
DATE: Wednesday, October 29, 1997           TAG: 9710290678
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: Staff writers Tom Holden, Lewis Krauskopf, Ida Kay Jordan and

        Liz Szabo contributed to this report.

                                            LENGTH:   96 lines

HAMPTON ROADS

VIRGINIA BEACH

Saddlery's fiberglass

horse stolen from

rooftop; feet remain

Alas, poor Clyde. Only his feet remain.

For nearly 15 years, the fiberglass horse standing atop the Acredale Saddlery has served as a landmark for Kempsville residents. You didn't need to look at street signs to know you were at Kempsville and Indian River roads.

All you needed was to spy the horse.

But sometime late Sunday or early Monday, Clyde was ripped from the roof and dragged away.

All that remained from the petty crime were two feet bolted to the roof and two feet in the back gravel lot where they snapped off after the fall.

``We mourned it like one of our animals had died,'' said Betty H. Davis, the store's owner. ``He's been a landmark here.''

Davis, who has owned the business since the 1960s, said she acquired the horse after it had adorned an Oceanfront restaurant for nearly as long as it did in Kempsville.

``He was getting up in age when I got him,'' she said.

The Acredale Saddlery sells English and Western saddles, bridles and clothing.

Davis said she is offering a reward of ``a couple hundred dollars'' for information leading to the return of the critter and the arrest of the people who took it.

The horse was such a familiar landmark that Davis laughed a bit when she said, ``I had a hard time finding the building myself when I came to work. It just made us fighting mad that it was destroyed after all this time for no useful reason. It's just plain vandalism.''

PORTSMOUTH

``Banjomania'' will feature

favorite jazz music, comedy

All employees of the state of Virginia and the cities of Portsmouth and Chesapeake have been invited to attend ``Banjomania'' Saturday at Willett Hall as guests of the Portsmouth Community Concert Association.

The concert by the four-man ensemble will feature comedy, traditional banjo music, jazz from the 1920s and '30s, and favorite tunes from the '40s, '50s and '60s.

Tickets may be picked up at the Willett Hall box office prior to the 8 p.m. program. The box office will open at 7:15 p.m., and state and city employees must show proper identification.

CHESAPEAKE

DMV awards city grant

to promote road safety

Chesapeake won $4,500 in grants to promote road safety from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles this year, according to spokeswoman Jeanne Chenault. The DMV awarded approximately $530,000 in grants to 250 municipalities.

The Chesapeake Police Department won a $1,500 grant for its Intersection Connection program, which targeted high-accident intersections on Battlefield Boulevard, and a $1,500 grant for selective enforcement of high-accident city streets. Chesapeake Public Schools won a $1,500 grant for motivational media assemblies.

Grant money was made available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Highway Administration.

Signs point to areas with

a Civil War significance

The Civil War left its mark on the land that is now Chesapeake, and now the history of those events will be marked by highway signs.

Chesapeake has received two signs denoting areas of the city that played a role during the Civil War's Peninsula campaign in which Union Gen. George B. McClellan assembled his forces on the Virginia Peninsula in 1862.

The Chesapeake signs are at the site of Glencoe plantation and the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, both off U.S. Route 17. Three more signs will be placed later this year.

Four of the five signs will be located along the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, said city planner Mark Shea. The canals were crucial during the war, for whoever controlled them also controlled Norfolk, Shea said.

The other sign tells about the Jackson Grays, a regiment formed in what is now southern Chesapeake, Shea said.

There are about 60 signs devoted to the Peninsula campaign and more than 200 Civil War signs in the state, Shea said.

The Richmond Tourism Bureau is coordinating the Civil War Trails program.

For more information, call 1-888-CIVIL-WAR. ILLUSTRATION: These two hooves - and two more on the roof - are all

that remain of Clyde, the fiberglass equine mascot that stood atop

Acredale Saddlery until he was horsenapped Sunday night or Monday

morning.

STEVE EARLEY/The Virginian-Pilot