June 3, 2012

Godspeed on the Bay with all sails flying.
Courtesy Jamestown Settlement

Out on the Chesapeake Bay Thursday morning a curious-looking three-masted ship gradually takes on sail.

Rapid-fire commands by the mates – “ease off the brace!” slack the weather lift!,” “haul out the weather bowline!” etc., cause square mainsails, foresails, topsails, sprit and mizzen sails to drop from their yards like parachutes on a windy day.

And the Godspeed, now in the thrall of a 12-knot northerly wind, is suddenly alive – along with the story that includes her all-but-forgotten captain, Bartholomew Gosnold.

Godspeed and sister ships Susan Constant and Discovery, brought the first English settlers to America over four centuries ago. Their distant offspring, painstakingly replicated and lovingly tended to by staff and volunteers at the Jamestown Settlement, help recreate the voyage for thousands of tourists.

Volunteers Georgia Irby and John Robinson unfurl a sail on a
bright blue morning on the Bay. By Paul Clancy

If you watch the Parade of Sail this Friday, you’ll notice, just behind the Coast Guard’s tall ship Eagle, the not-so-tall, but still-quite-proud Godspeed sailing in second position, representing the state.

In preparation last week, the 88-foot bark-rigged vessel slogged through heavy rain on Wednesday to Hampton and then, on a gorgeous clear Thursday, sailed to Yorktown.

You could feel the tug on the tiller as Godspeed sailed close to the wind, heeling gently to starboard. And the tug of history as reminders of its centuries-old namesake walked its decks.

Gosnold was a lawyer, privateer and explorer who, arguably more than anyone, was the driving force behind the first English settlement in America. He captained a 1602 expedition to the coast of New England where he discovered and named Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard – after his deceased daughter – and built a fort on a nearby small island.

It might have been the first English settlement, but Indian attacks and lack of provisions for the winter sent the would-be colonists back to England.

But the idea of colonizing the New World had taken hold and the young explorer lobbied and eventually convinced King James to support a new venture. He recruited crew members, including Captain John Smith, for the enterprise.

Historians say that the ever-scribbling Smith is more famous only because he survived and because he wrote so much.

Gosnold didn’t lead the Jamestown expedition. Because of his political connections, the job went to Christopher Newport, who skippered the largest of the ships, the Susan Constant. The title of second-in-command went to Gosnold.

And even though he was never president of the colony, it was clear that Gosnold – who disliked the dismal Jamestown site – was really in charge. During a massive Indian attack he boarded Godspeed and turned the ship’s guns on the attackers, scattering them.

But the very reasons he hated the island proved to be his undoing. In August 1607 he succumbed to disease and was buried outside the fort. And promptly forgotten – until recent years when archaeologists excavated a grave believed to be his, although DNA tests proved inconclusive.

Even though he played such a major role in the first settlement in America, no great rivers, no great cities or universities have been named for him. Smith himself called him “the first mover of this plantation.” Recently, British Heritage magazine called him “the man who was responsible for England’s settling the New World.”

Well, if he’s forgotten it won’t be because the volunteers and crew of the Godspeed haven’t tried.

During the trip to Yorktown, Eric Speth, the captain of the Jamestown fleet who oversaw construction of the new Godspeed replica in 2006, takes me on a tour.

Down below in the cargo hold, he points to the ship’s authentic construction, from the hand-wrought nails and sea chests to the hardwood ribs, planks and beams, and, on deck, double-fluke anchors. There’s modern equipment, to be sure, diesel engines and GPS chart plotters, but they can be easily hidden away when tourists come aboard at Jamestown.

Speth constantly marvels at how well the Godspeed handles in spite of its odd appearance, and how capable it handles in the roughest conditions. As rough as any the Atlantic could dish out on that long voyage.

Although not the largest of the Jamestown fleet, the Godspeed may be its most visible. It’s now the one that does most of the sailing for events like OpSail and other excursions around the region.

And then perhaps there’s old Gosnold himself brooding about and wishing for a little more recognition. “One of the best feelings I get,” Speth says, “is that we can carry the story of the founding of Virginia aboard the Godspeed to other ports throughout the state.”

May 27, 2012

OK, it was a little bit unfair.

Last week, I quoted one historian who observed that after the Civil War, Norfolk became “a roistering, carousing, gun-slinging, mining camp of a town.” And I ended by quipping, “In other words. . . it’s old self.”

I’ve been mildly called to task for this. After all, the city hasn’t always been that way.

It hasn’t always been a noxious, odiferous, pestilential, malarial, swampy, slum-ridden, slave-trading, sinful, god-forsaken place.

But darn-near.

At least we had Thomas Jefferson, who on seeing Norfolk rebuilding after being incinerated during the Revolutionary War, found himself to be “happy that circumstances have led my arrival to a place which I had seen before indeed in greater splendor, but which I now see rising like a Phoenix out of its ashes to that importance to which the laws of nature destine it"

 But that’s about it, at least as far as I can find: no one with a kind word for the place. What we’re stuck with is gloomy gusses like the duke de La Rochefoucauld Liancourt who in 1796 called it “one of the ugliest, most irregular, and most filthy towns that can any-where be found.”

Or Auguste Levasseur, the private secretary of the Marquis de Lafayette, who commented that “Norfolk is the one that offers the least agreeable appearance.” He added that the city was further marred by the “sad and revolting spectacle” of slaves being forced to work for uncaring masters.

Maybe the unkindest cut came from landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted who, in a journalistic tour of the South in 1853, declared:

“Norfolk is a dirty, low, ill-arranged town, nearly divided by a morass….It has all the immoral and disagreeable characteristics of a large seaport, with very few of the advantages that we should expect to find….No lyceum or public libraries, no public gardens, no galleries of art…no public resorts of healthful and refining amusement, no place better than a filthy, tobacco-impregnated bar-room or a licentious dance-cellar, so far as I have been able to learn, for the stranger of high or low degree to pass the hours unoccupied by business.”

And then the Civil War just about shut the city down. Union occupation was like a mailed fist for unreconstructed white southerners. But for others – as the accompanying illustration by a German artist suggests – there was a lively downtown marketplace. In some ways, the city appeared to be thriving.

Historians point out that horseracing, an early form of bicycle racing and even yacht racing took hold. Norfolk’s wharves almost sagged with the weight of cotton, peanuts and lumber. Railroads and steamboats suddenly put the city on the map again.

Horse-drawn trolleys and soon electric trolleys were introduced. Coal trains began arriving. Some huge, lavish hotels, the Atlantic and Monticello, opened downtown. Norfolk showed off its railroad prowess by building a downtown station topped by an 80-foot clock tower. The Jamestown Exposition came to town in 1907 and, a decade later, the Norfolk Naval Base opened.

So, yes, things haven’t been all that bad. And the city didn’t really descend into a carousing, wild-west kind of place. At least not until World War II. But that’s another story.

All I can say is, dogs and sailors keep off the grass. Oh, oh, was that another over-statement?

Illustration: The scene at Commercial Place in 1865, as captured by a
German artist. Courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library.

May 20. 2012

Union troops march up Bank Street between Main Street and Cove Street (now

City Hall Ave.) Courtesy of Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library.

(Click to enlarge.)


THE PHOTOGRAPH IS AMAZING. 

Here’s the city, still under Union occupation just after the Civil War, and federal troops are marching up Bank Street.

Not much is going on, although it appears to be mid-day. There are a few bystanders, maybe shopkeepers, on the sidewalk, and in the distance a lone horse and cart are approaching. The troops, blurred by the camera’s slow shutter speed, appear ghostlike as they hustle over the rock-littered street.

You can almost hear the sounds of their tramping boots and maybe the shouts of an officer. Perhaps even feel the unease among both the occupied and the occupiers.

It was just over 150 years ago that the once-hustling, once-prosperous, port city fell to Union forces. On May 10 1862, under the direction of President Abraham Lincoln, 6,000 troops landed at Ocean View and marched into the city where Mayor Charles Lamb and other officials met them and surrendered.

For free blacks and suddenly freed slaves, it was one of the happiest days they could have imagined. Crowds filled the streets and celebrations went on through the night. A day of public thanksgiving soon followed, with a parade, speeches, bonfires and the peal of church bells.

But soon widespread food shortages began to take a fearful toll. The city was flooded with refugees whose only hope of survival was begging for food. Women and children were reported to be dying daily from starvation.

For many whites – those who hadn’t fled the city – occupation turned out to be a time for bitter resentment.

As Wm. Troy Valos [cq] points out in the current issue of Sargeant’s Chronicles, a publication of Norfolk Public Library, the occupying force was at first cordial to the local populace, “but with time, residents began to deeply despise these troops.”

One author says that Norfolk, still under a blockade and unable to obtain provisions, had been “transformed into a city mainly of paupers.” Another writer quotes a visitor describing Norfolk as “a city of the dead.”

It didn’t help that the first Union commander, Col. Egbert Viele, was replaced by Gen. Benjamin Butler. Although lauded as the man who began the flood of “Contraband” slaves to freedom, it seems he was greatly despised by just about everyone else.

In “Norfolk, Historic Southern Port,” Thomas J. Wertenbaker wrote that the Butler regime “was as corrupt as it was oppressive. No man could do business without a permit from the military authorities, and permits were distributed to those who offered the highest bribe.”

Liquor distributorships were given to Butler’s friends from Lowell, Mass., as were profits from the local gas works. Dogs for whom a $2 fee was not paid were ordered to be shot. Marriage licenses were withheld from couples who were known to hold southern sympathies.

Ministers who dared sermonize against the government were sacked. Provost marshals were directed to see that pulpits were “properly filled, by displacing when necessary, the present incumbents, and substituting men of known loyalty.”

Many homes were deserted and left vacant. Some were seized and used as quarters for troops or northerners who had migrated to the city to fill jobs from which unrepentant southern whites were barred.

As one visitor saw it:

“Sadness and gloom, if not despair, have settled upon both people and houses. Broken glass, crumbling walls, opening roofs, creaking floors, and general dilapidation follow disappointed hopes. . . .I left Norfolk as sad as the large company of women, both white and black, standing in front of the commissary’s office to receive rations for the support of their families . . .  as sad as the winds which howl through the deserted habitations of the hundreds of secessionists.”

Prosperity did creep back into town after the war, and there was, as Thomas C. Parramore, Peter C. Stewart and Tommy L. Bogger write in “Norfolk, the First Four Centuries,” there was a general “unbuttoning.”

After Butler left, they write, the city turned into “a roistering, carousing, gun-slinging, mining camp of a town.”

In other words, from everything I’ve heard and read, its old self. 

May 13, 2012

Walt Whitehurst was telling stories about his great-uncle Oscar Mosely, who lived out back of the home where he grew up.

We sat sipping apple juice and ice tea in their comfortable house on Princess Anne Road. His wife, Betty, was in the kitchen fixing a three-salad lunch.

“The funniest one is about the lawyer,” she called out from the kitchen.

“Oh, the lawyer,” he said, warming to his task. “Uncle Oscar happened to come upon some sort of conflict, and so he was asked to go to court. So when the lawyer was interviewing him, he said, ‘Do I understand that you said such and such about it?’

“Uncle Oscar replied, ‘I can’t know what you understand, but if you did you ain’t got no understanding at all.’”

Stories about Oscar and many other folks from the little community of Pungo in southeastern Virginia Beach inhabit the new book, Pungo Tales Two: Some Old, Some New, by Walter A. Whitehurst.

As the name suggests, this is the second book about the unincorporated town probably best known for the Pungo Strawberry Festival – or is it the Witch of Pungo? – that Whitehurst has authored. Some of the stories are those told by friends, others stem from eulogies he delivered over the years as pastor of Charity United Methodist Church.

Some are funny, some droll, some as flat as the farm fields that stretch out in all directions in that part of the world.

There’s the story, as told by Chet Dorchester, of the time he and his wife, Faye, had a baby while living in Milwaukee. He tried to call her parents in Back Bay with the news, but it was midnight and he couldn’t get through to them, so he called a neighbor. The neighbor was too sleepy and by the next morning couldn’t remember any of the details.

But the telephone operator – in those days of hand-cranked phones, operators sometimes remained on the line – didn’t miss anything.

When the new grandmother called her, she said without hesitation, “Faye had a baby last night and it was a boy and they named him Chester Donald Dorchester and he weighed 8 ½ pounds.”

Then there’s the story of William “Tug” Jones, as told by Joe Burroughs, a lifelong friend of the author. Joe was then farming strawberries and each spring Tug Jones would arrive with an old school bus packed with laborers to help pick them.

“Tug’s wife, Florence, was also an entrepreneur. She prepared food and took it to sell in the places where the laborers were working. Among the many things she sold, pig’s ear sandwiches were the most popular. . .”

“Joe had a pet dog named Andrew Jackson, who loved to hang around the field as strawberries were being picked. He soon learned that there were lunches on the bus, and he would sneak on the bus and smell the lunch bags. Whenever he found one that had pork shops, he would grab it and run. Then someone would shout. ‘Get that dog. He’s got my lunch.”

Or one about an alligator, a chicken and a goat, as told by Janet Simons.  Her husband, Billy, was close friends with David Kellam, who at one time or another owned all three of these animals as pets.

One day the alligator, which had grown to three feet long, disappeared down the furnace piping in the den of the Kellam house near Princess Anne Courthouse.

“Then a repairman came to do some repairs on the house, and it was necessary for him to go under the house. All of a sudden the people inside the house heard loud shouts and a ‘bump bump’ sound, after which the man reappeared with his head skinned and bleeding from hitting the beams as he was rushing to get out as soon as possible. The alligator had been found!”

There is also: Goldie Bartee, who fulfilled a lifelong dream of  riding a motorcycle – on her 100^th birthday – in a church parking lot.

And, are you ready? The chorus of The Pungo Song, “Crossroads of the World,” by Roland Lakey:

         

         

Meet me at the stop light down in Pungo,

          Be there by 8:30 if you can;

          You’ll find this country girl

          At the crossroads of the world,

          Where Indian River crosses Princess Anne.

Walt and Betty spent several years as missionaries in Latin American countries. She taught English and Spanish to elementary, secondary and college students. When they moved to Pungo it was to a house on the farm where he grew up.


(Whitehurst will sell and autograph copies of his book at the Pungo Strawberry Festival May 26 and 27.)

Photo: Betty and Walt Whitehurst during the Pungo Strawberry Festival, 2008. She was Honorary First Lady and Witch of Pungo and he was Honorary Mayor of Pungo. Courtesy of the Whitehursts.

May 6, 2012

The air was electric with alarm and outrage. A warship of the British Navy had savaged an American vessel just off the Virginia Capes and forcefully removed enlisted sailors. Suddenly, without warning, a state of war seemed to exist. And because no one really knew if this was true or not, confusion reigned.

Into this crisis stepped a one-time Revolutionary War soldier who was regarded as a strong leader and statesman.

Thomas Mathews was born in 1742 in St. Kitts, an island in the British West Indies, and in his mid-20s made his way to Norfolk where he married a local woman, Molly Miller, and settled down to study and practice law.

But war soon intervened, and Mathews signed up for the patriot cause. He rose to the rank of major and served in an artillery regiment commanded by John Marshall, the future chief justice. Marshall’s regiment spent the Winter of 1778-79 at Valley Forge, and it’s likely there that Mathews became friends with George Washington.

                                                                                                      

In 1779, he was put in charge of a garrison of 150 men at Fort Nelson where the present-day Portsmouth Naval Medical Center now stands.  In a surprise attack, the British landed down-river and approached the fort from the rear, forcing its evacuation. He’d remember it ruefully.

After the war he went to Richmond as a delegate to the state Constitutional Convention. He was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1788 and was immediately chosen speaker of the House. There he played a major role in convincing legislators to approve the amendments that are known as the Bill of Rights.

In 1791, as a favor to colleagues, he introduced a resolution to form a new county consisting of the Kingston Parish of Gloucester County. In thanks for his support, the new entity was named Mathews County.

Mathews might have thought he was done with public service, although he kept up soldiering, accepting a position as brigadier general in the local militia. Lawyer, soldier, and by now, at age 65, elder statesman – he might have been ideal for the job he was suddenly handed.

On June 22, 1807, the frigate Chesapeake was mauled by the British warship Leopard, killing four and wounding many others. When the badly damaged ship made it back to port, citizens of Norfolk and Portsmouth were outraged.

Two days later local leaders unanimously called Mathews to chair an emergency meeting. It isn’t certain whether the words of the resulting resolution were his, but they ring with revolutionary fervor. The sailors, they declared, were “basely and insidiously murdered.”

In order to deal with “this awful crisis,” they resolved “to be in readiness to take up arms in defense of those sacred rights which our forefathers purchased with their blood.”

In the meantime, they would cut off all communication and interaction with the large British fleet, most of it anchored in Lynnhaven Bay. That applied to provisioning, repairs and even diplomatic contacts – and they urged other local governments to do the same. Anyone violating the ban “shall be deemed infamous.”

In one of the toughest resolutions, the committee declared “this unprovoked, piratical, savage and assassin-like attack upon the Chesapeake, with the horror and detestation which should always attend a violation of the faith of nations, and the laws of war, and we pledge ourselves and our properties to cooperate with the government in any measures which they may adopt, whether of vengeance or retaliation.”

They resolved also “to hold in readiness an armed force for the purpose of defense.” That meant bolstering the defenses at Fort Nelson. “If they attack us,” Mathews wrote to Gov. William Cabell, “I expect they will land as many marines and seamen from the ships as they can spare, and make an attempt to take Fort Nelson. . . .”

That surely would have been the case six years later had not the British been stopped cold at Craney Island.

By then Mathews was gone. After leaving the legislature, he evidently spent a pleasant retirement for there were reports that was frequently seen on the streets of Norfolk, tipping his hat to passersby.

He died in early 1812 – just before the war. An obituary in The Norfolk Gazette and Public Ledger described him as “kind, affectionate, polite and benevolent.”

Portrait of Thomas Mathews/Courtesy of Mathews Memorial Library

April 29, 2012

The appearance of Jean-Michel Cousteau at ODU last week triggered a flood of memories: Silver-suited aquanauts flying through inner-space like fish; sea creatures curiously inspecting these air-breathing intruders; humans living underwater and scooting about with cameras and diving saucers.

And all the while a silken-voiced, red-capped, French-accented narrator expounding on the wonders and raptures of the deep.

This was the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau, and it was not only brought to us in living color on television screens but, for a brief time, dwelt in our midst.

 You might remember the headlines from 1980: famed ocean explorer to move his operations, including his legendary research vessel Calypso, to Norfolk.

Furthermore, the Cousteau Society and the city would build a $24.7 million Cousteau Ocean Center that would take visitors on imaginary sea adventures.

 The worldwide offices of the Cousteau Society did come to Norfolk, and Calypso and one of her sister ships called the city home for a few years. There was much media attention in 1982 when Calypso set off for an ambitious exploration of the Amazon.

 The Society moved into low-rent space on West 21st Street. Staff converged from several parts of the globe, including Los Angeles and New York. Besides expedition planning, services to 160,000 members, including publications, were handled there.

 Plans were unveiled for a soaring, futuristic exhibition hall on the downtown waterfront. Officials touted it as Norfolk’s coming of age as an international center for marine exploration.

 Cousteau, with his characteristic white turtleneck and trim blue suits, came and spoke and charmed audiences with his vision of a blue planet. Jean-Michel and his family lived in a sprawling house on the Larchmont waterfront.

 But slowly, glacially, the relationship cooled. A review of voluminous yellowing newspaper clips shows the gradual crumbling of trust as city and Cousteau representatives tried to make the plan for an ocean center work. But they could never quite agree on what the center would house or how it would be paid for.

 I can’t figure out whether it was bureaucratic bean counters, cautious public officials or quixotic dreamers -- or all three – that killed the Cousteau Ocean Center. Maybe it was not meant to be.

There were six years of numbing negotiations. City officials couldn’t pin down exactly what the center would display. There’d be simulated adventures but no live animals. For Cousteau that was a non-starter.

And, although some pledges of funds were in hand, the deadline for producing the money kept slipping. It’ll be here, the city was constantly told; it’ll be here.

Back in 1980 when the project was announced, Mayor Vincent S. Thomas wholeheartedly supported it. But by 1984, with a new mayor, Joseph A. Leafe, in office, the story was different. Some think it was dead the moment he arrived in City Hall.

“Captain Cousteau really never focused on exactly what the project should be,” Leafe told me last week. “He’d be here and talk about it and then he’d be gone. Everything was in flux.”

This newspaper began to get cold feet, “It’s time to fish or cut bait,” an editorial said in February 1986.

On April 14, 1986, Leafe did the latter, dropping his support and indicating that a majority of City Council agreed. A formal vote was never taken, but the project was dead.

The Society continued its Norfolk operations, still running its expeditions from here. A few years later, when the city withdrew the low-rent space, it moved to an office in Greenbriar. The only nearby water was a mostly dry creek.

Jacques Cousteau died in 1997 and most society functions moved to Paris, leaving a small staff that moved to the former Hampton Visitor Center on the waterfront.

A few years ago an even smaller staff moved back to Chesapeake. And now, except for a Chesapeake warehouse that still houses tons of decompression chambers, a robot shark and shark cage, submersibles, scooters, ship models, etc. , all vestiges of the Society are gone.

The Cousteau Ocean Center does still live in Norfolk, though. In June 1994, on the exact spot where it was to rise, its replacement, Nauticus, opened. It’s vastly different, of course, but the city recognizes the birthright. Sometime in the future, Nauticus director Hank Lynch says, he’d like to house an exhibit for some of that adventurous stuff.

It’ll be a fitting coda.

Note: I came here in 1993 as editor of Calypso Log, the magazine of The Cousteau Society, then joined the Pilot four years later.

Photo: Calypso docking at the NOAA Pier, June 1979. Pilot file photo.

April 22, 2012

A young navy pilot comes in for a landing near a residential area and realizes he’s not going to make it. There’s a sudden crash and the terrible certainty that people have been killed. But something almost impossible happens. It may be the split-second action by the pilot. Or maybe an almost-Easter miracle. This wasn’t April 7, 2012 but April 13, 1944, and the place was Creeds, a farming community that is now part of sprawling Virginia Beach. It was four days after Easter.

The family of Paul J. Whitehurst Sr. had just settled down for the night. The large wooden house was packed with people: Whitehurst and his wife, Viola: his mother, Mahala; his brother, Aaron; two of their three children, Paul and Madeline. Upstairs were renters, a sailor, his wife and a baby, as well as another sailor’s wife and her baby who were spending the night. The house was in the middle of a wheat field on Campbell’s Landing Road, near the intersection of Morris Neck Road. At about 11:20 p.m., Ensign Luis Echenique was approaching Runway 18 at the Creeds Navy Auxiliary Air Station in an FM-2 “Wildcat” fighter when he apparently realized he was too low. What he saw was runway lights suddenly disappearing. They must have been blocked by a house. He had a split second to react. He pulled up on the stick and tried to gain altitude. There was a huge crash as the plane took off half of the roof. A newspaper account said bricks from a chimney showered the upstairs rooms “as one mother threw herself across her baby, on a bed. None suffered more than a few scratches.” In the other upstairs bedroom, young Paul and his sister Madeline had been sound asleep. The plane just missed their side of the house, but the ceiling collapsed and debris fell everywhere. The severely mangled plane ricocheted off the roof and landed in a tree beside the house. The pilot, although badly shaken, climbed out of the wreckage uninjured except for a few scratches. Everyone had survived. Last week after the FA-18 crash at the Beach, I got an e-mail from Paula Whitehurst Knight, the granddaughter of the house’s owner, remarking on the similarity of the accidents and concluding that if the pilot hadn’t reacted the way he did, “I probably wouldn’t be e-mailing you right now.” Paul J. Whitehurst Jr., the son who lived through the crash, is now “three score and 16 years old,” as he puts it, and still farms the field where the accident took place. Knight’s husband, hog farmer and Republican state Delegate Barry Knight drove me out to visit him the other day. We swung by the field and stood there talking. On the other side of the road the runway for the old Creeds Airfield is still there, but now sits beside a police tactical driving and K-9 training center. He pointed to the middle of the field of waving wheat where the house once stood. Whitehurst, known to all as “P.J.,” was only 8 at the time. He said he awoke to a wild scene. “The next thing I knew, somebody was carrying me downstairs.” And he remembers his uncle Aaron “trying to get the door open. Mother and father carried us out; they were concerned about fire.” Soon after, his father filed a damage report with the Air Station saying, “the house is seriously damaged – foundation and partitions are sprung. Roof of the house has been demolished. Destroyed two rooms entirely and 1 partially. . . Three chimneys and flu’s knocked down. Fence and gate demolished where plane landed. Back porch torn away from house.” “In my opinion,” he concluded, “the house is a complete wreck and is beyond repair. I therefore file claim for a new house.” Paula Knight says her father was too young to remember the details of a likely settlement. “They all moved to his uncle’s house for about two years before they moved to Princess Anne Road.” The era, it seems, was full of plane accidents. “It seemed something happened just about every day,” Whitehurst said. “There were right many accidents.” He doesn’t reflect much on what might have happened, although “You’re talking about a matter of a couple of feet.” [Any lower and] “it might have taken out a lot of people.” But he added, “I don’t really think much about it, tell the truth.”