DATE: Saturday, April 5, 1997               TAG: 9704050227

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN, staff writer 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   65 lines

NEWSOME FARM LEFT WITH SPIRIT AND PRIDE DUCATOR TAUGHT DETERMINATION.

There was a time when Newsome Farm was a quiet forgotten neighborhood, tucked away in a corner off Newtown Road, where even the most basic amenities were missing.

There were no sidewalks or street lights. After a heavy rain, water would stand knee-deep on the dirt roads. Trash and mail pickup was a sometime thing.

What made it particularly galling for resident Sadye Shaw was that Virginia Beach was in the midst of an unprecedented building boom that was transforming the city into the state's largest, while Newsome Farms was virtually ignored.

If anything, her friends said Friday, Shaw was determined. When the city announced 20 years ago it would target 12 low-income neighborhoods for improvements, including Newsome Farm, Shaw made sure her community would benefit.

And it was her determination, her drive and her generous spirit that friends celebrated on Friday at the First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, where Shaw's funeral drew together city officials and friends alike.

Shaw, 78, died March 30 at Sentara Leigh Memorial Hospital after a brief illness.

``She played a key role in getting improvements to Newsome Farm,'' said Andrew Friedman, the city's director of Housing and Neighborhood Preservation. ``She was precise, determined, energetic and always looking for ways to help the process, to help get the job done.''

It was Shaw, Friedman said, who invited then-City Manager Thomas Muehlenbeck to Newsome Farm to see firsthand the lack of basic services in the mostly black community. That meeting started a process that through the years culminated in new streets, lights, better drainage, and improved city services overall.

Today it is a handsome place, with tidy ranch homes - including the one that Sadye's husband, Norman, a bricklayer, built in 1963. He lives there today. Until her death, Shaw served as the secretary to the advisory committee on target neighborhoods.

Alice Green, who served on the New Light Civic League, another target neighborhood, said Shaw was a delightful person.

``She was the same the first day I met her, the same person all the way through,'' Green said. ``She was very nice and enthusiastic about uplifting her community and her people.''

Shaw came to public attention for her work with the civic league, but her first love was education. Born in Bayboro, N.C., she was the daughter of Thomas T. and Cora McMillian Ringer. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Fayetteville State University and later master's degrees from North Carolina A & T State University and William and Mary College.

She worked as a teacher for more than 40 years, having taught in the Pender County, N.C., public schools and retired from the Norfolk Public Schools in 1982 as program adviser to teachers of emotionally disturbed children.

She and her husband had one daughter, Stephanie Shaw-Wilson, who died in 1994.

Luvenia M. Tyson, a neighbor, said Shaw was an active woman who could sew, fish, sing, play the piano and who loved to collect ceramics, many of which now cover the walls of her home.

``She just loved people,'' Tyson said. ``She really did.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

SADYE SHAW

For 20 years, Shaw worked to ensure that the city would deliver on

its promise to improve Newsome Roads. She died March 30 at age 78. KEYWORDS: PROFILE DEATH OBITUARY

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