THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 25, 1996 TAG: 9605250704
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: CHARLISE LYLES
LENGTH: 57 lines
Neat little bungalows line my block on Delaware Avenue in Norfolk.
Bright shutters blend with carefully planted flower borders, pansies, begonias and camellia bushes. And the neighbors are more than nice.
But traffic whizzes crazily around the corner at Llewellyn Avenue. And sometimes, late at night you can hear the rat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire in the distance.
Occasionally a party threatens to get rowdy, but never does.
Several years ago a man was arrested in a nearby apartment and charged with murder.
For sanctuary, I often walk west to the other end of Delaware. There, stately waterfront houses overlook the Lafayette River. They seem poised in a lofty peace, superior and separate from my blue-collar block.
There, crape myrtles, oaks, pines and magnolias give graceful umbrage in landscaped gardens. Boats sway lazily in a marina, just across the water. Diving and splashing, the flying ducks dance about, dollops of whipped cream swirling in the sky.
Just a few blocks from the noise, traffic and nightclubs on Colley Avenue, the corner of Delaware and Mayflower is an urban oasis.
On my evening strolls, fantasies dance in my head of living and luxuriating in those lovely properties. I would be happy ever after.
Until last weekend.
That's when police found Megan Jones' body wrapped in a sheet and clothing inside the charming house at Delaware and Mayflower.
Wednesday police arrested her estranged husband, Norfolk psychiatrist Tobin Jones. He was charged with murder.
The fantasia footage of domestic tranquillity snapped in my head like film rolled too tight on a reel.
But this home was one where people couldn't help but be happy, I wanted to keep on believing. The ivy-shrouded stairs welcomed you. The sun umbrella on the patio awaited you. And on the lawn like a strange flower, a Honeywell Alarm sign kept the bad out.
It got in anyway. And it didn't have to bother to break in. It, apparently, had a key, if the police have the right man.
There is something mercilessly sobering about a murder on the street where you live. Even more so, when it happens on the good end where violence isn't supposed to happen.
At first, I loathe to admit, I felt strangely vindicated. ``See, our end of the avenue really isn't so bad, after all.'' But that is no real consolation.
Somehow, the walk from one end of Delaware to the other seemed shorter the other evening. My clip was just about the same. But I arrived at the river's edge, sooner, it seems, than I did only a week ago.
The peace no longer feels superior and separate. Murder has equalized both ends of the street. With that shorter walk comes the realization that we cannot buy our way out of violence, or move away from it. It will simply pack up and move with us.
What has really hit home is the reality of violence. The possibility of death at the hands of one's partner at the dinner table seems to be running just about even with the possibility of death by a stray bullet.
On Delaware Avenue, on any avenue, at either end. by CNB