THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9508300178
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Ida Kay's Portsmouth
SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
I'm indebted to Chris Vatistas for a copy of a story from the Portsmouth, N.H., Herald in which reporter Suzanne Klunk wrote about the five places in the United States that share the name Portsmouth.
Suzanne had called me one day early in the summer to talk about Portsmouth in Virginia, the largest of the five, so I wasn't surprised to find myself quoted in the story.
Vatistas, who works at the Naval Shipyard, is a native of Portsmouth in New Hampshire. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is across the river in Kittery, Maine.
``I tell people that I have lived in Portsmouth all my life,'' he said. ``But, for some reason, when they hear me speak, they have a strange look on their faces.''
Although he has lived here since 1971, Vatistas still has the Down East accent of his native Portsmouth. Like the natives of the Outer Banks who never lose the ``oi'' touch in their speech, he probably always will retain some vestige of the speech pattern of the Portsmouth-Kittery area.
The New Hampshire story briefly visited each Portsmouth:
Iowa, population 209; no grocery store, no gas station, no violence, no traffic.
Ohio, population 80,327; located on the Ohio River, where Riverdays are an annual Labor Day event; home of Shawnee State University; motto is ``Where Southern Hospitality Begins.''
Rhode Island, population 16,500; part of Aquidneck Island along with Newport and Middletown; residents say they like its quiet and friendly atmosphere.
New Hampshire, population 22,342; like Portsmouth in Virginia, a historic seaport; a historic district called ``Strawberry Banks;'' about 100 restaurants, a number of bed-and-breakfast establishments and three inns downtown.
The writer of the story rightfully compared the New Hampshire and Virginia Portsmouths because of the Navy yards.
While we have the Seawall Festival, they have a Market Square Festival that draws about 100,000 people annually.
However, judging from the reporter's comments about Portsmouth in New Hampshire, it may have beat some of the problems we still have. For instance, the restaurants and the overnight accommodations mentioned above.
Incidentally, residents of all the Portsmouths say the really nice thing about their Portsmouth is the friendly people who live there.
I was no different. I cited friendly people and small-town atmosphere as our valuable assets. That, of course, probably seems exaggerated to people in towns as small as the other Portsmouths - but it isn't. I never think of Portsmouth as being as heavily populated as it is.
It is a real asset that we still have small-town feeling but we must move quickly to capitalize on the national trend back to small-town community. Vision 2005, the plan encompassing the city from Downtown to Midtown, actually is geared to capturing and enhancing this very quality.
When Vatistas sent me the copy of the newspaper article, ``No place like Portsmouths,'' he also added his own observations about his adopted Portsmouth, noting that my comments in the story were positive.
``I wish that more residents could be as positive,'' he said. ``We are sometimes our own worst enemies with the way we talk about our town.''
Vatistas compared attitudes here with those in Portsmouth, N.H., Alexandria and Charleston, S.C.
``These cities have taken aggressive attitudes toward revitalizing the older sections of their towns,'' he said. ``I believe that once the residents of Olde Towne (here) stop fighting every time a restaurant or a B&B wants to open up and possibly serve alcohol, we can attract more businesses.
``Downtown Portsmouth is ideal for restaurants and shops and has the potential to be even nicer than it is now,'' he said.
He's so right!
Now people of Portsmouth in Virginia need to feel as good about themselves as all of us from other places feel. by CNB