THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 7, 1997 TAG: 9702070537
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 81 lines
Fond stories will be shared at a memorial service at noon today in Norfolk's Christ and St. Luke's Episcopal Church for Dr. W. Wickham Taylor, who died Wednesday.
One, typifying that gentle, self-effacing gentleman, surfaced as his widow, Joan, touched Thursday on the Taylors' role in the founding in 1979 of the Weyanoke Flower and Bird Sanctuary in West Ghent.
``We were among many,'' she said to a reporter's inquiry.
``Other people have worked harder than we did, especially as we grew older, and they have been wonderful friends.''
She ticked off a long list.
But, the reporter recalled, weren't he and she the first to start cleaning trash from the marsh and forest across from Bluebird Park?
``Well, yes,'' she admitted, ``with help of boys who played along the little slip to the Elizabeth River.''
Wasn't that the first step?
``In a way,'' she conceded, ready to drop the subject.
Then how did it happen that Norfolk and Western Railway Co. gave the wilderness patch for a refuge?
Bit by bit, the answer came.
Hearing that the railway president, Robert B. Claytor, would be returning from sailing off Deltaville, the Taylors pedaled their bicycles to intercept him on Redgate Avenue.
Driving to the N&W station where a railroad car would take him home to Roanoke, Claytor encountered the cyclists.
Standing by their bikes, earnest faces at the driver's window, the couple described the rare opportunity for saving in that blend of woods and water a pit stop on the eastern flyway for migrating song birds, hawks and owls, and waterfowl in the spring and fall.
During migrations a person can look out on the back yards of houses abutting the refuge and see flaming summer tanagers, black-throated blue warblers, prairie warblers, and a host of others. A yellow-crowned night heron nests amid tall pines. A shadowy great horned owl sounds a haunting hunting call as it sweeps softly through dark trees.
Claytor listened agreeably, and thanked them. Shortly after the Taylors reached home, a steward called from Claytor's car and invited the Taylors to join him there.
Midway in the second conversation, Claytor asked, ``Just what do you two want?''
``We want the land,'' said Wickham, laughing. It would be a nourishing oasis for humans as well as wildlife, he said.
With Claytor were Grif and Molly Dodson of Roanoke, friends of the Taylors. In Roanoke Thursday, Grif Dodson remembered that Claytor ``was most accommodating.''
He couldn't recall how the Taylors came to be by the side of the road, nor could Joan Taylor.
The railroad allotted the land to the national Nature Conservancy, which passed it along to the National Audubon Society, which placed it under the care of the Cape Henry Audubon Society, whose members spread across Hampton Roads.
When the N&W and the Southern Railway merged, Chairman Claytor brought the Norfolk Southern's headquarters to Norfolk. A model citizen, it continued to be supportive in a quiet, unobtrusive way. Visitors to the refuge were as blithely unaware of their benefactor as the birds.
The Norfolk Garden Club raised funds with which landscapist Gisela Grimm designed trails, a wildflower garden, a meadowland, an overlook. Bird watchers sow seeds and plant trees and bushes that produce food to nourish wildlife.
At the junction of Armistead Bridge Road and Gates Avenue, the sanctuary has become a community venture, open Saturday from 9 to noon.
As a child, Dodson lived in Norfolk around the corner from Wickham. He recalled his friend's sensitive, listening, attentive face and how with a word or two he drew out others, and his quick smile and infectious laughter.
His manners, even as a boy, were exceptional, Dodson said.
``The rest of us, after some event would say, `I certainly did have a good time.' But quite emphatically, Billy always said, and I can hear him now, `I enjoyed myself immensely!'
``And, always,'' said Dodson, ``the people in his company, no matter how recently they may have met him, enjoyed themselves immensely.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Joan and Wickham Taylor were instrumental in the creation of the
Norfolk flower and bird sanctuary in West Ghent.