
DATE: Wednesday, November 19, 1997          TAG: 9711190530

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   97 lines

RESTORING A SCHOOL, HISTORY

Some Creeds Elementary School children got an instant history lesson Tuesday when they crowded into antique student desks in a newly restored one-room schoolhouse in old Princess Anne County.

Former students at historic Pleasant Ridge School told the youngsters about learning the three R's in one room and what it was like in the ``good old golden rule days.''

Life was different then, said Alvin Lamb, who attended the school 59 years ago. Students said a prayer, sang ``America'' every morning and learned to show respect to the teacher.

``If you didn't do what the teacher said, you got a paddling,'' Lamb told the group, ``and if you got a paddling in school, when you got home, you got a real whopping!''

For decades, Lamb and other alumni had wanted to restore the deteriorating school, located at 1392Princess Anne Road, as a reminder of early education in the area. Now, thanks to Sheriff Frank Drew's work force and others, the school's sagging foundation is shored up and its peeling siding pristine. Muslin curtains hang in the windows and a pot-bellied stove is back in place.

Former students, supporters of the restoration effort and representatives from each grade at nearby Creeds Elementary School gathered Tuesday in Asbury United Methodist Church, next door to the refurbished school. They were there for an informal dedication ceremony at which Lamb gave the invocation.

``I am giving so much thanks today for the dedication of this little schoolhouse,'' Lamb told the group.

Thanks then went all around - to former student Neava Williams, who for 20 years was adamant that the crumbling little building be preserved, to City Council member Barbara M. Henley, who led a restoration effort in 1990, and to Drew.

Drew's inmate work force finished the restoration effort with funds from the Frank Drew Community Fund, a United Way charity. Drew also arranged for the furnishings. Although the building belongs to the church, Drew has pledged to maintain the school and grounds.

The one-room school has been preserved as one of the area's last and closely resembles the way it was before it closed in 1955. Built in the 1880s, the structure was once part of a two-room school for white children on Charity Neck Road. That school became too small and was closed in 1915.

About that time, nearby Pleasant Ridge School, a one-room school for black children next to Asbury Church, burned down. School officials solved the problem by splitting the old Charity Neck School in half and using mules to haul the bigger room up the road to become the new Pleasant Ridge.

On Tuesday, after the dedication in the warmth of the church, the crowd went over to the restored classroom. Creeds students sat in the little desks and watched their reading resource teacher, Ruth Bell, stand behind the old-fashioned, lectern-style teacher's desk.

Bell, Neava Williams' daughter and a former student at Pleasant Ridge herself, gave the kids more first-hand knowledge of what it was like to attend a one-room school.

``See that little cabinet in the back?'' Bell said. ``That was the library.''

She pointed to three short shelves. ``Can you imagine a library like that in your school?'' Bell asked the children.

They learned that lunch might be beans, warmed on the pot bellied stove, that the restrooms were ``two little buildings outside'' and that the ``drinking fountain'' was an outdoor well. The children also learned that there were no school buses.

Williams, a student in the 1920s, remembered that well. ``I walked down Charity Neck Road. It was 5 miles and 8/10s,'' she said, ``and we had a good time.''

The dedication was an especially good day for Williams. Her three children - Bell, Johnie Williams and Jacqueline Muhammad, all of whom attended the little school - were there, and so were two great-grandchildren.

Drew hopes Pleasant Ridge School will be incorporated into school field trips someday so many schoolchildren can see this reminder of the past, but in the meantime, private groups can tour the school by contacting his office. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

PHILIP HOLMAN

Students from nearby Creeds Elementary School listen to Sheriff

Frank Drew during a tour of the Pleasant Ridge Elementary School

Tuesday. John Haynes, left, and Ruth Bell, center, attended the

school that operated until 1955.

Color Photo

Philip Holman

Johnie Williams, center, toured the renovated Pleasant Ridge

Elementary School Tuesday with his granddaughter Micheala Johnson in

his arms. He and his mother, Neava, left, attended the school.

Graphic

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