THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 16, 1995 TAG: 9508160573
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
While neighbors battened their homes and packed to flee Willoughby Spit Tuesday, Kim Carver unloaded her belongings onto the most flood-prone, wind-imperiled real estate in the city.
Even as Hurricane Felix bore down on the mid-Atlantic coast, she was moving into a brick apartment building just four blocks from the tip of Willoughby's crooked finger, a spit of land created by two long-past hurricanes and swept by many since.
``I'd already rented the truck,'' she shrugged.
Carver joined a neighborhood renowned for its salty stubbornness in the face of nature. A mishmash of button-down professionals, blue-collar workers, fishermen and go-go dancers, Willoughby has been riding out big blows and high water for decades.
And though some Spit dwellers were spooked by Felix's size and its dead-eye aim for the Outer Banks - a course likely to bring flooding and high winds here - a good many planned to stare down this hurricane, too.
``We're locals. We were born here. We're not scared,'' said Mary Lou Lebby, who has owned the Willoughby Inn near the Spit's tip for 23 years. ``We'll be here, and we'll be open. I don't know what kind of shape we'll be in, but we'll be here.''
``We've been through worse,'' guessed Bill Neff, who has lived for six years on Lea View Avenue, a beachfront dead-end with a reputation for flooding. ``Usually they come around the night of the storm and ask you to leave, but I won't leave unless the winds get up to 100 mph.''
Fran Smither said she'd stay put, too. ``When the city tells me to evacuate, I'll evacuate the guests,'' said Smither, who left retirement last week to manage the Days Inn Marina, at the confluence of the Chesapeake and Willoughby bays. ``I'll stay with the hotel.
``I'm really not worried. I'm just putting all the loose things away that are outside, like furniture.''
A decade ago, with the Spit threatened by Hurricane Gloria, Smither suggested to guests that they might want to leave, though she didn't force the issue. As it happened, that storm took a last-minute hard turn out to sea.
But while that has been the pattern with recent hurricanes, it wasn't so in 1933, when an unnamed August storm erased most of Willoughby's housing and left Ocean View Avenue buried in sand drifts.
It's also worth remembering the enormous cyclone that swept into the Chesapeake in 1749, dumping so much sand at the western end of Ocean View that an 800-acre sand bar was left high and dry there. In 1806, another hurricane added to the pile, and Willoughby came to be.
``A storm gaveth, and a storm could taketh away,'' said Rita, a 16-year Willoughby resident who was packing Tuesday to evacuate - something she has not done for several hurricanes. ``I've realized that if it ever really happened, I'd have a home on Willoughby Island.''
Lori Grover, a friend of Carver's and one of her new neighbors, also planned to leave. ``I've always stayed,'' the 12-year Spit resident said, ``but not this time. I've got a bad feeling. I think this is the year.
``I told her she should leave her stuff in storage,'' she said, nodding toward Carver.
Her friend seemed unfazed. ``I'm on the second floor, anyway,'' she said. ``And seriously, I don't think it's going to hit, to tell you the truth. Do you?''
She paused. ``Do you?''
KEYWORDS: HURRICANE FELIX by CNB