August 12, 2012

Tucked into the minutes of the House of Burgesses on Sept. 3, 1736 is this line: “Ordered, That Mr. Boush have leave to be absent from the Service of this House, til this Day Seven-night.”

Samuel Boush, courtesy of Sargeant
Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library

Col. Samuel Boush, as he was known, was surely busy; he was drawing up plans for the new town of Norfolk. He didn’t overstay his leave, however, and was back in Williamsburg four days later in time to have a charter for the for the town signed by Gov. William Gooch and then introduce it to the House.

Among those named for the Common Council were none other than Samuel Boush, Mayor, and Samuel Boush “the younger,” as alderman.

It sounds like self-dealing, of course, but Boush, who owned vast amounts of land just north of Main Street was a rich and powerful figure. So who would dare complain?

Boush became Norfolk’s first mayor. But wait, less than two months later, before the first meeting of the council, he died, and George Newton, one of Boush’s hand-picked aldermen, was promptly sworn in.

Samuel Boush's 1762 plan for Norfolk.
Courtesy of Eileen Vernon.

We may only have heard about him because of the wide thoroughfare that takes traffic down to the Norfolk waterfront, turning into Waterside Drive. But there’s a lot more to “the Old Colonel” than meets the eye, or tires that meet the road.

What got me thinking about him is an auction that is going to be held, starting Aug. 21, by the James D. Julian Gallery of Fairfield, Maine. Among the items is “Samuel Boush’s 1762 Plan for Norfolk,” a faded, pen-on-sheepskin map showing the town’s northern expansion.

This wasn’t the original Old Colonel, but Boush “the younger,” the son who continued the family’s vast real estate dealings.

The plan, along with several other items, including a 1794 map of Virginia, a 19^th century still life (with fruit and birds), other paintings and a porcelain vase, are being offered by Eileen Vernon of Virginia Beach, a 7^th generation descendant of Boush.

Not much is known about the second Col Boush, but the first cut quite a figure. So did his brother, Maximilian, who in 1706 was prosecuting attorney in the infamous trial of Grace Sherwood, the “Witch of Pungo.”

I don’t know what there was with the Boushes and rebellious women, but there’s a pattern here. Records show that the town’s first ducking stool was erected in 1716, “good and substantial,” at the end of Samuel Boush’s wharf at the upper end of town.

These barbaric devices, consisting of chairs that were attached to polls and could be lowered into local waterways. They were supposed to, according to one account, correct the behavior of “the good wife who gossiped too much.” Or seemed to be a little out of line. She would be repeatedly ducked until she gasped for forgiveness.

Oh, those Boush brothers!

A lot of people got rich during Norfolk’s growth spurt in the early 1700s, but probably no one more than Boush, the town’s first suburban developer. He owned vast tracks of land just outside town limits and began subdividing them into lots and selling them to tradesmen. Among the first were mariners, shoemakers, shipwrights, weavers and joiners.

By 1715 he was running both ferries across the Elizabeth River, receiving 3,000 pounds of tobacco annually for his services. He had a brick-making business that supplied the building materials for a lot of the town’s new homes, and maybe one of its churches. He gave a silver communion chalice, made in England, to the Borough Church, now St. Paul’s Episcopal.

Now here’s a mystery.  On the side the church nearest the south transept is an inscription with the date 1739 and the initials “S.B.”  Presumably, this is the Boush who gave the chalice and apparently the land where the first churchyard was created.

This historic cemetery beside the church contains the graves of many stalwart figures of the era, but apparently not Boush. Historians have long puzzled about this. Is there a burial site in the churchyard that is so weather-worn that its inhabitant has been forgotten?

We may never know.

August 5, 2012

Alfred Rollins is seated in a comfortable corner chair in his den, with a view of Westover Avenue in West Ghent. On his side table is a stack of books that includes a new CIA espionage thriller. One of his two cats, Oedipuss, makes a quick move, leaping onto his lap while he talks with a visitor.

Alfred Rollins: "No, it's all going for women."
 By Paul Clancy

Rollins is 91 now, at a reflective point in a long and eventful life that included service as a bomber pilot during World War II and, at a time of sweeping change, nine years as president of Old Dominion University.

The two experiences were closely related. Had he not served in the Air Force during the war, he would not have gone back to college under the GI Bill, perhaps ending up selling insurance in Hartford where he grew up. Instead he got his doctorate in American history from Harvard and went on to a distinguished career in education.

It was a long road, from upstate New York, where he taught, to the University of Vermont and then Norfolk, where on July 1, 1976 he became ODU’s third president.

It was a university by then, but in name only, he says. There were just a few thousand students, the overwhelming majority day students. There were a handful of separate colleges, like Education and Arts and Sciences, and a main quadrangle.

But ODU, like many other southern universities, was mostly segregated, with only a few black students and faculty members, while across town, Norfolk State University was almost entirely black.

“During the interviews I had with the search committee, I remember saying to them I would not be involved in any university which wasn’t racially integrated,” he said. “One of the people on the search committee laughed and said, ‘Well that’s been done. We are racially integrated by law.’”

He made a solemn commitment to recruit black students and faculty.

“But there was something else going on that was probably in the long run more important,” he says, “and that was this was a period when large numbers of young people were graduating from high school and wanted to go on to college, and so both of the institutions, Norfolk State and Old Dominion, were tapping into an open market of young people who wanted to go to college but couldn’t afford to go away.

“And we were essentially saying we can provide you with a good college education in an accredited institution, everything you need to have about a college except a dormitory. I felt very good about being involved with that kind of institution and that kind of objective. It was a matter of timing perhaps: if it had been a few years earlier, where Old Dominion was thought of as a white institution I wouldn’t have come down here. I wouldn’t have been involved.”

There was another revolution in the works, the rise in women’s studies and women’s athletics. It was just a few years after passage of Title IV, the law that gives women’s sports equal footing on campuses. And Rollins was pushing hard for gender equality.

“When it came time to raise the fees for athletics,” he says, “the Athletic Department came up with the concept that a certain percentage of this would go for women, a certain percentage to men, I was able to say, no, this raise goes entirely to women’s programs. And so, women’s basketball got a real boost forward. . . I was in a position that I could say, no, it’s all going for women – because I say so.”

Rollins could sit back and watch it happen.

Led by superstar Nancy Lieberman, the Lady Monarchs captured back-to-back national basketball championships in 1979 and 1980, compiling an astonishing 72-2 record over two years. Lieberman would later be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. The cast also included All-American Inge Nissen and Anne Donovan, who became a three-time All-American and 1983 Naismith National Player of the Year. 

Rollins retired in 1985, but continued for several years to teach history. He found time to write short stories, especially about his wartime experiences, to root for ODU basketball teams, and just the other day, to reflect on his role in the school’s history.