
DATE: Wednesday, October 15, 1997           TAG: 9710150444

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Focus: Election '97 

SOURCE: BY LOUIS HANSEN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   94 lines

AT ISSUE: HE WORKS TO KEEP HIS NEIGHBORHOOD CLEAN AND CRIME-FREE

On sunny afternoons, you can sometimes see back 60 years from ``Sloppy'' Lewis' front porch.

The big houses in his Saratoga neighborhood rise two stories. Wooden screen doors snap open and shut when a visitor walks down the streets. Old and young men sit on lawn chairs. The pace is slow and unhurried.

At night, that past is gone.

Gunshots and police cruisers are too common for longtime residents. Too many young men take the opportunity to sell drugs rather than go do homework.

Joe ``Sloppy'' Lewis, a 62-year-old retired welder at the Newport News Shipyard, has lived in the neighborhood his entire life.

``Saratoga's all right,'' he said, nodding. ``Ain't nothing wrong with Saratoga.''

His part of Saratoga is all right.

He keeps his lime-green Cadillac immaculate, and his one-story house has a neat green-and-white paint scheme. Tiger Woods could putt on his front lawn.

Some other parts of Saratoga are not all right.

Despite a vigorous civic association, the community still stings from the crime and violence caused by drug dealing in a few homes.

``It's killing the young people,'' he said. ``They don't go to school. . .

If you ask Lewis what he does, he replies, ``Nothing.'' That's just not true.

Lewis is a regular at civic association meetings. Several mornings each week he rakes and cleans up trash along the road.

He keeps a full candy jar that neighborhood kids elbow into.

Last weekend, he took a few dozen neighborhood boys between the ages of 8 and 11 with him, armed them with trash bags and rakes, and went to work.

Their reward? A clean street, and all the hot dogs and hamburgers, chips and soda they could ingest.

Born in that ``big house down there'' - the two-story clapboard about three blocks down Battery Avenue from his house - Lewis has never strayed far.

He lived in the neighborhood when it produced doctors, lawyers, professional athletes and Broadway singers. It's where he earned his nickname, which came from his grandfather's teasing about his raffish appearance.

Although his four children are grown, he plays the quiet role of the community father that was so prevalent when he was growing up.

``The neighborhood was closer together then,'' he said.

``If you were doing something wrong, anybody beat you,'' he said and chuckled.

Lewis tries to offer some of the discipline that he had growing up in a family of 13 siblings. He pulls kids aside and tells them to study, to respect their mothers, and pats them on the back when they do good.

Lewis and the civic association struggled to improve the neighborhood, and drug trafficking has decreased.

But Lewis still doesn't sit out on his porch too long after dark.

He doesn't talk to the teen-agers as he does with the other kids: ``They don't carry no little guns.''

He wants more police officers to scoot kids into school and more recreational and educational programs for neighborhood children.

For his part of the deal, ``Sloppy'' will throw more barbecues.

``This is a nice neighborhood,'' he said. But, ``it's easy for a kid to get into something.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

JOHN SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot

Joe "Sloppy" Lewis wants the streets of his neighborhood to be free

of drugs

Graphic with photos

CANDIDATES RESPOND

Joe ``Sloppy'' Lewis' question: What can you do to get drugs off