THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 4, 1996 TAG: 9610020159
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: COVER STORY
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 216 lines
THOMAS E.``JEFF'' NORMAN was honored at a retirement party Monday at one of Portsmouth's popular waterfront restaurants.
But it was hard to beat the tribute about 250 people showed up for last week.
That one was held at the Neighborhood Facility, a recreation center that sits in the middle of the Ida Barbour neighborhood.
To some, the center is just an aging building, bricks and mortar, nothing more. But to the deputy director of the city's Parks and Recreation Department, it's a whole lot more.
It's a place that was once off-limits to him. It's a place that became home.
Norman spent much of his 40 years with the recreation department working in that neighborhood - many of them at that center. But even before then, that building had a pull on him.
When he was growing up, it was the National Guard Armory, and it had a gym where basketball teams in the white recreation leagues would play their games.
``We could go in to see the games as long as we sat in the balcony,'' Norman said. ``When it got crowded we had to leave.''
But every Sunday when the games were over, no matter how the building was locked up, he and his friends would find a way to get in and play basketball.
Most of the time the police would show up and make them leave. But one Sunday, they were ready to take the youths downtown.
Norman was about 14 at the time, and he remembers a captain of the National Guard was there, trying to negotiate with the youths. He asked them if the police let them go, would they promise never to come back.
``It wasn't rehearsed, but no one said `yes' because we knew we would be coming back the next Sunday,'' Norman said.
Finally, the National Guard officer offered to come in every Sunday and stay at the building for two to three hours so that the youngsters could use the building.
Norman doesn't remember the captain's name and after he went on to high school sports, he didn't see him for many years.
When he did see the captain again, it was 1970. The National Guard had a new armory then, and the old one had been renovated into the Neighborhood Facility, at the time, a center of health, welfare and recreation services.
Norman, who was a 13-year veteran of the Parks and Recreation Department by then, was to serve as coordinator of the facility.
At an opening ceremony, just as he was to be officially handed the building key, the National Guard captain stood up and smiled.
``He said: `I never thought you'd get a key to legally enter this building. Did you, Jeff?'
``I remember I was laughing and crying,'' Norman said. ``After he gave me that key and I opened that door to let everybody in - that was one of the greatest feelings I ever had.''
Norman worked from that building for 13 years, even after he had been named superintendent of the whole downtown district.
One of the things that had kept him happy in his career choice was the chance to serve a community that was also home.
He had been born in the old neighborhood that preceded Ida Barbour. It was a poor community, and Norman remembers his mother worked two jobs and took in laundry to take care of her family.
``I can't remember ever feeling bad about being poor,'' Norman said. ``I never felt it was going to stop me from doing anything.''
It is hard for him to relate to young people who want to drop out of school in a world that is trying so hard to encourage them to stay there.
``I didn't want to drop out of school,'' he said. ``But in that neighborhood, it was the thing to do.
``My mother wanted me to. But you've got to understand she was trying to raise five or six of us and trying to be a father and mother at the same time.''
Norman always relied on his own determination. He remembers the time his family was sitting around with a neighbor and everyone was guessing what the children would be when they grew up.
``I remember one of the ladies saying, `Well, Josephine, I don't mean to slight Jeff, but you're not going to have to worry about him. He's such a mess, by the time he turns 13 or 14, he'll be in a reform school . . . and then he'll be in prison.'
``You know what bothered me most of all,'' Norman said. ``Nobody defended me. But I said to myself, I'm not going to do anything wrong. I have to do well, because nobody has any confidence in me.''
Norman graduated from Norcom High School in 1953 and went to Fayetteville State University in North Carolina on a basketball scholarship. He was majoring in elementary education but unsure of what he really wanted to do.
``I hadn't thought about recreation or coaching,'' he said. ``I just knew I wanted to work with people.''
He was married by then and had a small child. After three years of college, he dropped out because he felt needed at home.
In 1957, he became a recreation leader at the small center in Ida Barbour. He planned on staying six months, paying some bills and then going back to school.
But six months turned into 40 years.
``It grew on me,'' Norman said. ``I began to see that I was realizing my goals, because I've always just wanted to help people.''
Norman was promoted to superintendent of volunteer services in 1982 and already had been moved to City Hall by then.
While working, he earned two associate degrees in recreation and a bachelor's degree from Upper Iowa University in public administration.
In 1990, he was promoted to deputy director of the department.
But looking back on the four decades that earned him the nickname, ``Mr. Recreation,'' Norman sees those times he was working directly with young people as his best.
``I feel valuable now,'' he said. ``But I felt most valuable then because I could see something that I was doing that benefited somebody else.''
Throughout his career, Norman started many athletic and recreation programs and had the pleasure of seeing recreation centers and opportunities expand.
But he also noticed a trend among youngsters to appreciate them less. By the late 1970s, he and other staff members were beginning to notice the impact of drugs on the youth they served.
``I'm sure it might have been out there before then,'' he said. ``But it was then that we could see a difference in the actions of some of the participants.''
He noticed a loss of interest in the recreation programs.
``I remember when the center was everything to them,'' he said. ``Then they began to hang out, to pick up little habits I wasn't familiar with at the time.''
Norman remembers the days when he could place 40 to 50 eager young people in summer jobs. Then, suddenly, some kids were asking why they should work for minimum wage when they could make $500 just carrying a bag of drugs somewhere for someone.
``My thing,'' he said, ``was to tell them, `You ever see anybody retire from this?' ''
Norman started the Youth Against Drugs program in 1988 in an effort to keep young people from straying into that world.
The program combined recreation with the development of leadership among youth.
``I think the saddest moments in my life in recreation were attending funerals of the young people who I have come in contact through my work with the city,'' he said.
In a little more than a year, he has gone to more than 20 funerals, he said.
But the one thing his career has taught him is not to dwell on those young people he could not save.
He believes recreation programs are needed more than ever to give young people something positive to focus on.
``I think that we as adults can't turn our back on them and say it's too late, it's a waste of time,'' he said. ``You can't reach them all, but you can keep on and reach as many as you can.''
Norman has seen kids he thought would make it fail and some he thought he never would reach turn out successfully.
He has received many letters over the years from adults who still remember something he did that touched them. Some have gone into the military, some to other professions. Others write from prison.
But they all hold a special place in his memory.
There was the 12-year-old he last saw as a boy at a center in the Lincoln Park public housing neighborhood.
Norman was sitting at a table trying to finish a report before a staff meeting. He had his watch off on the table in front of him so that he could watch the time.
The youngster was skipping school that day and had come into the center.
``I was fussing at him and writing the report at the same time,'' Norman remembers.
Then he got up to answer a phone. When he came back, the boy was gone and so was his watch.
``He never came back to the center again.''
Norman didn't report the incident. He felt like it was partly his fault for leaving the watch where it would be a temptation.
He later heard the boy had gotten into trouble and been given a choice of a Job Corps program or jail. Then about 20 years later, he got word that the young man was in town looking for him.
When he and Norman finally met again, the man he had known as a youth was in military uniform. He introduced Norman to his wife, who was expecting their second child.
Then the man asked Norman to hold out his arm while he put a new watch on his wrist.
``It probably cost him five times what mine cost in those days,'' Norman said. He told Norman how much shame that act had caused him through the years.
There are scores of such young people whose faces always will be etched in Norman's mind - like the teen-age dropouts who were creating a problem, by hanging around the center and disrupting the after-school programs.
Norman realized their real problem was they needed something to do. So he went to downtown merchants like Bernard Rivin and raised enough money to buy uniforms.
The teen-agers played three basketball games a week at the Neighborhood Facility.
``We had no major altercations, and it was amazing - the vandalism downtown went down,'' he said. ``These kids had something going for them.
``But what came out of that, that we never knew was going to come out of it, was the first year we got 12 kids to go back to school,'' he said. ``That will stay with me for as long as I live.''
Especially the one youth who had told Norman, flat out, to give it up when he tried to get him to go back to school.
``I thought I'd lost him,'' he recalled. ``I didn't see him for about a year.''
Then a girl on one of Norman's basketball teams invited him to a homecoming assembly at Norcom High School.
When the president of the student body went on stage to crown ``Miss Norcom,'' Norman realized it was the same youth.
``Not only had he gone back to school, but he had become president of the student body,'' he said.
``I sat and I cried that day.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos, including color cover by GARY C. KNAPP
Thomas Norman, right, retiring deputy director of Portsmouth Parks
and Recreation, chats with his friend, Maurice Garnell, at a tribute
to Norman.
Thomas E. ``Jeff'' Norman talks to Dorthea Missy Curry who called to
wish him well in his retirement before the community party began.
Curry, who grew up in the area, now resides in Washington.
The Opal Bazemore Dancers perform for Norman at the party in the
Neighborhood Facility.
Staff photos by MARK MITCHELL
``Mr. Recreation'' is retiring from the Portsmouth Parks and
Recreation Department.
This 1976 picture of Norman, right, and his friend Willie Orton was
on display at the community party. As members of the Afro
Associates, they were attending a social in African dress. by CNB