THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 6, 1995 TAG: 9510040239
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: K4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JANE ROWE
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
Most people who have lived around Pungo long enough remember Ava Carroll from one place or the other. She's lived in her two-story house on Indian River Road since 1927, and she and her husband, Aaron, owned one of the first Model-Ts in the area. She continued to run Carroll's Motor Service, where generations of local residents had their cars inspected and serviced, for years after her husband's death.
But she's probably best-known for the rousing hymns she played at Tabernacle United Methodist Church, where she served as organist for decades. The soon-to-be centenarian plans to give church members and visitors a special treat at her birthday celebration there Sunday.
If she's feeling well that day, she'll play the organ at the 11 a.m. worship service for the first time since last fall.
``I'll do my best,'' she said.
No one can remember exactly how long she played the organ at church each Sunday. Some people say it was about 50 years, others say it was more than 60.
``I don't keep up with things like that, but I have a lot of memories of her,'' said Melva Riggs, who accompanied her on the piano. Family members and special friends will share their memories of her at the service and at a reception following it.
``Miss Ava'' as most of the community knows her, doesn't get out too much anymore and she seldom gets to church.
She hasn't driven since she was 92, but she's still walking around her house and she still enjoys going for car rides and pointing out familiar landmarks. And she's very lively when she's playing her organ.
Cataracts have dimmed her vision so that she can no longer see the organ keys and she needs a little help getting seated, but once settled, she's totally in charge. She sits as regally as a queen, reaches down to turn the organ on and begins playing as if it were second nature.
Although the bookcases in her house are crowded with hymnals, she doesn't use them much, and she relies on her sense of touch to locate the keys.
``I don't need it (the music) much,'' she said recently as she finished a spirited rendition of ``The Old Rugged Cross'' and began ``Haven of Rest.''
``I've played some songs so much I've memorized them. Shucks, I've been playing since I was 8.
``I've played a lot of hymns and I've played at a lot of funerals,'' she said. Her favorite song is the secular ``You Great Big Beautiful Doll,'' but even the traditional church music becomes stirring when she does it.
Miss Ava, who will actually turn 100 on Oct. 14, attributes her long life to ``serving the Lord.'' Family members add that she never drank or smoked and that she has spartan eating habits.
``She has a piece of dry toast and coffee for breakfast every morning,'' her grandson, Dean Carroll, said.
It could also be that she comes from hearty stock, because her mother, Angelina, lived to be 96 or 97.
Miss Ava was born near Kala Church in Creeds, but when she was a small child, she moved to Long Island, a small island just west of Sandbridge in Back Bay. Her father, Edwood Mann, a farmer and fisherman, was encouraged to move onto the island by Solomon Baum, ``a rich old man'' who owned Sandbridge and the Back Bay island during the early 1900s, she said.
Miss Ava lived on Long Island six or seven years, and her memory of those days is now a little hazy, but in a 1990 video prepared by Carroll, she described the isolated island life. There were only two families living on the island at the time and transportation to the mainland was difficult.
``It was a big plantation and we lived in a huge house,'' she said, but she also remembered the loneliness of being the only child on the island.
Her father raised corn, potatoes and fruit, ``and we cured our own hams and made our own sausage.'' Cattle and pigs ran wild on the island, and, when market day came, they were loaded onto a boat and taken across to the mainland at Sandbridge. There, a horse and wagon would pull them up the beach to the dirt road that led to Pungo Station, where they were put on a train en route to their final destination in Norfolk.
When Miss Ava fell off of a fence and broke her arm, a doctor also had to travel the same long road from Pungo to treat it.
Her family moved back to the mainland when she was 7 and she attended a public school in Creeds for a while, then began attending John Batten's private school, where she learned to play the organ. She caught on very quickly to her music lessons, and she was an academic star as well, winning most of the spelling bees.
``I was pretty good, that's what they all said,'' she said.
While Miss Ava loved school and music, she disliked farm chores. As she got older, she was expected to work in the fields after school and during the summer. That's one part of her childhood that she still remembers very well, and she's quick to say how she felt about it.
``I didn't like it one bit,'' she said, ``but I did it, though.''
When she was 14, she and 21-year-old Aaron, one of Pungo's first auto mechanics, ran away to Knotts Island and got married.
``I was crazy,'' she said.
``Big A'' as his grandchildren called him, cut a dashing figure riding through Pungo in his Model-T Ford. ``He was considered an aristocrat for his time, meaning that he had ready money,'' Carroll said.
But marriage wasn't the escape from hard work Miss Ava hoped it would be.
Although her husband didn't farm, domestic life still meant long hours of gardening, cooking, cleaning and canning. Despite the endless chores and the birth of four children, she still found time to play the organ in church and she also mastered tatting, a type of intricate needlework.
Her husband died in 1954, but Miss Ava, with the help of mechanic Roy Williams, continued to run the shop at Pungo until the late 1970s.
In later years, Carroll's Service Center served largely as an inspection station, and each inspection was accompanied by personalized service, advice and sometimes even an apology if Williams found it necessary to place a rejection sticker on a car.
``I hate to have to do this, but the little honey needs new tires,'' he explained to a young woman's mother when the inspection revealed tires too worn to meet the state's standards.
``Roy is dead now too, poor fellow,'' Miss Ava said, but his wife, Ethel, shares her house with her. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JANE ROWE
Ava Carroll, who turns 100 on Oct. 14, is planning an early
celebration at church on Sunday.
by CNB