
DATE: Saturday, August 30, 1997             TAG: 9708300415

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER 

SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  150 lines

NEIGHBORHOOD FESTIVAL SPARKS CIVIC PRIDE - AND A LOT MORE

Note: How do citizens strengthen their neighborhoods? In occasional reports, The Virginian-Pilot is following the efforts of one community - Villa Heights, on the northern edge of downtown Norfolk. Here's another installment. ``I don't know. Something is bringing us all together.''

- CYNTHIA BUCK, VILLA HEIGHTS

Something finally hit home for Juanita Parker.

She's lived in Villa Heights for 20 years but rarely met neighbors.

``Last year, I met a couple of people in the civic league, and they said, `Isn't that strange? We're neighbors and we've never seen you,' '' Parker said. ``I thought that was kind of bad.''

Parker kept getting civic-league fliers, ``but I kept putting them off.''

Then she heard that activists were organizing a unity festival for today. Parker thought of the great time she and her son, William, 10, had at the neighborhood's Christmas-tree lighting in December.

And for the first time, Parker stepped forward to help, even joining the festival planning committee.

``I like how everybody is pulling together,'' said Parker, 44, who prepares children's meals at the Naval Base. She'll volunteer her cooking skills for today's party.

Progress might be be slow. But Villa Heights leaders say they are witnessing more sparks of civic pride among neighbors like Parker.

Maybe a few more people have grown fed up with the crime and decaying housing and streets they see around them. Maybe some more folks have been energized by community events such as the tree lighting. Maybe the message of ``do it for the children'' is sinking in.

``I don't know. Something is bringing us all together,'' said Cynthia Buck, 38, whose family has lived in Villa Heights for 40 years. ``I just can't believe this is happening in our neighborhood.''

That doesn't mean major problems have been solved.

Late Friday afternoon, some 20 adults and children gathered to clean an empty Army Reserve armory where part of the festival will be held. The brick building squats behind a chain-link and barbed-wire fence, its lone cannon aimed at the First United Presbyterian Church across the street.

Broken glass littered the parking lot. On the street out front, cars cruised past, emitting the rumbles and rhythms of loud stereos.

One such car stopped. So did a van going the other way. A small packet was exchanged. Drugs?

A few feet away, children bought ice cream from a vendor's truck.

Sandra Williams, heading the festival committee, stared for a moment and then continued the clean-up. That's why Villa Heights activists are holding the festival - to build community confidence to drive out drug dealers and other criminals; to gain more attention from City Hall and young families looking for starter homes.

The old armory on 29th Street figures in the strategy, and not just for a one-day festival.

Lana Pressley, league president, has asked the Army to donate or lease the armory for conversion to a center with a gym, arts-and-crafts and job-preparation programs, and satellite offices for social-service agencies.

The league has held prayer vigils outside the armory and is awaiting word from the Army about possible negotiations. Meanwhile, leaders want to use today's festival to show what the neighborhood can do with such an opportunity.

``Wouldn't you like to see a center that prevents our people from turning to a life of violence and crime?'' Buck wrote in a recent civic-league newsletter. ``Come out and let your constructive actions speak louder than your destructive complaints about Villa Heights.''

Buck, a science teacher at Portsmouth's I.C. Norcom High School, supervised children sweeping glass from the parking lot.

``Y'all come on now so we can get a rec center. We have to demonstrate a good showing!'' she shouted to some passing youngsters.

``For real?!?!?'' said a wide-eyed Jesse Sunkins, 10, as he stopped in front of Buck.

He ran inside the armory and returned. ``I'm going to get my cousin!'' Jesse yelled over his shoulder.

``Don't forget a broom, too!'' Buck called after him.

Soon, Jesse and cousin Mario Spencer, 14, raced into the armory. ``Tell mom and dad to come to the civic-league meetings,'' coaxed Buck.

Despite the level of enthusiasm, the upbeat mood did not take hold until mid-August.

Sometimes it seemed that neighbors were waiting for another miracle-like solution to their problems, like the donation of six Christmas trees last December after a thief stole the original tree.

Attendance at civic league meetings was uneven. Training to organize an anti-crime block-watch program was postponed several times. Morale plunged when two young men were shot dead in their parked car one night in April.

Residents continued to grumble. Insults piled on top of injury.

Several middle-aged and older women expressed outrage after being propositioned by ``johns'' trolling the streets for prostitutes.

City Hall organized a ribbon-cutting for the rebuilt 26th Street Bridge over the Lafayette River. The city held the ceremony on the far side of the span by the more-renovated Lafayette-Winona neighborhood - a perceived snub.

Residents still ask: ``Why couldn't it be held in the middle?''

Earlier this month, Williams, festival chairwoman, moaned that few volunteers and businesses were helping.

But Williams, a Headstart teacher, had endured other slow starts. Last summer, she organized a small July 4th cook-out at her apartment complex. This year, the number of neighbors who lent backyard grills had nearly doubled to 15.

And Pressley, the league president, said more people seem to be aware of what the civic group is trying to do.

Pressley has no shortage of civic ideas and energy. Her fervor for activism began in the mid-1970s, she said, when police mistakenly raided the home of an elderly couple in the Berkley section, where she had grown up.

But as many activists, Pressley gropes for practical ways to motivate neighbors to action on the seemingly mundane tasks of rebuilding their community. She's also unsure how to build partnerships with outside businesses.

``We don't want to be beggars. We ought to have something we can give in return,'' Pressley said. ``We're really going to have to search ourselves as a community, know our goals and what we can do.''

At times, Pressley feels that her frustration makes her act ``too autocratic.'' She said: ``I don't want to be madam-queen-president. But I expect a lot.''

She's willing to try almost any new idea, Pressley said. Today, she'll try yet another.

At the festival's noontime ceremony, Pressley said she'll challenge the assembly of residents to introduce themselves to any stranger standing close by.

``Say how you are, where you live and what you are going to do for the civic league from now on. And then ask them what they are going to do,'' Pressley said.

She plans to step down from the podium and join the handshaking. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

GARY C. KNAPP

Pelvonna Lewis, 7, sweeps the parking area of the armory on 29th

Street in Norfolk for the Villa Heights unity festival today.

Graphic

IF YOU GO

Villa Heights:

Partners-in-the-Community Day

When: Today, noon to 5 p.m.

Where: Army Reserve armory and lawn of First United Presbyterian

Church, 700 block of E. 29th St., Norfolk.

Highlights include noontime ceremony, with state Sen. Yvonne