THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 30, 1994 TAG: 9412300683
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: Prepared by Joseph Banks, Janie Bryant, Ida Kay Jordan, Rebecca Myers,
Judy Parker, Phyllis Speidell, Vanee Vines and Toni Whitt.
LENGTH: Long : 407 lines
As 1994 comes to a close, we'd like to offer our readers an update on stories that have been published in The Currents since July.
JULY
ITEM: Saxophonist Tommy Newsom of ``Tonight'' fame is planning to escape living with the threats of California earthquakes and probably will return to Hampton Roads.
UPDATE: Newsom, who purchased a home in Sterling Point, plans to move back to Portsmouth in early spring.
ITEM: For three months, a cloud of uncertainty loomed over city employees. On Tuesday, the cloud burst: 39 people lost their jobs. . . . An efficiency study dictated the elimination of ``positions.''
UPDATE: Before the layoffs, the city's annual payroll was $52 million. The layoffs reduced that amount to $49 million. Before the layoffs the city had 1,768 positions. Currently it employs 1,729.
ITEM: It may be a sweltering summer day, but birds sing and leaves stir with the gentlest of breezes in a quiet corner of the Glover back yard in Churchland.
This is Jessica's garden, the handiwork of volunteers from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Eastern Virginia, who recently created the garden retreat for 4-year-old Jessica Glover.
Jessica, the daughter of Sheila and David ``Smokey'' Glover, has a rare degenerative brain disease that has lead to numerous other health problems. Functionally blind, Jessica suffers from a seizure disorder, is unable to eat or drink, and has bones so fragile that they can fracture with just normal movement.
UPDATE: The garden is flourishing and Jessica is holding her own in spite of three hospitalizations in the past six months.
When her garden was the setting for a neighbor's September wedding, Jessica was an honorary flower girl and wore a long, white dress with a nosegay on her wrist.
When her garden sparkled with holiday lights, Jessica seemed to be respond to the Christmas hustle and bustle as well. ``The more commotion there is the better she seems to like it,'' said Sheila Glover, Jessica's mother.
Although her mother's heart said Jessica would not live past her fifth birthday late in January, Glover's daughter has surprised her. ``She is a tough little thing,'' Sheila Glover said. ``Our best Christmas present (was) to have her still here.''
ITEM: It is the second-largest mass retirement in the history of the city's Police Department. And it comes at a time when most indicators say the city needs more, not fewer, police officers.
UPDATE: Five more officers have retired or left the department since, leaving a total of 203 police officers. Twenty of those are either in the police academy or recent graduates who are still in training. Another 15 should be entering the academy next month.
City Manager V. Wayne Orton has proposed adding 29 new officers in 1995.
ITEM: For the next five or six months, emergency fire coverage in the Olde Towne district will be reduced by at least one engine company, Fire Chief Donald Newberry says.
The reduction in coverage is attributable to the unusually large number of firefighters, 34 in all, who took advantage of a revised retirement plan.
UPDATE: On Dec. 23, the Portsmouth Fire Department's training academy graduated 27 new firefighters. The department now has 205 sworn firefighters out of a complement of 210 officers and six administrative personnel. Chief Newberry hopes to fill the five vacant slots by February 1995.
ITEM: If you own a car phone and you live in Portsmouth, those first few calls you make will be taxed.
The city is charging all city mobile phone customers a 10 percent tax on the first $30 of their bill. That means customers who don't use their phone often and pay the basic fee, they'll also by paying an additional $2 in taxes. For customers who make a few phone calls, their tax bill will be slightly higher.
The City Council approved the tax 4-3.
UPDATE: The city has raised $8,945.50 from the new tax.
ITEM: The Portsmouth Public Library board will ask the City Council to reconsider recent layoffs at the library or give them an additional $38,000 by the end of the year.
UPDATE: The city restored the funds but not the people. Without the funds, the library would have been in danger of losing $200,000 in state aid.
ITEM: Girls Inc. needs $43,000 by Aug. 15.
Without the cash in hand, Girls Inc., formerly known as the Girls Club of Portsmouth, will have to postpone indefinitely its plans for a new Center for Youth of Southwest Hampton Roads.
UPDATE: Girls Inc. is well on its way to a proposed spring 1995 groundbreaking on its new $1.6 million Center for Youth on Portsmouth Boulevard. The land has been purchased, an architect hired, and 65 percent of the total cost has been raised - with almost half of that from the United Way. Girls Inc. is continuing to raise the remaining building funds from private sources and foundations as well as sponsoring a brick sale. Bricks, which can be engraved with the contributor's name, are being sold at $25 each.
ITEM: Don't be surprised if one day LaTasha Colander's face is plastered all over the front of a box of Wheaties.
The 17-year-old track star, a member of the U.S. Junior National Team, won a silver medal in the 100-meter hurdles at the World Junior Championships in Portugal on July 22.
Add to that six national championships and 12 state titles . . .
UPDATE: Colander just completed her first semester at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
``I thought it would be very, very hard adapting to the school work and being away from home, but it was nice. I adapted very well,'' said Colander, a mass-communications major on a track scholarship.
Colander's track season doesn't start until January.
``The only thing we've started doing is running three miles trying to get our endurance back up,'' she said.
AUGUST
ITEM: Resignation is the mood in Hattonsville.
. . . For more than three years, it has resisted the proposed location of a regional jail within earshot of its approximately 25 homes.
It appears that, after winning a battle, they've lost the war.
On Tuesday, the Planning Commission approved use permits to develop site and elevation plans, traffic patterns and designs for the proposed 875-bed facility on a 40-acre triangular plot bordered by Ballard Road, Elmhurst Lane and Victory Boulevard.
UPDATE: In exchange for improvements to the neighborhood's drainage system, the addition of street lighting and extensive landscaping, and construction of a mini-park, residents have agreed to drop their formal opposition to the regional jail. The jail, which will house convicted felons from Portsmouth, Norfolk, Newport News and Hampton, is expected to open in 1997.
ITEM: School officials hope to settle on a deal to pay a private company to run an alternative education program for about 100 troubled students. The outfit, Richard Milburn High School, works with students at risk of failing in school. Milburn has worked with districts in Hampton Roads - including Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Hampton - for the past four years.
UPDATE: The administration gave Milburn two months to respond to complaints from a review committee and several School Board members concerned about the private company's alternative-education program, Superintendent Richard D. Trumble said after the board's December meeting.
Milburn was hired in September to run the program at Noble Street Baptist Church and Calvary Evangelical Baptist Church on Gust Lane. The program was once housed at S.H. Clarke, which is now being converted into an elementary school.
Board members, several administrators and parents have questioned the way Milburn handles disciplinary, administrative and instructional duties.
Trumble said the company should have a chance to iron out things.
Milburn's one-year, $400,000 contract expires in June, but the board could renew it for four more one-year terms. If things don't work out by February, the board could cancel the contract within 60 days.
The board might opt to employ the company until the end of the school year, and then cancel the contract. If that happens, the district's biggest challenge may be finding space for the program.
ITEM: . . . Welcome to Portsmouth's pan yard, brought in from Trinidad to bring the gift of music and more to the lives of 40-some urban youngsters.
UPDATE: Keith St. Louis and the Trinidad and Tobago Pan Professionals returned to their homes at the end of the summer, but members of the non-profit Portsmouth Community Development Group hope to find funding to bring St. Louis back for a longer period of time.
Meanwhile, 16 of the Portsmouth youths are still meeting to play the pan. Working with them is Jean Raabe, who spent the summer helping with the program and found it to be a special calling.
Raabe, a music therapist and teacher from North Carolina, had studied the pan with St. Louis in Trinidad the summer before. She had hoped funding would come through to allow her to stay with the program here.
When it didn't, she went back home to her teaching job. But not for long. She finally realized Portsmouth's pan yard was where she wanted to be. So she resigned and came back to work as a volunteer, taking faith that eventually funding for her position will come through.
The Portsmouth Pan Players performed at the 7th annual Governor's Conference on Housing in October and ``had delegates dancing in the reception hall,'' said Maury Cooke, president of the organization. ``We think they're going to get a chance to play at the White House.''
Members of the organization hope to take some of the young pan players to Trinidad next year.
Meanwhile, a High Street storefront, which will be used for a dance studio, has been cleared of debris and renovated by members of the Youth Corp of the Southeastern Virginia Job Training Center.
ITEM: The next time you attend a City Council meeting, you might notice that the path to chambers is a little different. It will be a path marked by goals and dreams.
The council hopes to hang the city's goals born out of a three-day retreat in Smithfield. The council agreed to have its priorities drawn up in an attractive way and then to hang them in the area outside council chambers so that citizens can keep tabs on the council's goals and successes.
UPDATE: The large wall of goals has prominent stars next to the Children's Museum of Virginia, which opened early this month. Another goal, horse racing in Portsmouth, missed getting a star when New Kent County was selected. To meet another goal, the city is in negotiations with five gaming companies to bring in riverboat gambling.
The council also named I.C. Norcom High School in its list of goals. City officials have been working to include the school in the economic development plans developed with Ray Gindroz and Urban Design Associates. The school site may include a 5,000-seat regional stadium.
The economic development plan, another goal, will be considered in public hearings in January. Final approval is scheduled for February.
The city also is working to hire a public affairs director. City officials have completed one round of interviews and should announce the new public affairs director in January.
ITEM: In citing what some private citizens consider to be a little-known city code, the Commissioner of Revenue's office is back-billing, for three years, folks who have failed to obtain business licenses for properties they lease as residential rental units.
UPDATE: The city has collected approximately 95 percent of the outstanding business license fees, or between $350,000 and $400,000, said Commissioner of the Revenue A. James Fillion.
SEPTEMBER
ITEM: The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized its proposal for cleaning up lead at the former Abex Lead Foundry and surrounding sites, including the Washington Park public housing complex.
An EPA spokesman, Harold Yates, said the federal agency will begin negotiating with Abex, the city and other potentially responsible parties on when to begin and how to conduct the cleanup.
UPDATE: The city attorney is reviewing EPA documents, which will dictate remediation and other procedures. The city is still working to determine the guidelines for temporary relocation of Washington Park tenants while cleanup efforts are underway. The EPA is still working out time schedules for cleanup and moving homeowners from the area.
ITEM: Georgene and Frederick Olsen are a new kind of urban pioneers, taking a chance on the future of Downtown by moving into a new $140,000 home at Columbia Commons.
The Olsens are the first residents of the small city-fostered subdivision surrounded by Washington, County and Effingham streets.
UPDATE: Gray Bryant, one of the builders working in Columbia Commons said his company has completed its model houses and has sold two additional houses, one occupied and one going up. Another builder who completed a model in the subdivision has sold one house.
ITEM: ``I only paint when I'm depressed,'' the Rev. Milton Cole said matter-of-factly.
The painting in Cole's portfolio prove that good things can come out of the depths of depression.Cole, interim rector at St. Andrew's By-the-Sea Episcopal Church in G4JCOV29 Cole Nags Head for the past two years, has concluded his term on the Outer Banks and will soon be departing. The former curate at Trinity Episcopal Church in Portsmouth is taking this month off to read about artists and enjoy the ocean.
UPDATE: The Rev. Cole is now rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Elkins Park, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia.
ITEM: The novel may be fiction, but the love story that inspired it was very real.
Portsmouth native Zita Winterberg Christian, a 1966 graduate of Portsmouth Catholic High School, has written her second novel, ``First and Forever.''
UPDATE: Christian is working on her third book, ``Just A Miracle,'' a historical romance scheduled for publication in May 1996.
``I sent the publisher three chapters and an outline, and they bought it almost immediately after I sent it in,'' said an excited Christian.
Christian won't know until this spring how the sales of her second book are going, but early indications are good, she said.
``I've heard from people all across the country that the second book appeared in stores where the first one didn't,'' Christian said. ``And in the stores where the first one did appear, there are more copies of the second one than the first, which is really good.''
OCTOBER
ITEM: Linwood Williams is starting a new life in Georgia, and his BLT won't be far behind.
Bacon, lettuce and tomato?
No, Black Local Talent, a community theater group Williams founded in 1980.
. . . Because Williams can't take his local troupe with him, he plans to start a similar community theater in Augusta.
UPDATE: A lot has happened in the three months since Williams left Portsmouth. He's married now. He's teaching now. But still no BLT.
``I'm still in the process of working on it,'' he said, ``but right now I'm more concerned about getting myself situated!''
Williams found a position as a permanent substitute teacher in an Augusta high school, but his heart is still with probation and parole, where he worked in Portsmouth for 15 years.
``I passed the state board for probation officers, and I'm on the list to be called any time now, but in the meantime, I'm teaching,'' he said.
Williams and his bride of 12 weeks plan to return to Portsmouth sometime after the first of the year for their wedding reception.
``We haven't set a date yet, but the reception will be in Portsmouth,'' he said.
ITEM: Ray Gindroz heads Urban Design Associates, a Pittsburgh firm that has a $165,000 contract to develop a 10-year plan for Portsmouth.
. . . He was in Portsmouth recently to discuss his proposal for the city.
UPDATE: Gindroz will be back in the city Jan. 9 for a public work session on the plan with City Council, the Planning Commission, Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority and the Downtown Design Committee.
Additional meetings on the plan are scheduled as follows:
Jan. 24, joint public hearing with City Council and Planning Commission.
Feb.7, Planning Commission public hearing for recommendation on plan amendment.
Feb. 13, first reading for plan amendment at City Council meeting.
Feb. 28, second reading for adoption of plan at City Council meeting.
ITEM: ABC Agents were conducting a surveillance operation for the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control when an agent heard numerous gunshots coming from inside the Ebony Showcase.
Shortly thereafter, large numbers of people began exiting the club from all available exits and running for their cars. The parking lot of the Ebony Showcase became flooded with several hundred patrons of the business, which immediately became unruly, and then numerous gunshots were fired from the parking lot.
UPDATE: Last month, a judge said the business could reopen if changes were made to prevent noise bothering the nearby neighborhood and to correct other violations.
But the nightclub still faces a March 17 disciplinary hearing with the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
The ABC's enforcement division alleges:
That the Ebony Showcase maintained a noisy and disorderly establishment;
That the establishment is situated with respect to residences, so that the operation of such place has interfered with the usual quietude and tranquility of such residences, or adversely affected real property values;
That the establishment has become a meeting place or rendezvous for users of narcotics;
That they have knowingly employed a convicted felon.
NOVEMBER
ITEM: City voters approved on Tuesday the switch from an appointed to an elected School Board by a nearly 4-to-1- margin.
UPDATE: Because Virginia has a history of voting-rights abuses, the federal Justice Department must approve the City Council's plan for electing board members. Under the current system, board members must initially be elected on the same basis on which they were appointed - at-large. But the council may establish districts or wards for the School Board, according to the state Board of Elections.
The Justice Department will have the final say, however.
It's up to the department to determine whether the method of electing board members would be fair to racial minorities. If the department doesn't approve the city's plan, it could order the city to create a ward system or a mixed system in which some public officials would be elected at-large and some by wards. Ultimately, the department could overturn the way all public officials are elected in Portsmouth.
While the Justice Department can reject the plan, it can't force wards or any other plan on a city. But it could try to force the city to adopt wards for council elections by filing a lawsuit under a separate law.
The city attorney's office is now preparing guidelines on steps the council must take to implement any plan.
ITEM: The School Board appointed 13 people to the oversight committee charged with monitoring ``community'' schools.
UPDATE: The committee of eight blacks and five whites now is discovering how the district operates, the various records it keeps and who's in charge of what. The board has appointed Sue H. Butler, of Cypress Cove, to replace Sandra A. Boone, a local lawyer who resigned from the committee in November. Butler, whose background is in early childhood education, is active in several volunteer groups. She is a member of the board of directors for the Churchland Child Opportunity program based at Grove Baptist Church.
ITEM: The biggest challenge facing Portsmouth is ``not the money but the organization,'' Ray Gindroz said during a recent discussion of his 10-year economic development plan.
. . . Gindroz recommended a volunteer task force. . .
``You also need someone to manage the plan,'' he said. You need a person whose only responsibility is to carry it out.''
UPDATE: A volunteer marketing committee for the economic development plan was organized after a retreat to discuss the plan was sponsored by the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce. The group will meet at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 6 at the Economic Development offices, 200 High St.
ITEM: . . . they have invested more than $6 million in China Market USA, a new idea housed in an old Robert Hall Village building on Airline Boulevard.
Although they eventually hope to have about 300 Chinese manufacturer's representatives marketing their products from the remodeled building, they have only 15 companies in residence for an official opening Monday.
A total of 40 businesses have leased spaced and about 100 have signed contracts.
UPDATE: The newly opened trade market slowed down this month when representatives for the companies returned home to China for the Christmas season and the Chinese New Year in January. Wenson Ge, a vice president of the company, said recently that he expects to have several additions to the market by February.
DECEMBER
ITEM: It's Monday - five days before opening - and the final touches are going on the new, expanded Children's Museum.
. . . Come Saturday morning that silence is destined to give way to the din of hundred of chattering, squealing voices lost in the excitement of a paradise where grownups never say ``Don't Touch.''
UPDATE: As of Tuesday, a total of 12,974 people had visited the new museum during the 16 days it has been open. The peak attendance came Tuesday, when 1,850 people were clocked into the building. Museums Director Betty Burnell said she anticipates that the numbers will continue at a high level during the time that children are out of school for the holidays.
ITEM: The city manager has proposed a new way of doing business.
Rather than just borrow money for the city's building projects, City Manager V. Wayne Orton also wants to designate a 4-cent tax increase to be set aside for economic development and to borrow on future federal grants.
UPDATE: Two residents protested the proposed tax increase at a public hearing Dec. 13. In its work session Dec. 19, the council added three new proposals. The budget is set to be approved Jan. 10.
ITEM: Global Affairs, the group that had a contract to buy the former Elks Lodge on London Boulevard, no longer is in business at that location.
Charles Sullivan, exalted ruler of Lodge 82, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, said the company had been ``locked out . . . .''
UPDATE: Global Affairs still is locked out, pending payment of back rent and closing on the sales contract. The building will go back on the market next year if the situation is not resolved with Global Affairs. Meanwhile, Sullivan said Tuesday, the Elks Lodge is renting the parking lot to contractors at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital who need space for workers' vehicles. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Make-A-Wish Foundation of Eastern Virginia created the garden
retreat for Jessica Glover, who clings to life despite a
degenerative brain disease.
Track star LaTasha Colander just completed her first semester at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In exchange for improvements to their community, Hattonsville
residents have agreed to drop their formal opposition to a regional
jail.
Keith St. Louis and the Trinidad and Tobago Pan Professionals
returned to their homes at the end of the summer, but 16 local
youths are still playing.
Saxophonist Tommy Newsom
Purchased a home in Sterling Point
During a retreat, city officials drew up a list of goals. One, the
Children's Museum of Virginia, has opened.
Public hearings begin in January for the economic development plan
unveiled by urban planner Ray Gindroz.
Zita Christian, a Portsmouth native, had her second novel published
and is working on a third.
As of Tuesday, 12,974 people had visited the new Children's Museum
of Virginia in its first 16 days.
by CNB