ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605200075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTINA NUCKOLS STAFF WRITER
ROANOKE COUNTY'S OWN WONDERLAND may not be well-known, but it has provided many with happy memories.
Mary Jane Burgess stood watch over a bank of azalea bushes as bumblebees tumbled in and out of the magenta blossoms.
"If you do big publicity, you get everybody up here, and they pick the flowers," she warned in a hushed voice. "If I ever catch anybody ..."
Her voice trailed off as she imagined some unspeakable form of torture reserved for petal-pillagers.
Burgess and her sister, Cherie Shindell, donated Happy Hollow Gardens to Roanoke County in 1984, but not without a degree of anxiety that lingers today. Of the two, Burgess is the more protective of the secluded wonderland she tended for 15 years, but she was the one who first resolved to make it a gift to future generations. Shindell added her property to the contribution, and the result was a 34-acre tract on Mount Chestnut preserved as a wilderness garden. In spite of her reservations, Burgess softens as she tells about the four couples who shared their wedding vows in the garden or the teen-age hikers who frequent the trails.
"I've never seen anything going on out here that shouldn't," she said. "They're ones that love the outdoors and come up here and hike. It gives me faith in the young people of today."
The sisters, both in their 80s, occasionally visit together in the gardens. Shindell lingers on a bridge over the creek to rest. Her sister is in constant motion, shadowed by her hound dog Mandy, who in turn is trailed by a distinct perfume, eau de polecat.
Before long, the two sisters are lost in memories of childhood visits to Happy Hollow.
The spot was named by their uncle, H.B. Wharton, who purchased the land when he discovered wild azalea bushes thriving on some of the best soil in Roanoke County. Wharton and his wife, Ellen, built a home and planted more azaleas to sell wholesale. Another uncle, Foster Burgess, later moved in with his family and helped with the business.
Cherie and Mary Jane Burgess, who grew up near Richmond, were frequent summertime visitors.
"A wren had her nest out there," Shindell said, pointing to a wooden building - a horseshoe over the door - that once was used as a summer kitchen, "and she'd come on in and feed her babies while we were eating."
As the two little girls grew into women, jobs, wars and family ties drew them far away from Happy Hollow. Their lives were as colorful as the flowers they left behind, but they knew those flowers one day would draw them back to their childhood paradise.
Shindell got a secretarial job at the U.S. Naval Mine Depot in Yorktown, where dynamite from World War I was recycled forWorld War II. The wartime boom was exciting for the young woman, and she still recalls with awe watching a ship in the Chesapeake Bay that was transporting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on some unknown mission.
Shindell gave up her job to care for her aging father, then settled into married life after his death. After her husband, Walter, retired, they moved in with Cherie's aunt and uncle at Happy Hollow while they built a home nearby.
"When Walter was alive, I said I could never leave Happy Hollow," she said. But with no children to look after her, the widow moved into Roanoke.
Although she devoted much of her life to caring for other family members, she had one outside passion - politics. A 20-year member of the League of Women Voters, she held every office in the organization at some point and was a regular member of the audience whenever the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors met.
"I went to keep them straight," she said.
"Oh, I thought you went to take your naps," Burgess broke in.
"I think I gave pretty complete reports," Shindell said, straightening herself in her lawn chair. She eyed Burgess, who was swinging her short legs back and forth and smirking at her big sister's discomfort.
"It got pretty boring at times," Shindell conceded.
Poor health halted trips to see the supervisors, but Shindell has moved on to a new project. She recently bought a computer so she can write her autobiography, which she plans to call "From Ox Cart to Man on the Moon."
"She likes history," Burgess said of her sister. "I don't care anything about it. I live for the present."
Burgess' penchant for adventure surfaced as soon as she was old enough to leave home. She made a beeline for New York, where an aunt living on Long Island took her in.
"She kind of left me on my own," Burgess said. "She didn't give up her lifestyle because of me."
While her aunt was flying off to exotic locations, Burgess had free run of New York, but when the United States entered World War II, she wasn't about to be outdone by her older sister. She joined the Navy and was assigned to an amputee hospital.
"You emptied bed pans, gave bed baths, and you did all the dirty work," she said.
After the war, she attended the Pratt Institute on the GI Bill and got her master's degree. On her graduation day, H.B. and Ellen Wharton told her that Happy Hollow would be hers when they died.
But Burgess wasn't ready for Happy Hollow yet. She stayed in New York for decades, working as a home economics instructor. When she was in her early 50s, she bought and learned to fly a single-engine Cessna, even though she had learned to drive a car just 20 years earlier.
Female pilots were a curiosity at the time, but the scrutiny made Burgess more determined to fly.
"They probably thought I was crazy," she said. "One time I had a news reporter with me, and we were talking and everything, and she said `Oh, look, there's such and such a thing,' and all of the sudden I realized I had no idea where I was. Then, I looked and realized where I was. I paid attention after that."
Even after her beloved Long Island aunt died in an airline disaster over the Atlantic, Burgess continued her airborne joy rides. Her aunt was on one of her European vacations at the time.
"Was it on the way over or on the way back?" Burgess asked with a frown.
"My impression was it was on the way back," her sister answered.
The frown gave way to a smile.
"I hope so."
Burgess eventually did sell her plane, but only to trade it in on a new adventure. She moved to Alaska, where she taught home economics to the Inuit until she returned to Happy Hollow.
Like her aunt, Burgess has a taste for globe-trotting. She's traveled all over Europe, Asia and the Americas.
"I don't take vacations anymore," she said. "I went through the Panama Canal last year, and that's it."
Although she's resigned herself to ending her travels, she's still struggling with the idea that one day Happy Hollow Gardens will be entirely in the hands of other people. To ease her fears, she erected a plaque, set far back in the woods in the spot where she one day will be buried. It reads:
"Mr. and Mrs. H.B. Wharton and Mr. and Mrs. Foster Burgess, my aunts and uncles, were responsible for the development of Happy Hollow. I maintained it for 15 years then passed this responsibility on to the county. When I'm gone, the county will need your support and cooperation."
The plaque seemed to comfort Burgess as she wandered off with Mandy at her heels. Her sister watched her retreat.
``She tells everybody who comes up here and likes the place, `You see that it's taken care of when I'm gone.'''
LENGTH: Long : 139 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL L. NEWBY II\Staff. Mary Jane Burgess (left) andby CNBCherie Shindell are the two sisters, both in their 80s, who have
donated land to Roanoke County for the wilderness garden called
Happy Hollow. The spot was purchased by their uncle, H.B. Wharton,
and his wife, Ellen, back when the two sisters were still children.
Burgess worries over the continuing support of Happy Hollow in the
future. color. Graphic: Map by staff.