DATE: Monday, March 24, 1997                TAG: 9703240046

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   84 lines

WHAT'S IN A SCHOOL NAME? MANY WANT ``DEEP CREEK''

More than 50 years ago, on her first day at what was then the only school in Deep Creek, Martha Wilshire's older brother escorted her to a classroom door and told her to go in.

She stood outside and cried for a while before she entered. She was at the school for 10 years before becoming a member of the first class to graduate from the new high school, now the old middle school.

Since then, she has raised a family and watched her grandchildren grow up on Westonia Road, within walking distance of what is now Deep Creek Intermediate School.

When the School Board sent out surveys to parents of three Deep Creek elementary schools asking if they wanted their school renamed for longtime Principal Charles S. Brabble Sr., Wilshire didn't get one. Technically, it's not her school anymore.

But it is.

``That's where I went to school. I don't want it to change,'' Wilshire said. ``This has always been Deep Creek.''

This month, the School Board's decision on a name for the new middle school on Cedar Road came down to two candidates - Brabble and Hugo A. Owens Sr. The board chose Owens.

In deference to the many for whom the name Brabble is synonymous with education in Deep Creek, School Board members suggested a compromise. They proposed renaming an existing school or naming a future school for Brabble. A committee will offer its recommendation today.

What committee members have found is that for many in Deep Creek, nothing says Deep Creek like ``Deep Creek.'' No person's name, no matter how beloved, can mean as much as the name of the community itself. And once a school has a name - an identity - you can't easily change it.

``The whole name is Deep Creek. The community's really close; it's a family,'' said Kimberly Alder, a mother of two sons, ages 7 and 10. ``I plant purple and white flowers in my flower box. . . . I can't tell you how many purple-and-white T-shirts I have.''

Purple and white are the school colors. Alder and others say they're the community's colors, too. They don't make a distinction between school and community.

``It's a community thing. Go to a football game, you'll see,'' Alder said.

So, along with the decision to name - and perhaps rename - a school, Alder and others were distressed to learn that the colors at Owens Middle School will be black, gold and white, not purple and white, and the mascot will be a mustang, not a hornet.

It's a practical decision. When teams from the two middle schools play each other it would be confusing for them to have the same colors and mascot. But many point out that the students start their school days as purple-and-white Hornets and they'll graduate as purple-and-white Hornets. It's jarring to interrupt that with three years as a black, yellow and white Mustang.

``All the kids started moaning when they heard that,'' said Christina Baker, a sixth-grader at Deep Creek Intermediate School. Next year she'll be going to Deep Creek Middle School, so she'll stay a Hornet, but a lot of her friends will attend Owens Middle School. ``I'm lucky, but I'm taking up for my friends,'' she said.

School Board member Jeffrey A. Rowland, who along with board Vice Chairman Roderic A. Taylor is on the committee that will make a recommendation about renaming a school, says he understands the concerns. He has a niece who will attend Owens Middle School.

``She bleeds purple and white. She's been a Hornet all her life,'' Rowland said.

While the School Board is responsible for such important issues as the budget, the curriculum and school construction, ``the naming of schools has been the most contested,'' Rowland said.

``With the naming of a school, everybody's concerned about it, and rightfully so, because community ownership of the building is part of it,'' he said.

Rowland said that while he didn't want to divulge the committee's recommendation until the full board hears it today, , he left open the possibility of naming a new school in Deep Creek for Brabble, but he doesn't favor renaming an existing school.

``It opens up a Pandora's box. There's the emotional attachment to the name. You just don't come in and change it unless there's an overwhelming reason, and I don't see that here,'' Rowland said.

That would be good news to Wilshire and Alder.

``It's just a big deal out here,'' Alder said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by STEVE EARLEY/The Virginian-Pilot

The school Martha Wilshire attended is now Deep Creek Intermediate.

She opposes renaming it. KEYWORDS: DEEP CREEK INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL

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