DATE: Monday, July 14, 1997                 TAG: 9707140028

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LOUIS HANSEN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:  132 lines

DURING DECADES UP NORTH, SUFFOLK WAS IN THEIR HEARTS NOW SCORES OF MEN AND WOMEN WJO LEFT THEIR JOBS ARE HOME ONCE MORE.

It was 1945 or 1955 or 1960, when mules still turned some peanut fields and cotton picking paid 1 or 2 cents a pound.

It was before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, before the famous civil rights march on Washington, and in a rural patch of Virginia, before all-black Nansemond County Training school was closed and colored children were given desks next to whites.

Then, Nansemond students not going to college maybe landed sweat jobs with the Union Camp paper mill or at the shipyard. More just left.

They went north, to the powerhouse economies in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Haven.

Three and four decades up North was a long time. They're coming home.

By word of mouth, scores of men and women who left Holland or Rosemont or other small communities long ago have returned to modern Suffolk.

A municipal testament to the ties between the rural South and industrial North lies in the city's property tax records: more than 600 properties in predominantly black sections of Suffolk have owners in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.

Many inherited the properties from their parents and held on to parcels of their family's past. Many have come back to reclaim land and home.

Hermon White moved home to Holland in October, after 36 years and seven children in New Haven, Conn. The 62-year-old retired four years ago from Allied Van Lines, where he was a driver.

White and his wife, Delores, wanted a little country space for their retirement.

In October, he cleared a patch of the family acre on Leafwood Road (now paved) and built a ranch home with spotless white siding and red shutters, nestled under the old-growth pine trees.

``It was something I always wanted to do,'' he said.

There were as many reasons to leave old Nansemond County as there were workers leaving.

Financially, it made sense.

An open job down here might have a dozen applicants. Applicants up North could often choose from a dozen job offers, said Rev. Henry Baker, who spent parts of six years in New York City before eventually settling back in Holland.

He saw many of his Nansemond Training School classmates - including his brother, Herman - stay in New York.

``The jobs were there, and the money was there,'' he said.

Union Camp and the Newport News shipyard began hiring some black veterans returning from the war. The jobs were tough and low-paying.

Hermon White couldn't find a decent job after graduation in 1955. He kicked around for five years, pulling peanuts, working in a food processing factory, never earning much more than a dollar an hour. He made between $40 and $50 a week.

``It was kind of rough to find a good job,'' he said.

So he left for New Haven in 1960, where his brother had moved a few years earlier. Within a year, he had doubled his salary.

There were other reasons to move. In a South where water fountains and bus seats were not shared, little of the post-war American prosperity was open to blacks.

The two professional careers open to young black men in the '50s and '60s are repeated like a mantra by men of that generation: Be a teacher or a preacher.

Jean L. Copeland, a neighbor and classmate of Baker's, said young black women ``could work in the school system or be a nurse.''

With degrees from what Copeland jokingly calls the ``Hay Institute,'' young men and women boarded buses, drove jalopies and rode trains to what they thought were brighter skies and better jobs.

Henry Baker spent his summer breaks from Norfolk State living in Harlem, working several jobs at a Hotel in midtown Manhattan. The farm work ethic his parents gave him paid off, he said.

``These guys from up North, it would take them eight hours to do what I could do in two,'' he said. He more than doubled the money he was making in Virginia.

Still, they didn't know it all.

They had to learn the twists and flushes of indoor plumbing - the cities had no privies.

Baker remembers the scorn he received from a cab driver when he left a paltry nickel tip. It was his first trip in a Checker cab, he can explain now with a laugh.

Ted C. ``TC'' Williams graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1938 and was drafted into the Army, where he spent two years before being discharged on disability.

After a few bumps and bruises and youthful years traveling around the country, he settled in Manhattan in 1945, found a job as a postal clerk for the railroads, and became a small player in the city's Democratic Party machine.

``I came from Suffolk, but I hung out in Norfolk, so I knew what the deal was,'' said the vibrant 77-year-old.

He smiled. ``I was a babe in the woods.''

Baker remembers ``little Suffolks'' in New York, Jersey City, Philadelphia, and New Haven. Neighborhood pockets of friends and families supported and protected the small-town boys from the sharp edges of the big cities.

Baker lived in Harlem with his older brother, Herman, who went on to spend 20 years as a New York City police officer.

In New Haven, Hermon White met and talked with other transplanted Southern farmers every once in a while. ``I'd say, gee, I kind of want to go back there.''

Back home, Suffolk is still Suffolk. Tractors till the land, but the fields are still filled with peanuts, cotton and beans.

Life is slower and the living is modest. It makes the pension and Social Security checks go deeper into each month. And it's home.

``New York City is one of the most beautiful places in the world to live,'' Williams said. But, he told his wife, Florence, ``I refuse to get old in anybody's big city.''

That was 20 years ago - when Florence, also a Nansemond native, convinced him to settle back to her family's home on Woodruff Street, in the Rosemont section.

``Suffolk does not change,'' said Williams with a laugh. ``Suffolk has not changed since 1920.''

But most agree their children and grandchildren have more opportunities than they did.

``I wish the younger generation would appreciate some of the sacrifices,'' said Baker, minister of First Baptist Church in Orlando.

Friends who once explored the Great Dismal Swamp or double-dated now watch each other's children get married, and celebrate new grandchildren.

Enoch C. Copeland, a lifelong resident of Holland, has seen at least three childhood friends move back into his neighborhood.

``When we were kids,'' he said, ``we never thought that we would be back together.''

Hermon White stops not a second when asked why he wanted to come home.

``Peace, quiet, no noise, the friendly people, atmosphere,'' he said. ``I like seeing the ground turned.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot

Hermon and Delores White moved back to Holland to retire after 36

years in Connecticut. Their grandchildren, Ashley, left, and Joshua

visit with them on the front porch of the Whites' home on Leafwood

Drive.

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