THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 8, 1997 TAG: 9702080348
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 121 lines
This is the story of two native Deep Creekers - and a community grappling with which one's name should grace its new middle school.
One stayed in Deep Creek all his life. The other left but didn't go far - just up the road to the Bowers Hill area.
The first is Charles S. Brabble Sr., who served as principal for 44 years in various Deep Creek schools before retiring in 1990. He followed in the footsteps of his father, John Brabble, who was hired as a teacher-principal in Deep Creek in 1887 and served in the schools until his retirement in 1945. Together, the father and son have more than a century of service to Deep Creek schools.
The second is Hugo A. Owens Sr., perhaps better-known to those outside Deep Creek. He served as one of the city's first African-American City Council members and as its vice mayor before stepping down in 1980. Life in the public spotlight began in 1955, before the civil rights movement hit full stride, when he ran for and lost by 65 votes a seat on the Portsmouth City Council. Since then he has received national attention for his work as a civil rights leader.
Both men can trace their ancestry to the days when their grandparents were slaves. Both attended Deep Creek schools when John Brabble was principal.
And both men also have no shortage of admirers - as was shown by two public hearings in January on the naming of the new middle school on Cedar Road. The hearings drew more than 130 people, most of whom supported either Brabble or Owens.
A School Board committee studying the issue will probably make its recommendation Monday night, said committee chairman L. Thomas Bray. No proposed names - including the idea that the school should be named for its geographic location - have been ruled out, Bray said.
``I'm in a tough position because both those guys are super,'' he said.
Bray and his fellow committee members, Thomas L. Mercer Sr. and James M. Reeves, are also in a tough position because Owens and Brabble symbolize different views of just what a community is.
Ask the question, ``Do you live in Deep Creek or Chesapeake?'' The answer ``both,'' while technically correct, doesn't necessarily get at people's true allegiances.
Dorris Berry, who favors naming the school after Brabble, said: ``The first reason, of course, is that he's been in this school system for such a long time. Everybody around here knows him. It would be almost wrong if they named it for someone else because he's been right here.''
Berry worked for Brabble as a sixth-grade teacher for eight years before retiring in 1983.
``He's an easy-going man, willing to listen,'' said Berry. ``Some people don't listen, you can tell they're not, but he was unusually good to work for. dignity. I think that's kind of nice.''
Vincent Carpenter, a civic activist and financial planner in Chesapeake, supports Owens. He argues that it's his achievements after leaving Deep Creek that make him the strongest candidate for the honor.
Carpenter said that as a student at Indian River High School, he first became aware of Owens when The Virginian-Pilot named him Citizen of the Decade in 1980.
Three years later, as a student at Old Dominion University, Carpenter met Owens and ``aspired to be just like him.'' Then, in 1992, the scope of Owens' influence was impressed upon him when he met an elderly dentist at an NAACP convention in Tennessee. He struck up a conversation with the man, and asked if he happened to know Owens, who is also a dentist and founder of the National Dental Association.
```Do I?! He is a great man!'' Carpenter remembers the man saying. ``I told him I was from the same area as Dr. Owens, and he went on and on about him. Here's someone (Owens) who has touched someone way over - I think he was from the Midwest.''
Carpenter said staying in a community all your life shouldn't be the reason to have a school named after you.
``All of Chesapeake is my total concern,'' said Carpenter, who spent most of his childhood in different areas of the city. ``Here is a world traveler (Owens) who has not only helped people in Deep Creek, but also in Chesapeake and Portsmouth as well.''
But for Berry, Brabble symbolizes a time when people stayed in one place.
``When I was teaching, it was not a transient neighborhood. People lived there for generations. He (Brabble), his whole family has been here,'' said Berry.
Brabble himself declined to comment until after a decision had been made on the school's name, but Owens might understand what Berry was getting at. The Owens family was one of those that lived in Deep Creek for generations, dating to the days of slavery. In 1855, Owens' great-grandfather, George Corprew, purchased his freedom from the Happer plantation on Ballahack Road.
Owens said he remembered well growing up in Deep Creek, including walking to his elementary school on Old Galberry Road, before the `Old' was attached. He said his father taught in Deep Creek schools for four years and his family was instrumental in raising money to buy land to build a new school near where the Divine Baptist Church still stands.
It was his experiences growing up in Deep Creek, where the Ku Klux Klan was an oppressive presence, that fueled Owens' later activism for civil rights. As a schoolboy making the three-mile trek down Shell Road to school each day, he and other black schoolchildren endured having ink bottles and other objects thrown at them by white children riding the bus.
But he also remembers ``one of the finest teachers I ever had. . . . That's why I'm an amateur poet.''
Owens said his decision to set up his dentistry practice in Portsmouth instead of Deep Creek after he received his degree in 1947 was simply a practical one.
``There were only 400 or 500 people in Deep Creek at that time. I would have starved,'' he said.
Owens' feelings about Chesapeake as a whole and Deep Creek in particular perhaps mirror the conflict between his supporters - who cite his long list of accomplishments in the world beyond Deep Creek - and Brabble's, who cite his accomplishments right in Deep Creek.
``My heart is the entire city,'' said Owens. ``But Shell Road is home.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MORT FRYMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Will this be the Charles Brabble Elementary School? The Hugo Owens
Elementary School? Or will it carry another name?
Photo
Charles S. Brabble Sr. and his father, John, together served more
than a century in Deep Creek's schools.
Photo
Hugo Owens Sr., longtime dentist and a former vice mayor of
Chesapeake, has achieved national recognition.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE SCHOOLS