THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 3, 1997 TAG: 9701030473
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALETA PAYNE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 83 lines
For the first time in a long time, a flag flew over Princess Anne High School Thursday morning.
The voices of students filled the halls, and their cars filled the parking lot.
The Cavaliers were home.
Sixteen months after an arsonist's fire burned the core of the school, students and staffers who had been housed at the former mini-mall, Celebration Station, returned to a repaired and renovated building.
The cafeteria and library are larger, art rooms have been added and the charred areas were rebuilt with wider, gleaming hallways.
``It's beautiful. It's all bright white and blue, the new part,'' said senior class president Ana Ponce. ``(The return) is kind of relieving, kind of putting it behind us. It's like coming home.''
Over the winter break, staff members and a professional moving company worked to transfer the contents of Celebration Station, at Little Neck Road and Virginia Beach Boulevard, where most of PA's students had been housed since the fire, to the original campus a few miles away.
Principal Pat Griffin said the move had been smooth but long.
A simple flag-raising ceremony before classes greeted the first day at the reopened facility. With about two dozen cadets in the school's Naval Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps Unit standing at attention, and Griffin and three of the four class presidents nearby, a NJROTC color guard raised the American and Virginia flags over the school for the first time since the fire Sept. 1, 1995.
``It is the community that has made the way we have come back in style possible,'' Griffin said to students, staff, school officials and others gathered near the flag pole in the dim morning chill.
In an unexpected and touching moment, Cadet Nate Clark, the NJROTC company commander, presented Griffin with a shadow box containing the American flag that last flew over PA - the one lowered in the usual afternoon ritual on the day before the fire. Griffin said she hadn't realized the flag existed.
Inside the school Thursday, students worked from schedules with maps on the back. Staff members stood in hallways asking, ``Do you know where you're headed? Do you know where your class is?''
An open house is planned for February and a formal dedication will be held in spring.
About 2,000 students were displaced by the fire, which caused more than $6 million in damage to the city's oldest high school. The arson investigation remains open and no arrests have been made.
School officials have been working to find a tenant to take on the lease at Celebration Station. Before the fire, school programs had been moved from the building and school officials had tried unsuccessfully to terminate the lease, which will expire in June. At that time, there was no money in the budget for the rent.
Insurance has paid much of that cost since the fire, and money is allocated in the budget to pay the $80,000-a-month rent should that be necessary.
Superintendent Timothy R. Jenney said, however, that he would prefer to see that money used for education and hopes a new tenant can be found.
Most of the students who returned to Princess Anne have spent more time in Celebration Station than on the high school's campus. And there were mixed emotions about leaving Celebration Station. But there was also enthusiasm for the new and improved version of the old school.
``I think it's wonderful,'' said Amber Michael, junior class president. ``It's really neat to come back in the building. It's changed so much since I was a freshman!'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
STEVE EARLEY photos
The Virginian-Pilot
THE STUDENTS A student runs past a ``Welcome Home CAVS'' sign held
by seniors Sarah Smith, left, and Ana Ponce.
THE PRINCIPAL Principal Pat Griffin watches the first flag-raising
at Princess Anne High School since September 1995.
GETTING READY Just after 6 a.m. Thursday, Chris Copeland prepares
the flag pole in front of the school.
STEVE EARLEY
The Virginian-Pilot
Senior Lanisha Landraw gets directions from assistant Princess Anne
High School principal Nell Richardson Thursday. Arson swept the
core of the Virginia Beach school 16 months ago.