
DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710250139

SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN             PAGE: 06   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COVER STORY 

SOURCE: BY FRANK ROBERTS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  130 lines

HURRAH FOR SUFFOLK HIGH A RIDDICK'S FOLLY SHOW TAKES VISITORS BACK TO THE GLORY DAYS.

FOR MANY YEARS, that was the Alma Mater for Suffolk High School - cheerful, heartwarming, strong, unoriginal.

Roland Custis, the school's first principal when it opened in 1922, adapted it from another school.

In 1990, the words were erased. The school was closed - permanently.

Today's high school students in Suffolk attend Nansemond River or Lakeland - lookalike buildings that are functional, but lacking the personality of Suffolk High.

You want to see personality? Visit Riddick's Folly for the memories. Look at the annuals and newspapers, the photographs and memorabilia, most of it going through the 1960s.

Your first look at early Suffolk High life, as you enter the exhibit, is a quartet of photos from 1930. They show, as the captions note, ``a well-stocked library, a pleasant classroom, an adequate lab, well equipped home economics and commercial departments.''

All of those home ec students are white girls wearing white aprons and white caps.

Look at the guys. You can see their earring-less ears, and you see neatly combed hair. They are wearing suits and - gulp! - ties. The neatly coiffed girls are in skirts and sweaters.

The exhibit emphasizes neatness and decency.

Beneath a picture taken at a 1958 football game, 1957 school queen Betsy Brothers,

now president of the Historical Society, writes, ``How lucky we were to have attended high school in the `50s.

``We had such clean fun. We thought drugs were aspirin, morals were of true value, dances were exciting and fun without alcohol. Foul language was seldom heard, the word SEX was rarely said or read (surely not daily).

``We were, by no means, perfect angels and we were surely naive, but, oh, how nice it was.''

Several similar tributes are part of the exhibit, but it is the ``Believe It Or Not'' approach that makes the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society presentation unusual.

There are a lot of ``did-you-know?'' items including this one about Walter F. Story Jr., the only person who graduated twice from Suffolk High:

The first time was 1938. Then, he petitioned the school board to allow him to attend another year so he could take all the business courses he had no time to take before.

Story's story is that he was a 1938 and 1939 graduate.

Check the annuals - double-check the 1935 edition, the only one in paperback. And, check the 1945 annual. World War II was still on and the mood was patriotic . . . and then some.

That annual was totally patriotic. The superintendent of schools was referred to as the chief justice, the school board was the supreme court, the principal was the president, etc.

The principal from 1927 to 1939 was Dr. Francis S. Chase, whose picture is part of the exhibit.

He was so well liked that when he left Suffolk to work for the Virginia Education Association, people muttered that without him, the school would close.

``But, at the first teacher's meeting, after he left, Superintendent of Schools John Eppes Martin said that the school system was bigger than one man, that it would continue.

``That night, Martin, and two others, were killed in a car that went over the Broad Street Bridge,'' said Sue Woodward, program chairman of the Historical Society.

A North Carolinian, she had no connections with Suffolk High, until her marriage to Tom, valedictorian, Class of `61.

``I'm an Ahoskie High graduate,'' she said. ``I keep forgetting I'm not from here. I love Suffolk.''

That is evident from the work she and Brothers did in putting the exhibit together, including gathering from the Society and individuals many photographs of former students, principals, and teachers.

But, of all the neighborhood buildings, none were as revered as Suffolk High.

``There were no school buses,'' Woodward writes. ``Everybody lived within a two-mile radius, so the community and the school were one.''

The hub of school life was the front steps where classes and clubs usually posed for official pictures, and where students, after hurriedly downing their lunches, gathered to visit and, at times, to go courting.

The esteemed Suffolk High School building, located at the end of Saratoga Street, has been gathering dust and cobwebs since it closed.

Woodward said she was recently told by one graduate, Mayor Thomas Underwood, ``that no one knows what will become of the building.''

It's the history. If you went to Suffolk High, you were proud. You were carrying on a legacy without really realizing it. There was more connection between school and community than now.

``Everybody knew who you were. They all knew your parents, and there was no question about behaving. I always felt safe, secure, and so very happy. We had all the confidence in the world, coming from Suffolk High School.

``It was a magical place.''

Barbara Norfleet. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos including color cover by MICHAEL KESTNER

Historian Sue Woodward, who gathered items for an exhibit on the

now-closed Suffolk High School, expounds on some of the more

exciting elements of the show.\

``We had such clean fun. We thought drugs were aspirin, . . .

dances were exciting and fun without alcohol,'' Betsy Brothers, the

1957 Suffolk High queen, says.

Art Jones, a Suffolk High graduate and education, went on to become

a pro football player.

A gold Christmas tree ornament depicting the old Suffolk High School

building is available for sale at Riddick's Folley. The ornament is