THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609220027
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 81 lines
The house E. Leon Williams grew up in is long gone, but the backyard tree he used to climb still lifts its gnarled branches toward the sky.
``That's my tree!'' he said as excitedly as if he'd just spotted his best childhood buddy.
The 50-year-old retired Norfolk police officer lives in Chesapeake now. He and hundreds of other former Berkley residents returned to their old neighborhood Saturday for a day of fun and remembrance. They were joined by hundreds of folks who live there now.
Organizers hoped that the pride in community that once marked Berkley would be instilled in newcomers at the get-together.
Williams moved from Berkley more than two decades ago, but hardly a day goes by that he doesn't go back to his old haunts, whether to visit family or friends or attend services at New Central Baptist Church, where he worshiped as a child.
``I don't forget about where I come from,'' he said. ``That's part of me.''
During his childhood, Williams said, Berkley residents ``didn't need to go nowhere for nothing.'' All the basics, and a lot more, could be found within the neighborhood.
A century ago, the community on the southern fringe of Norfolk was an autonomous town; its loss of self-sufficiency is a sticking point for many old-timers.
During its heyday in the late 1880s and early 1900s, Berkley, then a town, was a bustling hub for manufacturing, shipbuilding and lumber. But the municipality's history goes back much further.
Virginia historian George Tucker, 87, was on hand for Saturday's celebration. He was born and raised in Berkley and synopsized its past:
During Colonial times, the town was known as Powder Point, because Norfolk stored its gunpower in the rural area, safely across the river from the downtown.
After the Revolutionary War, it was renamed Washington Point. But, Tucker says, the oft-repeated tale that George Washington considered the town for the nation's capital is just that - a tale.
Ultimately, the town took the name of one of its prominent citizens of the late 1800s - Lycurgus Berkley. In 1906, Norfolk annexed Berkley.
The reasons for Berkley's slow but steady decline since the early part of this century are several, said Tucker - depletion of the timber that fed the mills, Prohibition and the attendant closing of the Garrett Winery - a big employer - and the proliferation of larger ships that couldn't be navigated into Berkley's waterfront for repairs. Early this century, fire destroyed half the town.
It was then that Tucker and his family moved from Berkley.
Businesses and people departed Berkley in droves during the 1970s and '80s, and many of the 1970s photographs displayed at Saturday's festivities show boarded-up storefronts.
But other pictures drew to mind fond memories of childhood haunts and neighborhood characters.
``Look,'' said Linward Fields, ``Joe White fixed bikes here, on Liberty Street.'' There was Joe, right there, outside his shop amid a bevy of bikes. Yep, said several folks, that was Joe, all right.
Matthew Austin Sr., 69, tried to put into words that woozy feeling he'd always get as he hiked over Berkley Bridge to school at Booker T. Washington. He could almost bring it to stomach as he looked at the photo and recalled the sway. Just then, a gust of wind buckled the thin panel on which the photo was displayed, and Austin said, ``Just like that.''
The real difference between Berkley's past and present is in the way the neighborhood once functioned as a unit, said Horace Downing, who until today was president of Berkley's Beacon Light Civic League.
``When I was coming along, the neighborhood raised the children,'' he said. ``I had a lot of mothers.''
And there was no question what was to be done when the neighborhood cop found a kid misbehaving, Downing said.
``He'd bring you home and watch while your dad gave you a whipping.'' ILLUSTRATION: MOTOYA NAKAMURA photos/The Virginian-Pilot
Tamara Missick, 7, climbed onstage to sing to the people gathered at
Sunday's Berkley neighborhood reunion. Hundreds of people - those
still living there, and those who have moved but left a part of
themselves there - attended. A number of the people clustered around
a display of photos showing how things used to be in Berkley, a
pride in community that organizers of the get-together hoped would
find a home with the neighborhood's newcomers. by CNB