Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 12, 1993 TAG: 9309120095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CLOVER LENGTH: Long
Absolutely nothing.
"The kind of things they discuss don't really have much to do with my life in a small town like this, you know?" said Clark, who works in this village near South Boston.
"I get up, go to work, go home, go to sleep, get up again and go back to work again."
On the Eastern Shore, John Richards and Diane Jural can look from their restored Victorian home over the marshes toward Cedar and Parramore islands. Both are in their early 60s and in a retirement paradise, with sea captains for friends and the time to pursue projects that interest them - Civil War history, gardening, reading.
From their vantage point, the fall election offers exciting possibilities, such as the chance to elect Virginia's first female governor (Democrat Mary Sue Terry) and to do something about pressing issues.
One election, two worlds. The gulf between Clark and the retired couple suggests how far Virginia politics must stretch to reach both the young and the elderly.
Clark has been working at Bobcat's ever since graduating from high school four years ago. He had hoped to go to college on an art scholarship, he said, but didn't make good enough grades. Now he's stuck without the vocational training he needs to get a better job, such as helping build the nearby Clover electric plant, where 1,400 laborers are working the biggest construction project in the state.
When that facility opens in 1995 and the army of construction workers leaves, Clark fears that even the convenience store no longer will need him.
What can a new governor do about that? Clark, a registered voter, doesn't even know who's running. He's heard of Terry, but knows nothing about her.
"I guess it does affect me. I guess I just feel like it don't affect me, you know?" he said. "Now, the only thing that makes me interested is my kids' education. I can't really say anything else. I don't have the info."
Clark is determined that his children - ages 8 through 13 - get more out of school than he did. Growing up, Clark spent more time caring for his sister and three brothers than studying; he failed the sixth grade when his mother took ill and he, as the eldest son, had to cook and clean.
The experience left him feeling more mature than other kids his age. Now the plight of his friends, other young blacks, disturbs him.
"These kids out here, they're still blinded by anger more than anything else. I'm not that way. I want the black man to improve himself. I want to do better. Most of my friends are still sitting out on the street, and they're the same age as me, you know?"
But Clark can never be the breadwinner he envisions if he doesn't find the time to educate himself. He can't pay for training, and no one seems to be coming to his rescue. Least of all, politicians.
Even some young people in better circumstances feel a similar disconnection from the political process. "I get kind of bored listening to politicians, and I don't really believe them," said Brooks Robertson, an 18-year-old from Herndon who is beginning his first year at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
Poised to vote in his first election, Robertson has gotten a campaign mailer from Terry but doesn't know the name of her Republican opponent, George Allen. "I'm kind of embarrassed because I guess I'm not up on it very much," he said. But Robertson is not alone; of a pair of students interviewed at VCU and a half-dozen more at Norfolk State University, none could name Allen.
Big issues, though, are not nearly so hard to identify. "Abortion is important," Robertson said. "My view is that people deserve a choice. Being a male, I don't really have a place telling a woman what to do with her body."
Homelessness seems to be getting worse, he continued, and instead of working on the problem, the government just wastes money and runs up debt.
"I think there should be a lot more emphasis on us [young people], since we should be the future," he said. "We're going to, I guess, be the leaders, and it doesn't seem like they're leaving us much to work with."
Or much work, period. "I majored in psychology, and I want to help the kids, but I can't get a job," said Dionne Gary, 22, of Chesapeake, who graduated in May from Norfolk State.
"I read about all these guns in the schools; our young kids are dying, and it's unnecessary," she said. "Then they put them on probation and just pacify them through the system until they do something drastic, then they put them in jail to rot."
Gary would like to be in a position to intervene, but said the economy is working against her. One of her friends still in school, 24-year-old Tim Fobbs of Portsmouth, tried to beat the economy by applying for Navy ROTC.
"I think it's the best way to secure my future," Fobbs said. He could take a bit of the future in his own hands by voting this fall, he admits, but Fobbs isn't registered.
"If they'd just do what they say, I might be more interested," he said. Crime, for instance, is something Fobbs would like to see someone really tackle - not by having more prisons or tougher sentences, but by making people's lives better so they won't turn to crime in the first place. Until that happens, he said, "I just don't have time right now to get into politics."
Time for politics generally is not a problem in the Eastern Shore town of Wachapreague, where Richards and Jural live. The fishing village of 313 has the third-highest concentration of elderly residents in the state, with almost 42 percent over age 65 (the statewide average is about 11 percent).
Politics is a touchy subject, though. Three weathered men sitting in the shade at the corner filling station scattered quickly when the topic was raised. "Try over at the marina," one suggested as he walked away.
In the Wachapreague Marina Tackle Shop, a gray-haired gill netter buying a six-pack of Budweiser sneered at the mention of the governor's race.
"If I felt like I could honestly in my heart trust whoever I was voting for, I'd vote. But I ain't seen a-one of 'em I felt I could trust. Have you? I'll stay out of it," he said.
"Pick some non-controversial topic, like sex or religion," smiled shop clerk Paul Smith, 64, a retired insurance salesman.
Smith will talk politics, or at least issues. His biggest concern is health care. He took early retirement because his company was going to stop offering insurance to retirees.
Now he sees the proposals for revamping the national health-care system, and he doesn't see how it can work. "And, of course, taxes are a big problem with any retiree. Also, most of us are concerned about interest on money. Most of us have a couple of dollars put away in the bank. . . . I can live on what I have, but I don't have the funds to buy one of these big boats out here."
Smith doubts that either candidate for governor can do much about that. "Most elections, in my opinion, are voting for the lesser of two evils."
Richards and Jural live a few blocks away but come at politics from a far different perspective. Both are New Yorkers - he a retired detective, she a retired schoolteacher - who have made a point of plunging head-first into the community and state where they have lived for six years.
"We're great believers in education," said Richards, who spent three years as a substitute teacher at the local high school. "I'm a great believer in law and order, and a great believer in helping . . . the disadvantaged, people who are not doing too good right now. You see these fellas go out at dawn and come back six or seven hours later after working their pots or their nets. You look at them, and they've got an ice chest full of fish, and there's not a place to sell them. They're lucky to get enough money to buy gas."
Environmental regulations have doomed many of the old seafood canneries, so people leave the area to find work. The state government needs to provide loans for small-scale development that will create jobs, they said.
But the one thing a new governor could do to make the most difference, both agreed, is beef up funding for education.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB