THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 23, 1994 TAG: 9409210159
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY STEIN, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
The year was 1943. America was at war with Germany and Japan and our nation's collective sleeves were rolled up, churning out the ships and planes and tanks and guns that gave the country the name ``Arsenal of Democracy.''
Here in eastern Virginia, the shipyards were a humming hub of the war effort, and housing was desperately needed for the men and women working in the yards. To fill that need, houses were quickly thrown up. They became a community called Riverdale Manor. Born of necessity, now dying of old age, but - for some people at least - a repository of rich and happy memories.
That's why the second Riverdale Manor Reunion earlier this month was a success. That's why about 150 people partied and reminisced at the Chesapeake home of Charlie Wynne, an old Riverdale Manor resident himself. The era represented was from 1943 to about 1959 and this was the second such reunion, a sequel to one held in 1991.
If the name ``Riverdale Manor'' doesn't ring a bell with you, it is the development that later became Foundation Park and is now known as Campostella Square. Builder of the 1,600 one-story row houses was William J. Levitt. He's the man who later achieved national fame for his mass-produced cookie-cutter homes in New York and Pennsylvania They bore his name - ``Levittown.''
In a 1987 newspaper interview, one of the men who painted the Riverdale Manor buildings, New Jersey contractor Louis Frazer, expressed surprise that they still stood. ``The basic intent,'' he said, ``was fast housing, housing in a hurry. A real hurry.''
Even so, they were happy homes for a lot of people, people like the family of Chesapeake brothers Harry and Maurice Fuller. The Fullers originally lived in Roanoke, where their father laid tile. But there were good jobs and better pay in Tidewater, so the family moved here. ``In Roanoke, my daddy was making 75 cents an hour,'' Maurice Fuller remembers. ``His pay jumped to $1.25 an hour. We were rich.''
The Fullers' first home in Riverdale Manor was on Welcome Road. So new was the project, Harry Fuller says, that only three streets were open. Their home had two bedrooms, a bath, a small kitchen and a living room. Mom and Dad slept in one bedroom. Harry and Maurice shared the other and their sister slept on a couch in the living room. ``Two brothers, only one couch,'' Maurice explains.
In winter, the house was warmed by a coal-burning heater. Cooking was done on a coal-burning stove. People bought their coal by the bushel and one of the Fuller boys' chores was to shovel it into a bin at the side of the house. After it was burned, it was recycled. The Fullers and their neighbors used the ash to fill the holes that dotted the raggedy streets.
These days, we say ``ice box'' and mean the electric refrigerator. In those days in Riverdale Manor, an ``ice box'' was just that, a wooden box holding ice. It held 50 pounds. The ice man would come around and look in your window. You put out a card that told him how much you wanted and he delivered it. A 50-pound fill-up was a quarter.
If this sounds like hard living to members of younger generations, there are a couple of convincing answers. One was that housing of any kind was at a desperate premium. The other is that these Riverdale Manor homes rented for $29 a month.
But the Fuller brothers will tell you it wasn't the memory of coal dust and cramped quarters and pot-holed streets that brought people to the reunion from as far away as California and Arizona. There was a spirit of togetherness in the old Riverdale Manor section, the Fullers say. There was a neighborliness that stemmed from putting so many people from so many different backgrounds together in a sort of residential blender. And the Fullers claim a pride of place that, they say, meant people kept their yards trim and bright with flowers.
It's also possible that architecture fostered a cheerful spirit. The homes were row houses, wall to wall to wall. A loud argument, it would seem, made your neighbor a willing or unwilling listener.
Another fond bit of Fuller reminiscence about old Riverdale Manor was Mr. Willy. ``Nobody knew his last name,'' Harry says, ``and that's what we all called him.'' In the mornings, between about 9 and 11, he would come down the Riverdale Manor streets in his horse-drawn wagon. It was loaded with groceries and goodies. The Fullers rattled off a list: fresh eggs, bacon, vegetables, ice cream, watermelon, cantaloupe and cold drinks. Not only did Mr. Willy have an inviting inventory but he gave credit.
In the early days of Riverdale Manor, the Fullers say, they went to a school held in one of the homes because there was no other building. There was a teen club for Ping-Pong and cards and dances to the records of the big bands like Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. Riverdale Manor folks older than teenagers might have hit the Arrowhead Tavern right at hand on the highway. Maurice was too young to be a patron at the time, but he recalled that the Arrowhead sold 87 cases of beer the day World War II ended. Sold out completely, in fact.
There were also Riverdale Manor community baseball and football teams that the Fullers loved to play on. Harry, a baseball outfielder, says he was about to sign a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization when the Korean War broke out and his Marine Reserve unit was called up.
There's a sad note as he talks about the Korean War era. He says an old Riverdale Manor boy named David Cooper, a baseball teammate, was the first American soldier from South Hampton Roads to be killed in Korea.
Harry Fuller, a retired civil service teacher, lived in the Riverdale Manor area until 1955. Maurice, a part-time bridge tender for the city, lived there until 1974. Charlie Wynne, retired from a fencing company, lived there in the early 1950s. ``The rent was $37 a month then,'' he said, ``and that was the most a lot of young couples could afford starting out.''
``The places were pretty well kept up and the neighborhood was very close-knit,'' Wynne said. There were people at the reunion he hadn't seen in 40 years, he said, and he said it gave him a weird feeling. ``Weird but nice.''
Though the memories that the Fullers and Wynne retain are happy ones, Riverdale Manor was apparently a problem area by the mid-1950s. It was called Glenwood Village at that time and complaints about conditions there led to an investigation by the South Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority. The old city of South Norfolk and Norfolk County formed the city of Chesapeake when they merged in 1963.
The investigation found dilapidated and abandoned units and destruction by vandals, but, in 1958, it was sold to the Beazley Foundation of Portsmouth, which renamed it Foundation Park. In 1977, the foundation sold it to a local business group and, in 1988, the Chesapeake Redevelopment and Housing Authority bought it. Over the years and through the shifts in ownership, it had gone on a downhill course and had turned into something of a civic eyesore.
Under Housing Authority ownership, it has been renamed Campostella Square. Old units have been cleared away and new housing built in the area with more planned for the future. But Edmund Carrera, executive director of the Housing Authority, says that about 150 families still live in original units.
The later history of Riverdale Manor raises the question of whether the mists of nostalgia have obscured some bad stuff. Ask Harry Fuller the question and he answers with a gentle smile on his face. ``I talked to people at the reunion about how would they like to go back to the old days,'' he says. ``Most said they would.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
The same unit at 2139 Wagon Road stands vacant in what is now called
Campostella Square.
Photo courtesy of HARRY D. FULLER
In 1949, a Riverdale Manor housing unit is modest, but well
maintained.
Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
Billy Hewitt was one of the participants who enjoyed the second
Riverdale Manor Reunion.
Betty Jo Hendrix, left, videotape the good time being had by all at
the reunion as friends enjoy the buffet.
Douglas Fuller gets a hug for Jean Jones while Lorraine Powers gets
a chuckle from the situation.
by CNB