metropolitan areas became more accessible, thanks to the bridges, the automobile and improved roads (today Route 17 is the principal highway in or out of the area).
Suzanne Yeomans, whom I asked directions of twice as she was jogging, explained that she, her husband, Harry, and sons, Sam, 18, and Chris, 19, had moved to the area in 1989. They can see Chuckatuck Creek from the home they built. They love the area, she said, even though her husband works in Norfolk.
``It's been a great experience,'' she explained. ``People here still wave at one another. It's been a great place for the boys to grow up, hunting, fishing, water skiing, doing `boy things.' ''
Two churches, Ebenezer United Methodist, dating from 1866, and Mount Zion Fellowship Church, on the line separating Crittenden from Eclipse, serve the community. The Crittenden, Eclipse and Hobson Ruritan Club occupies a former schoolhouse. One new maritime enterprise has located along Chuckatuck Creek, on the site of an old oyster house and marine railway: Volvo Penta's Marine Test Center.
Thomas Hazelwood, Suffolk's Commissioner of the Revenue, a fifth generation waterman who worked on the water for 21 years, hails from Eclipse. He still lives there, in the same house his father lived in.
``It was a great place to grow up as a child,'' he recalled, but expressed regret that water-related industry ``is in the worst shape it's been in in my life. You could say it's a way of life lost,'' he added, ``the oystering, that is. There's still some clamming and crabbing. The clamming is recent, within the last 30 years.''
Cedar Point and Sleepy Lake, said Bush, have sprung up within the last 25 years.
In Eclipse, along Wigneil Street off of Rivershore Drive, large, custom homes line the banks of the James River across from Newport News. Yet the area retains a distinctive rural feel about it.
The original bridges that tied the area to the rest of Hampton Roads, noted Bush, have all been replaced. The new bridge over the Nansemond River was dedicated as the Mills E. Godwin Bridge on May 8, 1981; the bridge over Currituck Creek as the Sidney Bertram Hazelwood, Sr. Bridge, after Thomas Hazelwood's father, in 1989.
The area throws a big Fourth of July party each year, sponsored by the Ruritan and area merchants, featuring fireworks from the field by Ebenezer Church. A homemade raft race on Chuckatuck Creek draws plenty of entries.
Boone's Trading Post used to mark the turnoff of Route 17 onto Eclipse Drive; now it's the Crittenden Mobil Mart. Assistant manager Sharrone Parker, who came to the area from Ohio in 1968, shared her observations.
``We still get a lot of watermen, fishermen,'' she said. ``Farmers, too. I like the people. They're colorful, down-to-earth; it's a tight community, a small town.
People are friendly and nice. You don't have to worry about anything.''
Before concluding my visit, I stopped by the studio of well-known artist and calligrapher Michael Podesta. The sounds of Mozart filled the air. We paused and listened to the ``Laudate Dominum'' from ``The Solemn Vespers.''
``Just as man needs food for the body,'' explained Podesta, ``so I believe he needs food for the soul, to daily come into contact with that which is beautiful.''
It's all there, right in Crittenden and its neighboring villages, as Parker, at the Mobil Mart put it, ``about 10 minutes from Newport News, about 10 minutes from Churchland, about 10 minutes from everywhere.''
But, in many ways, still a world all its own. MEMO: Do you have an idea for Discover? Call Dawson Mills at 489-9547. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by DAWSON MILLS
Sharrone Parker, assistant manager at Crittenden Mobil Mart, gives
customer Howard Foster his change.
Michael Podesta, artist and calligrapher, works in his Crittenden
studio.
by CNB