THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 14, 1995 TAG: 9504130174
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
Betty Flynn McClane, one of my favorite people even though I've never met her face to face, called the other day to tell me that the graduates of the old Oceana High School are having another reunion.
``Gee, has it been a year already since you had the last one?'' I asked.
``Not quite,'' Betty responded. ``It's closer to five years.''
I was reminded once more that those Oceana grads certainly are unique.
Their school, which probably averaged 40 students to a graduating class, closed for good 41 years ago this spring.
Despite that, and the fact that everyone says it's so hard to find a native around here, they already have close to 300 people from classes dating back to the 1920s signed up for the May 19-20 event.
Betty, of course is one of them. ``I graduated in 1940,'' she told me proudly. ``Went to Dunbarton College up in Washington, met my husband, Joe, when he was here at the Beach on his youngster cruise from Annapolis and married him on his graduation day in 1943.
``They used to tell them back at the academy to watch out when they came down here for their summer cruises because all of the eligible Virginia Beach girls were given copies of the Navy Register and boat hooks,'' she added.
``Hauled him right in off the beach, did you?'' I asked her.
``Indeed I did,'' she told me.
That's one of the things I like about Betty. She always has these neat stories she can tell, and a snappy way of telling them as well.
I asked her what life was like for kids growing up on the sand back in those prewar days.
``It was wonderful,'' she told me. ``We rode the rail bus to school every day. It came right down Pacific Avenue, then turned west and toward Norfolk. They dropped us off right at the school's front door.''
Parts of the old school are still there, still by the tracks that carry the freight cars back and forth on a daily basis now.
If you take a look when you're passing the north end of Oceana Naval Air Station between First Colonial Road and Oceana Boulevard you can just imagine Betty and all the other pretty girls from the Beach (along with some hunky looking guys) piling off the train and into school just in time for homeroom.
``What did you do for fun?'' I asked her.
``Well,'' she said, ``we spent a lot of time on the beach, we went to each other's houses, we went to the movies and to the drug store for sodas afterward and,'' she added coyly, ``there was a whole lot of courtin' going on.''
``Where?'' I asked.
``You know Birdneck Point?'' she asked.
``Sure,'' I told her.
``You probably shouldn't accent the neck part too much,'' she replied with a bit of irony tinged lightly with modesty.
E.S. (Steve) Gresham was a classmate of Betty's. While Betty was a town girl, Steve was definitely a country boy. I decided to find out a little about Oceana from his point of view.
``I mainly grew up on my granddaddy's farm,'' Steve told me. ``He, his two brothers and one sister all had places on Old Courthouse Road. If the road was still there it would extend from where First Colonial ends now, right through the air station and down to the courthouse.
``My granddaddy's land ended just where the Oceana commanding officer's house is now,'' he told me.
When he lived with his grandparents Steve rode a school bus over rutted country roads to get to school but after his grandfather's death at a time when the country was still deep into the Great Depression Steve moved in with a friend at the Oceanfront so that he could work there and finish his last year and a half of high school.
After graduation he went on to the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, also graduating in 1943 right into the thick of the war.
``And how did you carry on your courting?'' I asked him.
``Any way I could,'' he responded, quick as a flash. ``There were some mighty pretty girls around here in those days,'' he added.
He married a mighty pretty one, as well. Only she wasn't from the Beach. ``I met Mary when she was teaching in Wilmington, N.C., after the war,'' he told me.
Betty McClane and the reunion committee expect that there'll be lots of spouses to be re-introduced and lots of old Virginia Beach-Princess Anne County stories swapped when their group gets together at the Pavilion in May, most of them enjoyable ones.
``We still have room for more graduates,'' she told me, ``but they have to make their reservations by May 5.'' Mary Ann Simmons, at 340-7560, is the person to contact. by CNB