THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9608290233
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 47 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY THERESA SHEA CHAVEZ, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: COROLLA LENGTH: 108 lines
Norris Austin doesn't climb to the top of the 150-foot-tall red brick Currituck Beach Lighthouse much anymore.
When he does, he can hardly believe his eyes.
Even though he knows what to expect, the vista from the tower near his northern Outer Banks home still comes as a shock.
He sees the meticulously manicured lawns adorned with Pampas grass and other imported plants, picture-perfect golf greens and tremendous 5,000-square-foot beach homes. He sees modern Corolla - and the things that transformed his small fishing village into one of the East Coast's most desirable and exclusive summer beach destinations.
The land is hardly recognizable as the Corolla of Austin's childhood.
As a boy during the 1950s, the view from the lighthouse disclosed another world. Peering from the top, Austin would spot his friends' and neighbors' clapboard homes scattered about, and he would gaze upon the marshes and an undeveloped oceanfront. Fewer than 100 families lived along the windswept sands between Duck and the Virginia border.
Today, Currituck's Outer Banks host 30,000 visitors each summer week - up 10,000 in just a year.
``The hardest part is to go up to the lighthouse and look off the deck,'' said the 58-year-old Corolla native. ``You're really amazed at how much building has gone on the last few years. Now you see developments - and how thickly they're put together.''
Austin's deep voice is steady and soft when he talks about how his hometown has changed over the years. He can see much of the old village from his two-bedroom apartment above Corolla's post office, where he served as postmaster for 33 years. Austin owns the building in which he lives, which also hosts a convenience store and pizza place on N.C. 12.
Although he said he is happy with Corolla's upscale development and the income that tourism has generated for residents, there is a touch of yearning in his gentle blue eyes when he speaks of his village's past.
``It's a little strange,'' Austin said of seeing million-dollar summer beach homes, shopping centers and recreation facilities that have consumed the sandy landscape. ``You kind of live like an ostrich and pretend it's not there.''
Austin's grandparents moved by boat with their three sons to Corolla from Hatteras in 1891 when Austin's grandfather, a member of the U.S. Lighthouse Service, was transferred north to fill the post of Currituck's lighthouse keeper. The Austins' move pushed Corolla's population over the 200 mark, making a total of 205 residents near the end of the 19th century. The village boasted a lifesaving station and a lighthouse - and few other structures other than the clapboard cottages.
The Corolla that Austin knew as a boy was a close-knit, neighborly town of people working together and helping each other get by. ``We knew everybody,'' Austin said. ``Everybody was family. Everybody traded their labor back and forth to help each other.''
But making a living in Corolla over the years was a challenge. Changes and choices over the decades whittled away the village's base of longtime residents.
At one time, hunting and fishing was a mainstay of the villagers' lives. Hunting clubs, such as the Whalehead Club in the 1920s and '30s, employed local residents as guides, house- and groundskeepers and cooks.
The Whalehead Club eventually ceased operation as a hunting club and became host to the Corolla Academy for Boys in 1959. Some locals found employment at the academy. Austin woke up at 4 a.m. to work in the kitchen and serve breakfast to the students before starting his postmaster duties later in the morning.
The school closed in 1963. And the Whalehead Club mansion sat abandoned for the next seven years, until Atlantic Research opened a rocket testing facility there - again providing an employment outlet for villagers and attracting workers from nearby Virginia and other parts of Currituck County. The facility closed by the mid-1970s.
Over the decades, locals left Corolla behind in search of better economic opportunities elsewhere. ``The young people grew up and had kids. Most of the young people moved away because there wasn't anything to make a living out of,'' Austin said.
Skyrocketing land values accompanying the real estate boom of the 1970s and '80s was enough to persuade most of the remaining longtime Corolla families to sell their land and relocate.
Austin, who has lived in Corolla all his life - except for about three years when he attended business school in Norfolk and worked in Washington, D.C. - considers himself fortunate to be from one of the three or so old-time families that still make Corolla their home.
He doesn't know everyone in the village anymore. Cars from all parts of the country hurry past on N.C. 12 in front of his apartment. And Corolla surely will continue to change and develop.
But Austin said he'll never leave. And he's dedicated to preserving his village's past while protecting its future.
A trustee of the Whalehead Club and an active supporter of its restoration, Austin works as a volunteer tour guide there on the weekends. He's also a Hospice volunteer and serves on Currituck County's economic development board.
Just a few steps behind his apartment, past his vegetable garden and fig trees, Austin can get away from the busy traffic - back to his roots. He points to the 12-room, white clapboard house where he grew up. His nephew now lives there with his wife and daughters.
``My roots were here. I just loved home and loved Corolla,'' he said. ``I was very fortunate I wound up with the job I had and have been able to live here.''
``Most of those families when we were growing up were so close,'' Austin said. ``I miss them. But I hope they're happy. I think some of them wish they'd stayed.
``This is home. And I have deep roots here,'' Austin said. ``I don't think I feel comfortable living anywhere else.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
Norris Austin, 58, who grew up in the vollage of Corolla, stands by
the vollage's old school house. by CNB