DATE: Monday, November 3, 1997              TAG: 9711030034

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LEWIS KRAUSKOPF, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  117 lines

CHESAPEAKE NEIGHBORS TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN PUGHSVILLE RESIDENTS HAMMER AWAY TO GIVE THE GIFT OF A NEW HOME.

From now until Christmas, sunup to sundown, the hammering of nails and the sawing of boards will fill the air at the end of Pughsville Road.

It's all sweet music to Geraldine Walker.

Every day that Walker hears the noise next door, she and her son are a day closer to moving into a new home, one built by her Pughsville neighbors.

``To think that someone cares for me so much,'' Walker said.

The story of the Pughsville Community Project is a simple one - a neighborhood coming together to take care of one of its own.

It began in 1993, when six residents, who had grown up as boyhood friends, noticed the sheets and blankets that Geraldine Walker had pushed against the wall and tacked up over her windows to keep out the winter chill.

Walker, whom the men had known their entire lives, lived with her handicapped son. The roof was sinking in, paint chipping everywhere. It had barely any heat and no indoor toilet.

``It was a bad situation,'' said Melvin Copeland, a 54-year-old retired longshoreman and one of the leaders of the project.

So at a special meeting at the New Hope Baptist Church - the focal point for Pughsville, which straddles Suffolk and Chesapeake - the six men told the neighborhood of their plan: to build homes for Walker and another neighbor, Queen Mitchell.

Each of the six men - Copeland, his brother Linwood, Wayne White, Welton Gaines, William Gaines and Jasper Taylor - put up $1,000 as seed money.

And the Pughsville Community Project was born.

The group went to work first on Mitchell's home - which was finished in March 1995 - because Walker could not get a clear title to the house she lives in. So they decided to try to buy the land next door and found that Walker qualified for a grant from the Chesapeake Redevelopment and Housing Authority, Copeland said.

The CRHA spent $16,000 for the land, which they donated to the project, said Rick Bartlett, director of design and construction. But the citizens have provided everything else: materials, labor and willing hands.

A small group of men began work Oct. 9. They hope to move Walker into her house, complete with central air and heat, by Christmas, as a present.

The goals may be grand, their hearts big. But their motives are simple.

``These are people who are raised in the community,'' said Copeland, vice president of the Pughsville Civic League in Chesapeake. ``This is our home, and we're proud of it.''

Pughsville is a community of about 220 homes, located off Interstate 664. Many residents grew up in the houses they now live in. On Sundays, the pews of New Hope Baptist Church are filled.

Like many of the residents in Pughsville, Geraldine Walker was born there. She has lived in family houses up and down Old Pughsville Road for all of her 60 years. She used to clean Maryview Hospital in Portsmouth, but has had her hands full much of the last 30 years caring for her mother, who died in 1992, and her 43-year-old son, Calvin Davis.

Like many communities in these two cities, Pughsville has experienced a recent boom. Richardson says it started when sewer lines came through two years ago.

Now it's not unusual for the longtime residents to run into unfamiliar faces in a neighborhood which William Gaines, one of the project's leaders, used to call ``one big family.''

But the new residents have blended in easily, Richardson says.

When the community held a rally against crime in June, she said, ``we had the whole neighborhood marching, the old and the new.''

Some of the newcomers have helped build Geraldine Walker's new house.

``We had the talent, we had the know-how, and you see the results,'' Copeland said.

That know-how was evident last week when the brick foundation had been laid and the wooden floor finished, and the men were putting up the first wall.

``We got to make hay; we got to get it done,'' William Gaines urged his co-workers.

Gaines walked around the site with a pencil pushed into his hair, the head carpenter. The 62-year-old retired shipyard worker wore a sweatshirt with the words ``Gaines Bus Service,'' the company he and his family run.

Gaines had drawn up the plans for Walker's home with the help of his older brother Welton, who died this year. The 30-by-30-foot, one-story house will have an 8-foot porch and dwarf Walker's old one.

The house will also have an entrance ramp and railings for Davis, who uses a wheelchair and suffers from seizures.

``They got no kind of facilities. And he don't deserve to live that way,'' Gaines said.

The day usually begins at about 8 a.m. with a few workers on hand. By nightfall as many as a dozen workers have stopped by to chip in a couple of hours of work. On Tuesday, some of the Pughsville regulars were joined by a couple of volunteers from the American Legion.

And as with the first house, the donations, too, have come from many sources.

For Mitchell's house, the men asked each Pughsville home to give $10. For Walker's, they've asked for $20. Most have already given or plan to, Copeland said.

Civic leagues, businesses and churches from Suffolk and Chesapeake have also contributed. The first home cost $14,500, and is valued at about $55,000, Copeland said. And the second will probably cost more because of inflation and building codes for handicapped living, he said.

Tuesday morning's day of work began with a prayer. Charles Leavell, an associate minister at New Hope Baptist who moved to Pughsville about three months ago, gathered the men in a circle before the hammering began.

``Father, we know that there are going to be roadblocks,'' Leavell, wearing red sweatpants and a knee pad, said. ``But you will turn our roadblocks into stepping stones.''

Later in the day, Len Richardson stopped by. Richardson, 80, has lived in Pughsville for 57 years and helped build the first house off Town Point Road. He'd be wielding a hammer, but kidney problems have sapped his strength.

But sitting on the sidelines has made Richardson anxious. He nodded vehemently when asked whether he'll be able to hammer before Christmas.

``Makes you feel good . . . ,'' Richardson said. ``There's nothing the community can't do.'' MEMO: To make a donation or volunteer with the Pughsville Community

Project, call Melvin Copeland at 484-6474. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot

Pughsville Community Project volunteers William Harrell, left, and

William Gaines, right, are helping build a home to replace the one

in the background.

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