THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 24, 1996 TAG: 9601230113
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 09 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: IN PERSON
SOURCE: LORI DENNEY
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
No one memory is sweeter than another when I think back to my tenure as a Carper Navy Housing resident.
In fact, all my memories of life in Carper center around camaraderie and the wild.
I was 13 when my family became one of the first residents of Vermont Court in 1979.
At that time, only two courts of 23 were open.
My parents figured there were 100 kids in our court alone, as each family had to have a minimum of three kids to qualify.
That's 100 kids with nothing to do but a whole lot of friends to do it with.
And we learned to make friends fast because we never knew how long we would have before we moved again.
Nearly everyone from toddlers to teens spent the days exploring the surrounding wilderness. We built treehouses in the tallest trees. We fished from the bank of a small stream, and we rode horses that were housed at a farm up the road.
At night, when the lights went out, the court came alive. We would silently open our windows, climb out onto the roof of the back porch and shimmy down the post.
We'd set a time when everyone would meet in the center of the court. From there, we'd spend our time ducking the ever-watchful eyes of one mother and the Navy security guards that patrolled the area.
We spent our summers freely swimming in dank and dark drainage canals and spent our winters huddled around a small fire built outside a clubhouse we'd constructed deep in the woods.
During those years, about the meanest thing we could come up with was putting dog poop in an old purse. We'd push it into the road and laugh like crazy when a car stopped to snatch it up. It never failed, a block or two down the road, the car would come to a screeching halt and out flew the purse.
Outside of a few petty thefts, none of us ``Carper kids'' actually knew we were so labeled until we began attending a nearby high school.
Then, we started to sense that, for some reason, people didn't think highly of Carper Housing or the kids that lived there.
It seemed that guidance counselors or even some of our teachers didn't offer the encouragement we needed. Several kids in our group wanted to drop out of school and nobody was there to convince them otherwise.
It seemed that Carper, was indeed, on the downswing. Fights were starting. Drugs became commonplace and vandalism was rampant.
We moved out when these things were beginning. Later, I'd hear about gangs and violence and robberies and even a stabbing. But, still, in my memory, Carper Navy Housing was a place where myself and 100 other kids became fast friends.
Today, I still have some of the same best friends that I met in Vermont Court 17 years ago. by CNB