
DATE: Monday, October 13, 1997              TAG: 9710130058

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  152 lines

AN ``ISLAND'S'' STRUGGLE SUNRAY COMMUNITY WANTS TO KEEP ITS RURAL IDENTITY.

Sunray is a place where kids treat their sisters to bike rides on their handlebars.

Where boys chase soccer balls out of roadside ditches with little fear of traffic on the narrow country lanes.

It's a place sheltered by trees, lush with soybeans and hay, where a croaking chorus of frogs can drown out the roar of a nearby highway.

It's a place that's going to change.

Most of the water in the black soil of Sunray was drained away years ago by the Polish immigrants who founded this small community on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp.

But in many ways, Sunray is an island, surrounded by land slated for industrial development. On a city land-use map, Sunray's boundaries stand out as a brilliant yellow square of agricultural land in a vast expanse of purple industrial zoning.

Sunray residents know their rural enclave eventually will be surrounded by truck routes and warehouses. They can slow the area's growth, but they can't stop it. Many say they want to ensure they have a voice in selecting their new neighbors.

Residents recently have raised objections to proposals for a new middle school on Sunray farmland and an industrial park on its southern borders. Some even worry about the impact of the Pleasant Grove Parkway - a proposed highway connecting central Chesapeake with Interstate 664 by way of Sunray - even though the city doesn't plan to build that road for at least 20 years.

Sunray's original Polish settlers were lured to Sunray by a sample of rich, black soil mailed home to Europe in a tobacco box, Sunray Farmers Association President Gary Szymanski said. Those 10 families found the property far swampier and overgrown than they expected.

But they stayed.

Community leaders estimate there are now 200 to 300 people in Sunray.

Farmer Helen Price describes her farm as ``paradise.'' Price, whose grandmother emigrated from Poland early this century, often strolls through the woods in the evening with her husband, inspecting dams built by enterprising beavers and inspecting tracks of bears and their cubs. She often spots deer grazing in the pasture beside her cows.

Surveying her property, Price exudes a sense of satisfaction.

``Nothing's more beautiful than a pretty lawn with flowers,'' Price said. ``You can be depressed, but you get so perked up looking at it that you forget all about it. It's good therapy, you know, to get out there planting if you're upset about something. It's better than going to the doctor's office and getting a lot of pills.''

Price doesn't look forward to the day when the woods beyond her property are cleared.

``I sit on my swing and I listen to those birds singing, and I think, `I got an orchestra in my back yard,' '' Price said. ``After it rains you hear those frogs croaking; they're just so happy for the water. All you have to do is just be quiet for a minute and listen.''

For now, a wall of trees separates Sunray from the outside world. From the shade of her back porch, Price can't hear the excavating machines digging a borrow pit just a few miles to the east. Nor the interstate to the north or the airport to the west.

Chesapeake's Industrial Development Authority would like to buy 1,400 acres to the south to create the Compaz Industrial Park. The city doesn't yet have the money to buy the land, but it already has budgeted $1.4 million for roads and sewers in anticipation of the purchase.

``It'll be strange to see something back there,'' Price said, standing on her back porch and gazing at the woods behind her cow pasture. ``We've always been so secluded.''

If change must come, Price said, she'd prefer industry to a new school or housing subdivision.

``If it's one of these places with a nice lawn, I wouldn't mind it,'' Price said.

So far, change has come slowly to Sunray.

Price, like many other longtime residents, can still read and understand Polish. But she has difficulty summoning the words to speak it. Price learned Polish as a child and remembers how difficult it was to learn English in school.

The un-air-conditioned, one-room Sunray Community Center on Hertz Road has a black-and-white picture of residents from 1932.

Today, many of Sunray's residents are newcomers. That is, they're not Polish, and they have no relatives next door.

Some homeowners have lived in Sunray for 30 years but say they still feel like outsiders.

Sunray's people admit they have an independent streak - and are proud of it.

They've fended off further development by doing without the city water and sewer lines that would be needed to build new homes. Residents use groundwater wells instead, Szymanski said.

Sunray folks may live in smaller homes than some of their newer neighbors in Western Branch, but they are also a smaller drain on city services, he said.

Construction is only part of the problem, though.

For Frank Nowak, it's not the chain saws that get to him. It's the fear of crime.

Nowak, 71, knows all of his neighbors. He should - many of them are his relatives. Biernot Road was named for his grandmother's family. As a descendent of Polish settlers, Nowak is one of the few in Chesapeake who know how to pronounce Sunray's street names, like Sondej Road. (It rhymes with Monday.)

``I sure don't want anyone coming through here but the deer and the bear and the rabbits,'' Nowak said. ``I realize that peace and quiet isn't going to last forever. It's bad enough now.''

With development, Nowak said, come strangers.

``My home's been broken into,'' Nowak said. ``And a couple weeks ago, my neighbor's was broken into. People ask me if I'm afraid of the bears when I go walking in those woods, but I'll tell you what I'm afraid of. It's walking on High Street (in downtown Portsmouth). You don't know who you're going to meet there.''

Sunray's post office manager, Agnes Craver, recognizes nearly all of her customers by name.

The post office is in a side room of the old Sunray schoolhouse, now given over mostly to ceramics classes. Its hours of operation are displayed on the door in a hand-written sign. Sunray residents refurbished the post office themselves when the city ran short of money.

But just across the street on Homestead Road at the intersection of Military Highway, empty brick buildings are spray-painted with graffiti, tagged with scribbles and the words ``Wu Tang,'' after the rap group Wu Tang Clan.

Members of the younger generation such as Szymanski, who works in Norfolk, worry less about crime than wetlands destruction. As president of the Sunray Farmers Association, Szymanski organized a meeting in May between residents and Chesapeake's economic development director, Donald Z. Goldberg, who is leading the effort to develop Compaz.

Szymanski said he's still waiting for an environmental impact report Goldberg promised. Goldberg said the environmental report is still being completed.

Szymanski also was one of the few residents in Sunray who fought the creation of two borrow pits, also the site of a future city reservoir on the Southern Pines property off military highway. ``You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that you can't dig 50-foot-deep holes around the swamp and not expect it to have an impact,'' Szymanski said. ``Some things are worth putting a perimeter around.''

Come what may, farmers such as Helen Price and Frank Nowak say they have no plans to change.

``A lot of people want to come in here and buy this place,'' Nowak said, shaking his head.

And encroaching development won't keep her from farming, Price said.

Only age can do that.

``My grandmother was here; I was raised here; and after I'm gone my sons will be here,'' Price said. ``I can't hop on a tractor like I used to. But I'll be doing it as long as I'm able to.'' ILLUSTRATION: FARMING VS. INDUSTRY

[Color Photos]

CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot

Chesapeake's industrial development authority wants to buy 1,400

acres south of Sunray for an industrial park.

Nurseryman Bruce McDaniel fought to keep a prison from being built

nearby.

VP Map

FIGHTING FOR A NEIGHBORHOOD