Valley Pike by Adrian O'Connor

It’s an age-old continuum common to man — as natural, nay, as expected (almost) as the sun rising in the East: An assumption, uttered once, begets a common perception, which becomes a reality.

Or a version thereof. Sooner or later though — but not always — there comes a tipping point when someone, for history’s sake, says a correction is warranted.
A recent case in point: the genesis of a local treasure, the Congregational-Community Action Project, better known as C-CAP.

For years, or so it seems, it’s been assumed that C-CAP was the baby of local clergy. At least that’s the story I’ve always heard — and, to be honest, never questioned.

Not so, as I learned this past week, or ever since Joe Demski, my Gifted Independent Study student from Sherando High, wrote these words in a profile of longtime C-CAP President Fran Ricketts:
“C-CAP was started in 1975 underneath the old Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church by two priests, a rabbi, a Lutheran minister, and a Baptist minister.”

For the folks largely responsible for the emergence of C-CAP, that proved the so-called tipping point.

Understandable, yes, but somewhat ironic, too, given the author’s youth and the intent of an exercise as much academic — Joe just scratching the surface of latent writing skills — as journalistic.

But a tipping point it was. Joe got the year and location right, but not so the forces that fueled the origin of C-CAP. More so than the clergy, it was the laity, aided by certain government and legal officials, who turned a desire to help the less fortunate into a reality.

Judy Bogner was there from the git-go, as a member of Sacred Heart’s Social Development Committee who, as early as ’68, saw the need for organized “outreach.”
“There was no way,” Judy says, “that a pastor answering his doorbell could answer all the community’s needs.”

But a nascent organization could. Over the next six years, a dedicated cadre — which included Judy, Geraldine Galloway (now Crawley-Woods) and local Lutheran pastors Conrad Christianson and John Morrill — began working the phones and knocking on doors.
Among those who answered the call were M. Kirby Lloyd at the local Social Services office and Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge Carle Germelman. Local churches were also “involved.”

By the spring of 1974, these parties were meeting regularly, and “things,” Judy says, had begun to “coalesce” — so much so that, on a rainy October night that year, an “organization” was conceived.

Over the next five months, by-laws were written, legalities resolved, and formal office space procured, courtesy of the Rev. Charles Gerloff of Sacred Heart, in whose basement that organizational meeting was held.

Critical to this birthing effort, say both Judy and the Rev. Christianson, was getting individual ministers and the ministerial association on board. That meant overcoming a certain “territorialism” and a feeling that the informal system of helping the needy, albeit “duplicative” in many instances, “should stay as is.”

Still, through sheer elbow grease, cooperation was forthcoming. In February 1975, C-CAP (dubbed the Christian Cooperative Action Project until the Jewish community joined) opened its doors in the old Sacred Heart basement on South Loudoun. Eleven churches had signed on, and, says the Rev. Christianson, “donations met needs from the beginning.”

That was nearly 37 years ago. Today, C-CAP remains a beacon, a shining star for many, particularly in this season of giving. That baby — now fully “growed up,” as they say — is doing just fine.

Glorious anachronism

Posted: Dec. 14, 2011

“Army-Navy is one of the most enduring storied rivalries. It was just such a tremendous opportunity to be involved . . . Everything is done with class. I was glad to be part of something that, at the end, winning and losing can be put aside.”
— Pepper Martin III

Late Monday afternoon: I had just returned from an interview and, as is my wont, I checked my office email. And what popped up but a posting from the Chronicle of Higher Education announcing its Dec. 11 issue.

The topic (which well-nigh screamed through the computer screen): “What the Hell Has Happened to College Sports — and What Can We Do About It?”
What serendipity, and what juxtaposition, I thought — for the interview I had just completed touched on everything that still remains right in college athletics — at least for one splendid Saturday afternoon in early December.

Yes, the Army-Navy football game is a singular event and, as I learned from two first-time active participants — Zach Franz and Pepper Martin III of Russ Potts Productions — one that still stands apart. As Zach and Pepper clearly implied, this game — almost an afterthought in a sport tainted at times by misplaced priorities and a pursuit of the almighty dollar — is an anachronism.

A glorious anachronism.

That, in a way that can’t be quantified but must be felt, is what made Zach and Pepper’s involvement so special. For one thing, they were a part of history — the first Army-Navy clash contested in the Nation’s Capital — and, for another, they got to see the game, in all its pomp and pageantry, up close, as they say, and personal.

Zach, a 28-year-old graduate of Sherando where he excelled in basketball and soccer, is senior vice president at RPP. Pepper, 24 and a former Handley wrestler, is the firm’s marketing director.

By dint of these positions, they and their boss, former state Sen. Russ Potts, assisted the Washington Redskins and the Greater Washington Sports Alliance in bringing the 112th rendition of this rivalry to FedEx Field. Over the past two years, RPP has performed a similar marketing/logistics role in three other major college football games played at FedEx.

But this one, as Zach related, was “a little different” given the “tradition” and special events like the annual Army-Navy Gala that required “a lot more logistics.”
The good thing? By game day, their work — save for welcoming guests and thanking those who assisted in the landmark effort — was largely done. “I got to watch and enjoy the game; that was one of my jobs,” said Zach with a grin.

And not just the game itself — a hotly contested 27-21 affair that saw Navy prevail for a record 10th straight time — but all the attendant festivities: the fabled “March On” by the respective corps of Cadets and Midshipmen, and flyovers featuring F-16 jets and Blackhawk helicopters. And witnessing the arrival of the president.

“It’s just such a unique event,” said Zach, who added that he’ll forever cherish the opportunity to have shared the experience with his wife, Nyle, and his father and father-in-law. “It wouldn’t matter if both teams were winless; there would still be a full house . . . Probably half [the crowd] didn’t care who won, just the alums. People were cheering for both teams.”

Pepper, the grandson of an Armed Forces boxing standout, noticed how the camaraderie extended to the players.

“I just thought the sportsmanship was great,” he said. “Even though Navy achieved a milestone win, I think both [academies] should be proud. And even though there can be only one victor, both services won. It was such a moment of unity.”

And, anachronistic or not, a display of all that is right — or can be — in college athletics.

‘The 12, er, ah, 22 Women of Christmas’

Posted: Dec. 7, 2011

Sure signs this most blessed of seasons is surely upon us — Christmas trees for sale lined up against Rouss Fire Hall, the appearance of a Nativity scene near the junction of Va. 37 and U.S. 50 West (I’ve learned from husband George that Carolyn Glaize is responsible for this beacon of goodwill), and the endless airing of what, in my home, are called “those sappy Christmas movies.”
Of the latter, you know these feel-good flicks all too well: Hallmark, ABC Family and Lifetime are inundated with them over these “25 days of Christmas.”

Anyway, my mother-in-law, Maxine Korb, who spent a few weeks with us over Thanksgiving, has a soft spot for these films — and I, admittedly, am a bit of a sucker for them, too. Even though their plot lines are oh-so predictable.

Take, for instance, one titled “The 12 Men of Christmas”: A high-powered blonde (Kristin Chenoweth) gets fired from her Big Apple job, gains employment in the wilds of Montana and organizes a glitzy ad campaign around a beefcake calendar to save an endangered fire and rescue squad. Oh yeah, she ends up falling for one of the EMT dudes who had thoroughly turned her off at the git-go. As I said, predictable — and predictably schmaltzy.

Funny, though, how life can imitate art — at least somewhat. OK, I’m still at The Star, am happily married, and will never be confused for Kristin Chenoweth — but I am hawking a calendar to raise funds for the Newtown Heritage Festival with all the earnestness of the standard Hallmark character.

It’s a special keepsake, featuring as it does the “women of Stephens City” — 22 of ’em — albeit not in the sort of, ahem, imaginative poses reminiscent of the movie “Calendar Girls.” But these are real people — folks encountered daily on Stephens City’s main-traveled roads — and the color photography, courtesy of The Star’s own Ginger Perry, is stunning. As such, I thought the 300 copies we had printed at Commercial Press would fly off the shelves. Not so much, at least not yet.

So who are our “calendar girls”? Well, some, like Tootie Rinker and her mother-in-law Ruth, are familiar faces even beyond the boundaries of “Newtown.” Others — Mayor Joy Shull, the Fravels of The Flower Center, the Farmers Market women (Jacquetta Owens and Angela Mohr), Molly Lantz at our “Good Neighbor Pharmacy,” and the “Town Office ladies” (Dianne MacMillan and Shannon Rothemich) — are well-known to folks who shop and do business within “Newtown’s” cozy confines.

I certainly benefited from my role in helping put this calendar together. I got to meet some of our portrait subjects for the first time — Sis Clark, who runs the night shift at the High Point Restaurant, being one such example. And some I got to know better, or at least their unique stories. For instance, I never knew that Brenda Miller started her furniture and home decor business (The Miller House) in her childhood home on Valley Pike.

In all, the calendar represents a coming together of good stories, fine people, and serendipitous fortune — like on that autumn evening at Sherando when Ginger managed to commandeer the Warrior mascot (horse and all) as a backdrop for the portrait of the school’s assistant principals Karen McCoy and Teresa Ritenour.

What a shot!

And what a perfect stocking stuffer this holiday season. So, behold our “22 Women of Christmas” from Stephens City and help seed a Hallmark ending for the town’s 2012 Newtown Heritage Festival on Memorial Day weekend.

The “Women of Stephens City” calendar can be purchased for $10 at The Miller House, Lantz’s Pharmacy, High Point Restaurant, High Point Truck Stop, The Flower Center, the Town Office, and Handy Mart on Fairfax Street — or from the back seat of my car.

A visit to 'Hollywood'

Posted: Nov. 30, 2011

CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. — First off, a disclaimer: I am not a habitué of Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races, or any other such establishment. It’s not that I consider gambling the Devil’s Coil or anything. It’s just something that never particularly interested me.

Sure, on occasion, I have tossed away a few bucks on the slots, for instance when my wife and I were on a cruise some years back. And, granted, I like to bet the ponies — though without much success — when I accompany “the fellas” to Charles Town to watch Jim Casey’s horses run.

But, unlike my dear departed dad and his recently deceased brother, my Uncle Pat, I’ll never be confused with a horse-racing tout. Dad always said his expertise as a handicapper, not to mention his skill with a pool cue, were signs of a “misspent youth.”

Even with all this said, when Tiffany Lawrence, marketing and public relations manager at Hollywood Casino, came a-callin’ a few weeks back asking if I’d like to tour the recently updated facility, I figured, “What the hay, I might learn something.” Anyway, it’s hard to turn down a request from a former Miss West Virginia (2006).

In truth, I’ve known Tiffany, albeit remotely, since she was a kid, or ever since my wife and her mom, Cheryl, taught together at Shepherdstown Elementary. My defining memory of Cheryl is of her striding into the kitchen at our wedding reception to procure my dad a sorely desired cup of coffee. The woman gets it done.
And so, like mother, like daughter. Tiffany met me last Wednesday at the casino’s valet entrance and proceeded to take me on a whirlwind tour of the ever-evolving pleasure dome crafted by the folks at Penn National. She took me places I’d heard about — the Final Cut Steakhouse, for instance, with its Hollywood memorabilia (e.g., Tom Cruise’s tux from “Mission Impossible”), the Skybox Sports Bar with its frosted beer taps, and the new H Lounge entertainment center — but had never seen.

Another confession: The closest I had ever come to any of these places was in getting lost amidst the maze of slot machines on my infrequent visits to the track.
Along the way and over lunch, Tiffany filled my head with stats pertinent to the business. Hollywood Casino, with more than 4,000 slots and — since 2010, in the wake of a 2009 referendum in Jefferson County — myriad table games, attracts more than 4 million visitors annually.

As Tiffany explained, it’s difficult to ascertain precisely how many folks come from our Winchester-Frederick-Clarke area. But she did say more than 2,700 of our residents hold free Club Hollywood membership cards.
Some 2,200 folks are employed by the casino. And to think, prior to 1997, when Penn National came on board and commenced pouring more than $400 million into a revitalization program, the track employed fewer than 250 people.

Economic impact? Since 1997, the operation has poured more than $1 billion into state coffers. Total slot taxes paid reached a high of $269.29 million in 2008 before the recession hit. This year, as of October, this figure stood at $230.86 million, less than $2 million shy of the total for all of 2010. To be sure, the benefit of a full year’s worth of table games — which started in July 2010 — must be factored into the 2011 figures.

The state, as Tiffany said, “funnels” proceeds back to Jefferson County and its municipalities which, since 1997, have realized more than $28 million from the operation of the casino and track. These dollars, she noted, have helped fund local schools.

Whew! I left “Hollywood” that blustery day thinking that Tiffany has come a long way from the teenager I saw tentatively compete in one of her first beauty pageants. And so, too, has the casino she works for.

In thanks of 'Mr. P'

Posted: Nov. 23, 2011

“There is no Frigate like a Book to take us Lands away ...”
— Emily Dickinson

It’s that time of year again — and so soon? Geez, it seems like only yesterday I was writing my annual Thanksgiving column.

But then, as my wise-cracking dad was fond of saying, “Tempus certainly does fugit.”

So my mind clicks into motion and starts trolling for an idea. The evergreen approach is to compile a list of things for which I am thankful. But that won’t work this go-round, you see, because my thoughts keep circling back to the afternoon of Nov. 7, to something for which so many others — Winchester students past, present, and future — should be thankful.

And that is a gift, and a legacy, and warm memories of someone who truly made a difference in the lives of many by instilling in them a reverence for words, and for the written word as seen in the great works of English Literature.

“It’s a lonely profession,” Jim Porterfield said that cloudy Monday. “You’re on your own, the last one standing. But kids, I thought, may never hear ‘Hamlet’ again. So I’d say to myself, ‘They’ll get it here — and they’ll love it.’”

And not only did they love “it,” but they loved him as well, as demonstrated in a most extraordinary gift — the endowment of a chair for English teachers at Handley High in Mr. Porterfield’s name by two of his former students, J.J. and Kaye Smith.

The monetary value of this gift — $700,000 over seven years — is significant, but more so is the value placed by the Smiths on the educational experience offered by the man known simply as “Mr. P.”

Speaking anecdotally, J.J. recalled the “rigors” of Porterfield’s class — his rugged exams well-nigh impossible to complete in 55 minutes, and his weekly list of vocabulary words that included gems like “pusillanimous,” a synonym for “cowardly.”

But, most of all, the Smiths remembered the “intensity” of Porterfield’s love, not only for literature but for the students whose names (first and last) he committed to memory by the second day of class. “That’s the reason,” J.J. said, “we made this commitment.”

To say that Jim Porterfield, English teacher, was cut from the mold of Central Casting is to engage the mundane, to dabble in cliché. But allow me this observation, after listening to the Smiths and then hearing the man himself speak for a few moments that Monday: If a casting director combed the country looking for the beau ideal of an English teacher, he or she could do no better than “Mr. P.” I left Handley that day wishing I had occupied a seat in his class.

The secret to his success over his 30 years at Handley? For starters, Mr. P. said, “you have to be an actor of sorts.” As such, I assumed, he made the Great Books of English Literature come to life.

Second, Porterfield, over the years, engaged in continual self-instruction. “I teach myself,” he says. “I read Chaucer, an old friend, as if I’m reading him for the first time.” And so, too, Shakespeare, Milton, the Romantic poets, the great Victorians.

“That’s how I lived my life,” says Porterfield, a 2011 retiree. “I spent my entire life doing what I enjoyed. Not many people can say that.”

Nor can many folks say they’ve accomplished their life’s goals — which, in Mr. P’s case, were to earn a commission in the military and to teach English.
Thus, it came as little surprise — at least to me, disinterested observer — to witness these twin passions commingled.

Upon learning of the honor bestowed upon him by two erstwhile students, Porterfield, proud VMI grad (Class of ’65) that he is, said, “It’s the academic equivalent of the Medal of Honor, Silver Star, and Bronze Star in one fell swoop.”

And it makes for a great Thanksgiving — in so many ways.

Handlians home

Posted: Nov. 16, 2011

In examining treasures long lost and now suddenly found — a pair of Handley High annuals from 1946 and ’47 — I discovered a shard of paper, of obviously recent vintage, inside the latter book.

On it, so her daughter Sherri Sisk told me, Emma Owens had taken the time to record how many young ladies from the Class of ’47 had written notes beside their senior portraits to her late husband, Richard Byrd “Dick” Owens.

That number painstakingly noted after perusing that Handlian, returned to the Northern Valley by mail mere hours earlier — 45. But then, it was no mystery to Mrs. Owens, now 93 and living with Sherri in Bunker Hill, W.Va., that her Dick was something of a flirt.

Nor was it a mystery, or even news, to either mother and daughter, that Dick was also a BMOC (Big Man on Campus) atop Handley Hill. Upon leafing through that ‘47 Handlian, one can’t help but notice that the standard list of activities beside each senior portrait was longest for Dick.

As Sherri says, her dad was “in everything” — from football and track to the Glee Club and Handlian staff. In a class that included such notables, then and future, as the late Del. Al Smith, former City Manager Wendell Seldon, and local ice-cream maven George Garber, Dick Owens was voted “Best All-Around” by his classmates.
What is a mystery, though — and liable to remain one for some time — is how these yearbooks found their way to Tidewater and, eventually, into the hands of a fella named Benny Potts.

A few weeks back, if you recall, I wrote in this space how Mr. Potts had sent a “cold” email to The Star asking us to track down Dick Owens or members of his family. It seemed that Benny had come upon two Handlians he surmised, on due inspection, belonged to Dick.

Well, typically, as is often the case with Valley Pike, notes were passed — Nora Garber, George’s wife, for instance, dashed one off to Mrs. Owens, Sherri told me — and calls were made. Sherri, who works for Valley Health and was 19 when her dad died unexpectedly of what was termed a massive heart attack on Oct. 2, 1977, rang me at The Star. I gave her Benny’s number down south and — Voila! — a week ago today the yearbooks, looking no worse for the wear, arrived in Bunker Hill.

Needless to say, Dick’s family was overjoyed at their arrival. In an email to Benny, Sherri stressed that “these books will not just get thrown in a closet somewhere, they will be looked [at] over and over again.” And indeed they have been — not only by Emma and Sherri but, as the latter told me, by her twins Kerri and Samantha who never knew their granddad but now know a lot more about him than they did 10 days ago.
“It’s been sad in a way, but also very special,” Sherri says.

And, yes, still a mystery. She and Benny, she adds, have “compared notes.” But nothing adds up. Maybe Dick and Benny’s uncle and grand uncle, Grier and Thurman — both of whom graduated from Handley before the Pottses moved south — were in service together. But Sherri can’t imagine her dad “lugging” those yearbooks to basic training in Kentucky.

Or maybe, as Sherri speculates, the books were lost in transit when Dick’s mom moved from Boscawen to Kent back in the ‘50s and somehow wound up in the possession of Benny’s kin.

It matters little though, as the books are back home, and cherished anew as vehicles for misty-eyed trips down Memory Lane.

In first writing about Dick Owens’ wayward Handlians, I made what we in the business call an MFE (Major Factual Error).

I placed Jim Taylor and Bob Edwards, of whom I’ve also written recently, in the same Handley Class of ‘47 as Dick. Truth is, Jim and Bob are both proud members of the Class of ’46.

A birthday gift that keeps on giving

Posted: Nov. 10, 2011

“Bobby, he made all these people come together.”
— Joyce Butler Allen

As birthday requests go, Joyce Butler Allen’s was a tad unusual. But if fulfilled, it would not only satisfy a longtime dream, but also bring closure to an entire family.

The way Joyce, now 77, figured it, she and her husband John were going to be in Europe anyway, on a business trip. So why not, after all these years, travel to the site where, 67 Octobers ago, her brother Bobby’s B-24 “Liberator” crashed to the earth following a mid-air collision with another American bomber?

Plans were made, and so, too, a phone call — between Joyce’s travel agent and a friend in France who then contacted the Edenkoben Homeland Society in the Palatinate region of Germany. And so was set in motion a journey that not only brought Joyce to the site of her brother’s death, but also brought nations — once bitter enemies — and people together. For one Handley grad (Class of ’54), it was the trip of a lifetime.

Joyce was but 9 when the plane on which Staff Sgt. Robert R. Butler served as a flight engineer and top turret gunner went down on a cold and gray October afternoon. Its mission: to bomb German industrial targets near Mainz.

Joyce says her mother never talked about the death of her son, the oldest in a family of 10. Not even the return of Bobby’s remains to the United States — he was buried in Mount Hebron in late 1948 — could assuage her grief. But Joyce, who resides with John in Coalton, W.Va., near Elkins, never gave up on a long-held wish. This past Oct. 5, it came true.

And what a story she heard. Bobby was one of 12 American aviators lost that day when the two planes hurtled into the Black Forest. Burghers from Edenkoben buried them all at the north end of the town cemetery. Following the end of hostilities, the airmen’s bodies were exhumed — and, in Bobby’s case, identified — and removed to the American cemetery near the French town of St. Avold.

To this day, as Joyce discovered, Americans and Germans are still collaborating in the search for MIAs. She learned, too, that the collision of the two Liberators remains a matter for historical inquiry, and that the hardy citizenry of Edenkoben never forget. They consider the spot where the planes plunged to earth “sacred ground.”

And so on the morning of Oct. 5, there to greet Joyce and John was not only town historian Herbert Hartkopf, who wrote an article for the local newspaper on the anniversary of the crash, but also Uwe Benkel, an insurance agent who, as leader of the MIA Research Club, had scoured the crash site with a metal detector.
Oddly enough, Joyce says, Herbert and Uwe had never met until that day, even though the latter had positively identified pieces of the downed aircraft. A portion of a tail section is displayed in the Edenkoben town museum.

On that morning, the small party traversed the “sacred ground” where Bobby perished. Uwe, his metal detector ever at the ready, found what he believes are pieces of a bomb. Joyce carried flowers that she laid in the forest and observed a prolonged moment of silence for her brother.

Tears still glisten in her eyes as she retells the story of that day, and of how Uwe has gone into German schools, with a photo of Bobby in hand, to tell his story and that of the doomed planes.

“Think of it,” she says, “a German telling the story of the Butlers, that this man [in the photo] came from a family affected by war.

“To the German people, to them, it’s very important that German villagers, through circumstances, were involved in this.”

And so closure, it seems, belongs not to the Butlers alone. This is a birthday gift that keeps on giving, in so many ways.

What it means to be
a Warrior

Posted: Nov. 2, 2011

(This fall, it has again been my privilege to be a mentor in Frederick County’s Gifted Independent Study Program. My student is Joe Demski, a senior at Sherando. Joe researched the origins of his school’s name. You’ll be interested in reading what he uncovered. And so, I’m handing the rest of this column over to Joe.)

As a senior at Sherando, I have always loved the thought of being a warrior. I personally take great in pride in what our mascot represents and the traditions we hold.

When talking to out-of-town friends last summer, I spoke a lot about our football pre-game ritual in which a warrior on horseback rides into the stadium and throws down his spear at midfield.

While speaking of the electric Friday-night atmosphere in Arrowhead Stadium, I was posed a question I was not ready to answer.

“What is Sherando?” asked a friend from Minnesota. I stood dumbfounded before replying, “I don’t really know. I think it’s an Indian tribe or chief or something.”
This bugged me. I’m not the only one at Sherando who doesn’t know the exact origin of our name, but I wanted to find out what it was that I take so much pride in.
I did some research, and found my answer. Around 1700, Iroquois Indians in the lower Shenandoah Valley began referring to where they lived as “Sherando,” a name derived from a strong former chief “Gherundo.” When white men began to settle they believed the Indians were saying “Shenaudow.” This is likely why today the Valley is referred to as the Shenandoah.

Those warriors of the Sherando were here more than 300 years ago. Today, the Sherando Warriors use the images of those brave Indians for motivation and tradition.
The most notable of our practices? That Indian riding in — Sherando pride in motion.

This custom began in 1997, when former Principal Joseph Swack approached Ag teacher Jeff Stout with the idea. Mr. Swack believed it would be a great send-off for the seniors if a warrior galloped onto the field to close graduation.

Stout loved the idea. The plan became a schoolwide scheme, and other teachers were recruited to help make it possible. It came to fruition at the ’97 graduation. Students were surprised and excited. It became a tradition at that point.

Everything about the warrior is authentic. His face paint is in the same style as that of an Iroquois warrior. Robin Owens, then our cheer coach and now our Gifted Resource teacher, has painted the warrior since that original graduation. Owens has done research on the style of paint and even uses Indian figurines as examples. Over the years, the headdress, paint, clothing, and spear have changed, but have remained authentic.

Stout continued as the warrior until graduation 2005. A new warrior (whose name is to remain secret) took the reins in 2006.

During the 2007 football season, the Warrior Club approached this new warrior and asked him if he could start home games in the same fashion. A new twist on the tradition was born!

The appearance of the warrior never fails to elicit a roar from the crowd. This doesn’t faze his American Quarter Horse, who also participates in Civil War re-enactments and is used to general pandemonium. Even more amazing is that it is blind in one eye, but as his rider says, feeds off the energy of the crowd just like the athletes.

There is nothing quite like Arrowhead on a Friday night. Even those who aren’t football fans find something to get excited about. The college-like atmosphere is like none other in the area. The reason? That pregame tradition.

Now, I feel more prepared to answer the question from this summer. So what is Sherando? Yes, it’s the name of an Indian chief and the origin of our Valley’s name. But it’s way more than that.

“Sherando” is what means to be a true warrior: pride and tradition.

Class of '47 Strikes Again

Posted: Oct. 26, 2011

Sometimes even in the column-writing business you get a “run” on things, and these days, it seems, I just can’t enough of the Handley High Class of 1947.

Back in September, if you recall, I did a two-part series on a fella named Jim Taylor (Class of ’47, but now living in Baton Rouge, La.) who sent me some detailed emails chock-a-block with memories of his formative years in Winchester.

A few columns later, I noted how another ’47er, Bob Edwards, had uncovered 1911 sheet music for “Apple of the Valley,” a locally written song highlighted in The Star’s “Out of the Past” feature.

And now this short note . . .

Benny Potts, a Norfolk resident whose family roots run back to the Valley, wrote us with a unique request — find Richard Byrd Owens, or at least a living relative of his.

The reason? Benny has in his possession two Handlians, from 1946 and ’47, that presumably belonged to “Dick” Owens (Class of ‘47). “Presumably” is, perhaps, too tepid an assumption as the notes and autographs in the yearbooks are all addressed to him.

The mystery in all this — and Valley Pike dearly loves a mystery — is how Benny’s family came to be caretakers of these yearbooks. As he explains, his grandparents lived in Winchester but moved to Norfolk in the early ’40s as jobs were more plentiful there.

So, as Benny implies, chances are good that his grandparents knew Mr. Owens “back in the day” and, perhaps, were even schoolmates of his. Still, that hardly explains possession of the yearbooks. The best Benny can figure is that Mr. Owens may have joined the Navy, was stationed in Norfolk, and gave his yearbooks to the Potts family for safe-keeping.

Well, consider that done. Now, after more than 60 years, Benny wants to see these Handlians returned to folks who might cherish them. And he’s enlisted our help. So, here’s our call: Any Owenses out there?

“Pathway of Pride” — OK, the notion of “It takes a village” may be a bit overdone, but in the case of the new arch and brick “pathway” dedicated Friday at James Wood High, it did take many hands — and hearts — to produce something truly meaningful.

The list of firms involved in this worthy endeavor — Crane’s Welding, Winchester Metric, Spahr Metric, Frederick County Customs, Ruckman Engineering, Carroll Concrete and Excavation, Essroc, Stuart M. Perry, Frederick Block — reads like a “who’s who” of local small businesses and manufacturers. The finished product, as envisioned by the James Wood Touchdown Club, is sure to be a source of “pride” for the Colonel Community.
And, needless to say, the Touchdown Club could not have picked four worthier individuals to honor as
“cornerstones” along the “pathway” than four gentlemen who are the very embodiment of “Colonel Pride”: Don Shirley, principal from 1975 to 1999; Jim Casey, coach and athletic director from 1954 to 1986; Wendell Dick, JWHS athlete, teacher, coach, and principal (“Mr. James Wood”); and Walter Barr, who book-ended an inspirational gridiron coaching career with memorable stints at Wood.

No. 268 — Speaking of pride-generating accomplishments, I’d like to give a special shout-out to West Virginia’s new leader in career victories in football — Musselman’s Denny Price.

The Star stopped covering the Applemen on a regular basis in 2000, but I’ve maintained my interest in Musselman football — if only, at times, from afar.
With a 49-6 thrashing of Keyser last Friday, Price, in his 39th year at Musselman, now stands alone atop his peers, past and present.

“I’m the one that’s been blessed,” he told throngs of well-wishers after his 268th victory.

His players, I contend, would say it’s the other way around.

ISO a battlefield

Posted: Oct. 19, 2011

LEESBURG — In the spirit of the Civil War sesquicentennial, and ever cognizant of anniversaries, I went in search of a battlefield Tuesday morning — and a battle I had long heard about but, in reality, knew nothing about.

Truth be told, until recently, I didn’t have the foggiest where this Confederate victory took place.

I first recall Ball’s Bluff being mentioned back in the early ’70s when my sister’s grad-school apartment-mate complained bitterly when a professor assigned her to do a definitive paper on the scrap, which transpired 150 years ago this Friday — Oct. 21, 1861.

I remember that lamentation vividly, but even the passing interest it produced yielded no desire to learn the true details — or the location — of the fight.

Obviously.

For some reason, I always assumed Ball’s Bluff was closer to Washington, in Fairfax County somewhere. An explanation of the battle in a recent Washington Post article jolted me to attention. Ball’s Bluff is a 600-yard shale and sandstone precipice overlooking a bend in the Potomac — near Leesburg.

So Tuesday morning saw me on Va. 7 headed that way. As usual with me, such gallivanting produced a wrong turn, which — following a momentary bout of “I’ll-find-it” stubbornness — inspired a trip to the town’s visitors center.

Duly set on my way, I found a precious, albeit tiny, historical gem, almost an afterthought bounded by the river and one of those inevitable Loudoun subdivisions. The site is well-marked, hiker-friendly, and features one of America’s smallest national cemeteries — 25 graves in all.

What of the battle itself? Well, it’s not lacking in significance, being the only one in which a U.S. senator — Edward D. Baker of Oregon, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln’s — was killed in combat.

Like many battles dating back to ancient times, I suspect, Ball’s Bluff originated in a mistake. Ordered by Union commander George B. McClellan to determine Rebel whereabouts around Leesburg, Gen. Charles Stone, on the night of Oct. 20, sent a scouting party across the Potomac from Poolesville, Md. Upon scaling Ball’s Bluff, a Union patrol moved inland and, in dim moonlight, spied the outlines of a Confederate camp. Or so it thought. What the soldiers actually saw was a stand of trees.

Stone sensed an opportunity and acted on this “intelligence,” sending Col. Charles Devens and five companies of the 15th Massachusetts — a reconnaissance in force — across the Potomac that night. In a portent of grisly events to come, Stone had trouble procuring boats to ferry troops across a river too deep to ford.

Observing this activity was Col. Nathan “Shanks” Evans, whose 17th Mississippi moved quickly to strike the first blow of a fight that should never have happened. A spirited skirmish turned into a daylong battle. And a Union disaster.

Space hardly allows greater detail, but suffice it to say, the Federal position was indefensible, its soldiers pinned atop a high bluff with the river at their backs. Baker died manning an artillery piece. Many others perished as they tried to escape down the steep slope. Others, unable to swim, drowned as their skiffs foundered.

In all, the Union force of 1,720 suffered more than 1,000 killed, wounded, or captured. The Rebel casualties: 36 killed, 117 wounded.

The stunning defeat, not to mention Baker’s death, prompted the establishment, with full investigative powers, of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Its first victim: Gen. Stone, accused of treason and imprisoned without charges. Eventually released, he never recovered his reputation.

One of the “survivors” of Ball’s Bluff, though, was a 20-year-old lieutenant from Massachusetts. Wounded twice in the battle, he later became the oldest man to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. His name? Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Bob, Paul - and 'Calendar Girls'

Posted: Oct. 12, 2011

A little bit of this, a little bit of that for a Wednesday morning starting with . . .

“Calendar Girls” — It’s never been a part of this column’s modus operandi to serve as flack for the causes of its writer. But I’ll make an exception here.

This is how I figure it: If the likes of Bill O’Reilly can shamelessly shill for his books on his popular Fox news and commentary program, why can’t I say a word, or 50, about a fundraiser we at the Newtown Heritage Festival are laboring to bring to fruition? It’s called “Women of Stephens City,” a 2012 calendar featuring photos of ladies well-known around our little burg.

Hey, don’t get any ideas that this is a shameless — that word again — ripoff of the movie “Calendar Girls,” right down to those provocative poses and garb that leaves little to the imagination.

It’s not that at all, though I must admit that flick may have inspired the concept — at least partially. In truth, though, what got me thinking about such a project was Joy Shull’s election last year as the town’s first female mayor.

Then I, as well as other members of the festival committee I am privileged to guide this year as president, got to thinking about the many other women who play leading and/or highly visible roles in our community. Truth be told, getting enough women to fill all 12 months was, at times, an exercise in arm-twisting. But, in the end, enough graciously agreed — it will benefit the festival and thereby the town, after all — and the calendar, it seems, will become a reality.
Currently in the throes of production, it will, we hope, be ready for sale at local venues in Stephens City on Nov. 19, the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

Can you say stocking-stuffer? Each month holds a pleasant surprise, a smiling friend or acquaintance from the main-traveled roads of our lives.

“Apple of the Valley” — Back last month, if you recall, in The Star’s regular feature “Out of the Past,” there appeared a snippet from late August 1911 about a new and “catchy” song penned by two local girls, Agnes Bell and Mary Hack, called “Apple of the Valley.”

The tune, so stated the story, exuded “all the fragrance of the fruit that has made the Valley of the Shenandoah famous.” It went on to say that “(t)he apple men of the Valley will find this song not only most pleasing but a valuable asset for advertising purposes.”

Well, wouldn’t you know it, but a few weeks after that reminiscence ran, my ol’ Rotary buddy, H. Robert “Bob” Edwards, produced for my perusal actual sheet music for “Apple of the Valley,” dated 1911. Bob, a musician at Handley before matriculating at U.Va. en route to a career in banking, boasts a substantial cache of sheet music from “back in the day.”

This bit of music, though, predates Bob’s “day.” He is a 1947 grad of the high school atop the hill.

National exposure — I don’t know how many of you read Popular Mechanics on a regular basis, but if you do, you may have noticed a familiar name jump off the page of the edition that hit the newsstand, and the Web, late last month: Paul Brewer, your friendly electrical department manager at Solenberger’s Hardware.

Paul’s observations and ruminations led off a story titled “Is the Light-Bulb Ban a Bright Idea?” Noting the looming ban on Tom Edison’s marvel — the incandescent light bulb — slated to take effect (courtesy of Congress) on New Year’s Day 2012, Paul relates the story of a valued customer who, one day recently, came into the Berryville Avenue store and purchased two cases of incandescent bulbs, 240 lights in all.

“He’s just used to them,” says Paul, who’s been buying and selling bulbs at Solenberger’s for 34 years. “He knows what he likes.”

As do we all, as do we all.

Crisis of FAN-aticism

Posted: Oct. 5, 2011

Say this about the Toyota Echo: Those little cars, made for just a few years at the turn of this century, wear like iron. You still see a lot of ’em on the road. Mine is one.
But this is not a paean to the Echo as much as it is a lamentation on the license plate adorning it. And on all the emotions wrapped up therein.

You see, that plate — SAWXFN — is not just a way of identifying me among all other Echo owners. It also says an awful lot about me.

Figured it out yet? Most folks do, eventually. Oh yeah, he’s a Boston Red Sox fan. Yes, I am. But, as of the witching hour last Thursday, that devotion has witnessed much stress, most self-induced.

I needn’t go through the sordid details, as they’re well-known by now. Suffice it to say, last Thursday was a weird day, filled as it was with demons — ghosts, curses, whatever — all “Sawx fans” believed were exorcised seven years ago. We fans of the Olde Towne Team cannot help but feel, in the wake of Wednesday’s surreal happenings, that “they’re baaa-aaack.” Seven years of relative feast done; 77 (or 86 more?) of famine in the offing?

And so, true diehard that I am, I walked through Thursday in a bit of a daze, as did other locals in this far-flung outpost of Red Sox Nation. When I stumbled into the office that morning, an e-mail from my fantasy-league buddy, Bill Grubbs, awaited me. Its subject line said, simply, “Tears.” The word “unbelievable” was also used.

That night’s Rotary Shrimp Feed was a minefield of emotion. Dick Helm, though not a Sox fan, greeted me, arms outstretched, with a theatrical “How did that happen?” Moments later, I huddled with Don Butler for a quick assessment of our team’s unprecedented swoon. A lighter (only in retrospect) moment came in the chow line when I passed up a bowl of New England clam clowder. The server, club treasurer Dan Martin, said, “Has it come to that?”

Not really — I’m not supposed to eat cream-based soups — and, then again, yes really. You see, I’m laboring through a crisis of . . . well, let’s not call it faith — that’s borderline sacrilegious, even knowing as I do that Red Sox devotion is the one true “religion” linking all six New England states. Call it instead a crisis of FAN-aticism.

Forget, for a moment, that rage and disgust fueled my response to the Sawx’ collapse on the field. That I can weather, after lo these many years. What really has me questioning my allegiance is the team’s dismissal of the man most blameless for that giant gack-job, manager Terry Francona.

I know what’s been said by team officials, by baseball cognoscenti, by Francona himself — that he “lost” the clubhouse, that it was time for a new leader, yada, yada, yada. I, as a longtime fan, think “Tito” deserved better.

Not only did his record — 744-552 over eight seasons, 8-0 in Series play with two world’s championships — scream for a shot at redemption, but so, too, his demeanor. He’s a player’s manager, a straight shooter, a “I’ve got your back” kind of guy. And, hey, while this year’s 2-10 start and 7-20 September swoon were ghastly, in between the Sox were 81-39, merely the best record in baseball.

Still, he’s gone, even though he didn’t throw a pitch, swing a bat, or make a trade. It all has me wondering if a club that jettisoned a good guy like that could still be mine.

Genetics and past history suggest a parting of the ways. My late dad, for instance, never forgave the Yankees for not giving Babe Ruth, savior of the franchise as well as the game, a chance to manage the Bronx Bombers, ill-fated as that might have been. He passed on his utter contempt to his only son. And, 20-odd years ago, I dropped my once-beloved Dallas Cowboys following Jerry Jones’ heartless treatment of Tom Landry.

But the Sawx? I just don’t know. Let’s just say, for the time being, the license plate has lost its luster.

Jim Taylor's Winchester

Posted: Sept. 28, 2011

“I still own the Washington Street house, but that is my only connection with Winchester — except family at Mt. Hebron, and fond memories of Winchester and the Valley.”

— Jim Taylor, Handley Class of ’46.

Last week, I introduced you — or re-introduced you, as the case may be — to Jim Taylor, Handley Class of ’46, who wrote from Baton Rouge, La., where he has lived for many years.

Jim, a few days away from his 83rd birthday, doesn’t come north much anymore — particularly after a “brain bleed” episode he calls his “three-month Rip Van Winkle experience” — but from his wistful posts I can tell his heart still, in many ways, resides here.

Jim, as the lead quote suggests, grew up on South Washington, 618 to be exact. But the house he owns is not the dwelling in which he was delivered into this world by Dr. Ben Dutton. His birthplace — a log home covered with weatherboard — was moved to 18 W. Germain in 1939, when the brick pile at 618 S. Washington was built.

A word about that log home: Jim recalls that classmate Ann Shull lived there for a spell until it burned. Later, he says, Ann and her husband Doc Wiener, a 1944 graduate of Handley and a drummer for the Marching Judges, built a brick home at 18 W. Germain.

Jim’s parents were both working folk. His mom, he told me, worked for years at the old Lovett’s shoe store on “North Main” (Loudoun). His dad, so my Rotary buddy Bob Edwards informed me, was a Postal Service employee.

Through his family, Jim boasted a connection to — and a reading interest in — The Star. It seems his aunt, Eva Whetzel, who ran a beauty shop (“Eva’s Beauty Box”) from her home on North Loudoun, was a regular editorial-page correspondent. “She didn’t mind saying her mind about various subjects affecting Winchester, the state, or the country,” he says. “And she was a pretty good poet as well.”

One of Jim’s closest friends growing up was a youngster whose name is now synonymous with Winchester baseball — Boyd “Bodie” Grim. Bodie, who lived on Germain, was forever organizing pick-up ball games, Jim says. Later in his all-too-short life, he excelled at softball. Bodie, killed in the Korean War, is memorialized at Jim Barnett Park, where his name adorns one of the baseball fields.

And, speaking of ball diamonds, Jim says he spent a lot of time at Rouss Park (where Ohrstrom-Bryant Theatre now stands) chasing foul balls and tape-measure home runs off the bats of semi-pro players — for bags of peanuts.

Finally, among the notable names sprinkled through his stream-of-conscious stroll down Memory Lane were George Garber, also Class of ’46, who played center on that undefeated Judges gridiron squad of ’45, and future Handley teacher Patsy Jack (nee Ritter) who, back in his day, was one of the girls from the neighborhood. Patsy lived on Braddock.

Upon settling into his career with Esso (now ExxonMobil), Jim, a Hokie who later did graduate work at Lehigh, made it back to Winchester but infrequently. Once a devoted runner and triathlete — nine marathons and two “ironman” competitions — he came back thrice in the ’80s to witness “The Bloom” again and to run in the Apple Blossom 10-K. His most recent visit was in the summer of 2008, en route to Lancaster, Pa., for a Virginia Tech Highty Tighty reunion.

In the wake of his “brain bleed,” Jim is uncertain whether he’ll ever return. But daughter Lizabeth, who also resides in Baton Rouge, is eager to see Dad’s homeplace. So, if he does come north, Jim says he’ll stop in. I’d love to meet him.

Writin' . . . from Baton Rouge

Posted: Sept. 21, 2011

“Watching the Weather Channel coverage of ‘Irene’ makes it look like you may be in for some north winds and a lot of rain. Hope it is nothing much more. Hope you stay dry, that the presses keep electric power, and Water Street doesn’t flood again.”

— Jim Taylor, Handley Class of ’46, from Baton Rouge, La.

Sometimes, they just arrive out of the blue. Or, in this case, from out of a stormcloud way down South.

Anyway, I just love letters that start, “Mr. O’Connor, you don’t know me, but I feel that I know you.” That’s how Jim Taylor began his reflective email of Aug. 27, when Irene was roaring, hell bent for leather, up the East Coast.

So how does a man who left Winchester decades ago and now lives (in blessed retirement) in Baton Rouge after years spent working for ExxonMobil feel as if he knows me? Well, his daughter presented him my book, “Remembering Winchester: The Best of ‘Valley Pike,’” last October on his 82nd birthday. It seems Jim lived much of what I’ve written about pertinent to Winchester in the 20th century.

For instance, he was delivered by Dr. Benjamin Dutton, the revered physician who was the subject of one of my first columns. He also sledded — and, on one memorable occasion, actually skied — down Shiner’s Hill in the Handley neighborhood. And he also partook of the water delights at Willow Lawn pool — mostly, he says, “when escorting a group of campers from a summer camp in Round Hill.” Talk about lucky, Jim was the lone male in the camp’s cadre of four counselors.

To be sure, many of Jim’s reminiscences center around Handley. Considered a rather “frail child” — he had a heart murmur and was subject to nosebleeds — Jim got a late start playing sports, but an early one playing music. For years, he studied trumpet under Handley band director W.H. McIlwee.

But, come Jim’s early teenage years or thereabouts, his parents took him to a new doctor who told them, “Don’t worry about the murmur.” Another physician, he says, “sealed the leaky vein (in his nose) with a hot needle.” And so, free to indulge athletic passions long restrained, Jim would go around the block from his Washington Street home to Hink Lewis’ house, where there was a jumping pit and a shot-put circle. There, he says, “I got in shape enough to go out for track and football” at Handley.

Jim lettered in both sports, and played on the ’45 football team that made Handley history as the first to go unbeaten and untied. Coaching the Judges that year was Snag Sargent, who stepped in when Hunter Maddex went off to war.

Jim, though, never lost his interest in music. After the season’s finale in football — a 13-0 conquest of Martinsburg — he went to Gaylen Strunce, who had taken over for “Prof” McIlwee as band director, and asked if he could join the Marching Judges. Mr. Strunce, he recalls, told him that if he could learn all the scales by heart he could “play third trumpet in about five marches.”

That he did, in time to march with a number of longtime friends in the ‘46 Grand Feature Parade at Apple Blossom. And so, he believes with justifiable pride, he was the school’s “first three-letter man ... in track, football, and band.”

This band “experience,” Jim notes, prompted him to join a group of young musicians who met regularly at the Rouss Fire Hall for practice. This ensemble played at a number of events around town, he adds, including one at Jordan Springs to promote Dale Carnegie’s best-seller “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

In 1946, Jim matriculated at Virginia Tech where, no surprise, he auditioned for, and made, the Highty Tighties, the school’s fabled cadet marching band.

Next Wednesday: Jim Taylor’s Winchester — where he lived, whom he knew, where he hung out.

A buzz saw, and
a twice told tale

Posted: Sept. 14, 2011

Usually I’m a bitter-ender. When I attend a football game, or any sporting event, I like to stay to the final out, horn, or whistle.

But on Saturday, with 6:15 left in the third quarter at the Handley Bowl, I had seen enough. I had seen enough of greatness.

And, make no mistake, that’s the only word to describe Martinsburg’s performance, on this day at least. When I opted to leave, the score stood 51-7, in favor of the Bulldogs. They would go on to beat Handley, 61-14.
Before I departed, though, I had a chance to huddle with former state Sen. (and Star sports editor) Russ Potts, who was even more excited about the renewal of this traditional rivalry than I was. We quickly agreed on two things: first, that we thought the revival would draw a larger crowd — The Star pegged the attendance at around 2,000 — and, second, we wished the score were a bit closer, for obvious reasons.

But what can you say when you run into a buzz saw? The Judges are a good team which, given their modus operandi of late, will only get better. They’ll be in the playoff hunt yet again come November, I feel sure. But the team they played Saturday is, well, special. Or appears to be. And I say that as one who has watched high-school kids go at it for more than 30 years.
These ’Dogs are deep, they’re big, and they’re quick-on-quick. And, as defending West Virginia AAA champs, they carry a swagger — not showy as much as confident. They know they’re good.

As such, the Judges should just file this game away, forget about it — and start looking toward the next contest and the district schedule ahead. Do that and by the end of the season, they, too, will be good. After all, they always are.

Martinsburg’s 30-point second-quarter eruption gave me precious little to write about by halftime. In terms of drama, I mean. Fortunately, I ran into an old friend and Handley grad, Manuel Sempeles.

Manuel, who played both ways for Handley (fullback and linebacker) and frequently has a yarn to relate, let me in on a good one: He was, he says, the central figure in the most controversial play ever in the Handley-Martinsburg series, back when it was contested annually on Thanksgiving Day.

The year was 1949, and Handley (so The Star writeup says) was holding a comfortable 12-0 lead early in the fourth quarter. But Martinsburg was driving.
With the ball on the Judges 25, Handley end Bobby Anderson hit the Martinsburg quarterback — Potts, by name — as he was dropping back to pass. The ball popped loose. Manuel picked it out of mid-air and raced 75 yards to paydirt.

Touchdown, said the officiating crew. No touchdown, said the Bulldog coaching staff, led by John Coburn. The ball, they said, hit the ground and, by the rules of the day, could not be advanced.

As Manuel recalls, the argument raged for upwards of 15 to 20 minutes. At one point, an official asked him if the ball had struck the turf. “No, sir,” Manuel remembers saying. The touchdown stood, but Manuel recollects being a marked man for the rest of the game. He was, he says now with a laugh, pinched, gouged, and punched.

He was equally marked after the contest. One of the Martinsburg coaches came up and posed the same question as the official. His reply was the same, to which he recalls the older man saying, “Then you’re a damned liar.”

Duly informed of this undignified retort, Handley coach Hunter Maddex, Manuel says, stormed over to the Bulldog locker room to give the offending party what-for.
The next day’s Martinsburg Journal, Manuel adds, refused to count the touchdown in its coverage. Its final score: 12-0.

Hmmmm. That gives us an idea. We’ll amend Saturday’s final to be, say, 37-7, likewise the score at halftime. Let’s go with that.

Class of '61: The Coach

Posted: Sept. 7, 2011

“I wouldn’t be where I am today if it were not for Coach Casey.”
— Don Unger, James Wood High Class of ’61

Ask anyone remotely familiar with high-school athletics in these parts over the past half-century to name the Northern Valley’s best coach, and you’ll pretty much get the same answer. And not just from James Wood folk, mind you.

The coach’s name? Jim Casey.

Granted, several coaches made bigger splashes in individual sports — Ron Rice, Walter Barr, Carroll Reid, and Ron Lindon in football, for example, and Willie Walters in wrestling, and Tommy Dixon, Jimmy Omps, and, now Debby Sanders in basketball.

But for unparalleled excellence in all three major sports — football, basketball and baseball — there’s been no one quite like Jim Casey. He has the records to back it up.

For instance, Casey’s James Wood basketball teams, over an eight-year tenure, compiled a record of 132-29. In seven of those years, his hoopsters lost nary a game at home. His five Colonel football squads won 70 percent of their games (35-15), while his JW baseball squads were nearly as good, amassing a mark of 47-25.
All told, that’s a winning percentage of 75 percent.

Wow!

Funny, but when Casey, a Clarke County guy, accepted his teaching post at Wood 57 years ago he was warned by others in the profession that the school was a coaching “graveyard.” The alleged reason, Casey says with a chuckle, was the prevalence of “country boys who wore heavy shoes.”

Luckily for both parties — coach and school — Casey chose to disregard those warnings and, within hours of arriving at Wood, then located on Amherst Street, “I felt like I was right at home. I looked forward to going to school every day.”

And, the longtime JW athletic director adds, “I liked coaching ’em all” — the three major sports. His efforts on the hardwood, though, have earned him the greatest acclaim. “We were not always the best team on the court,” says retired Circuit Court Judge John Prosser, “but we were always the best prepared, the best coached.”

Proof positive may be the ‘61 squad that featured five senior starters — Prosser, Larry Hockman, Don Unger, and the two Bobbys (Carter and Hummer) — none taller than 6-1. This quintet advanced to the 1B state semifinals before losing to Martinsville.

Two Saturdays ago, four of these players — Hummer, due to family obligations, could not attend — met Casey, now 81, for lunch prior to their 50th class reunion. The coach’s methods were a prominent topic of conversation.

So what was the key to the Casey Code? Preparation, discipline, and attention to detail. Unger remembers the coach’s ubiquitous legal pad on which practice sessions were timed to the minute.

What’s more, these finely calibrated practices were chockablock with unorthodox drills — dribbling in the dark with only the gym’s “Exit” lights for a guide, “cat-and-mouse” drills to develop defensive quickness and perseverance, rebounding drills (with a lid on the hoop) emphasizing “smarts,” positioning, and knowledge of where the ball would usually carom. And free throws practiced when “winded” to mimic game situations.
In other words, little things, fundamentals endlessly stressed to yield maximum results. That was the Casey Way.

But it’s also his way to deftly deflect praise. “I was,” he says, “blessed with good athletes.”

Good and somewhat atypical of the supposed mold. Even in ’61, the athletic demographics in Frederick County were changing. As Casey himself says, “We got urbanized.” His five starters that year, by and large, lived within shooting distance of the city limits.

They, to be sure, did not come to play wearing “heavy shoes.”

Class of '61: The Players

Posted: Aug. 31, 2011

John Prosser looked at his longtime buddies — fellow seniors on James Wood High’s 1961 district champion basketball team — and said, “There was a time I was never sure we’d see 50 of anything.”

But that’s the thing about youth: Time is so bountiful that nary a thought is given to its passage. The present takes precedence. And that, too, is the thing about time: It does pass, seemingly in a blink. Then memory takes precedence.

There was a great deal of that latter commodity present — and a lot of laughter, too — when Prosser, Don Unger, Bobby Carter, and Larry Hockman huddled Saturday with their coach, Jim Casey, to reflect on that championship season 50 years ago. In attendance as well was “Mr. James Wood,” Wendell Dick, keeper of the school’s flame, not to mention its sports history.

Unable to attend either this reunion or that of the entire Class of ’61 was Bobby Hummer, the fifth member of that senior starting five which never left the floor at Shepherd College (now University) when Wood beat Handley for the Group 1-B Northwestern District tournament title that winter of ’61.

Theirs was a well-balanced, well-oiled team, living testimony to Casey’s coaching acumen and his will not simply to win, but also to prepare. And with this senior quintet, preparation was everything, as none stood taller than 6-1.

But they complemented each other well. Hockman, a sturdy six-footer, was the go-to guy offensively. He led the Colonels in scoring at a tick over 19 points a game.
Unger, a scrappy 5-9 ballhawk, drew the toughest backcourt defensive assignment. In that district final against Handley, he guarded Phil Newcome, who, along with Hockman, was one of the league’s top point-producers that year.

Hummer and Carter patrolled the paint and swept the boards. Though smallish at 6-1 and 5-11, respectively, they always “got great position” in the rebounding wars, Hockman said.

And then there was Prosser, later a local circuit court judge, who at 5-11 did a little bit of everything — scoring, defending and passing, skills he later took to VMI.

The Colonels lost but one game in the regular season, a 35-33 nailbiter to Loudoun County in which Unger recalls missing a crucial one-and-one free-throw try down the stretch. They later avenged this loss in grand sytle, whipping the Raiders, 74-50.

In the district tourney finale against Handley, Carter stepped into a scoring role, pouring in 15 points — Hockman added 11 — as the Colonels outlasted the Judges, 48-45. Wood advanced to the state 1-B semifinals before losing to powerhouse Martinsville, 49-41. They finished the season at 18-2.

After graduation, the four in attendance Saturday pretty much went their separate ways — albeit with one common denominator, says Dick: All achieved a measure of success in their chosen fields.

Hockman, now retired, attended Richmond on an athletic scholarship and, following a stint in the Navy during the Vietnam era, worked in Baltimore and then Albany, Ga., where he had a peanut brokerage business for 21 years.
While at VMI, Prosser competed against Hockman’s Richmond teams in the old Southern Conference. He later earned his law degree at Washington & Lee and, after serving in the Army (where he continued to play ball), returned to Winchester to practice law.

Unger worked for a finance company before entering the banking business with Shenandoah Valley National Bank. And a banker he remained throughout his professional life.

Hummer and Carter went to Shenandoah to play basketball. The latter transferred to Virginia Tech and graduated with a degree in civil engineering. He owns his own firm in Richmond and, he says, “is still working.”
Next Wednesday: The seniors remember playing for Jim Casey.

A hero recalled in 'O.C. Country'

Posted: Aug. 24, 2011

“Grandpap taught me reality. He said, ‘If you’re afraid to say what you think, you’re afraid of yourself.’”
— O.C. Whitacre

Somewhere along Hollow Road near Trone — Orvis Carson “O.C.” Whitacre, rough-and-ever-ready at 83 years young, is not too old to have heroes.

One, as you may recall from this space roughly a year ago, is a much younger man — O.C.’s buddy Cordell Watt, proprietor of Timber Ridge Fruit Farm beyond Gore.

But the major influence on his life, as I learned last week on one of our far-too-infrequent rambles — taken when O.C. feels I “need to get out of that Star office” — was his grandfather, Upton Pugh.

“Grandpap” was clearly on O.C.’s mind as we made what has become our standard circuit — circling ‘round to the Trone community of his youth in western Frederick by way of Gainesboro.

References were made and stories of Upton told, but first we had business to attend to — namely a ride through Cordell’s 500-acre spread so that O.C. could show me fresh plantings and the farm’s spanking new cold storage facility.

“It’s amazing we have someone left to do what he’s doing,” said O.C. of his friend. “You’re looking at millions of bushels of apples . . . a world of planning. He believes in common sense, and uses it.”

Only when we left the Watt orchard and and wheeled onto Hollow Road and passed the old Muse house, home of Trone’s first postmaster, did the memories truly begin to flow. And talk ran high of the man who made O.C. Whitacre what he is today.

Upton Pugh, at one time so his grandson told me, owned upwards of 2,000 acres, along both sides of Hollow Road down to present-day Va. 259 (Carper’s Pike) where O.C. still resides.

He “supported” everyone in his extended family, and even hobos who wandered in during the Depression, providing flour, corn, and freshly butchered meat, O.C. told me as we passed the landmarks of his youth — the field where he caught Mr. Muse’s bull, the creek he forded (or couldn’t in times of high water), the path to his Aunt Lena’s on which he rode the horse called “Ol’ Doc,” Dr. Charles Anderson’s cabin, and the site of the old convict camp.

I was in “O.C. Country,” and felt privileged to be there.
O.C.’s voice softened a bit as, nearing the intersection of U.S. 50 West, we drove by a smokehouse (behind which a young O.C. often slept, on a bunk near the chicken coop) and then two sets of steps, one of which exists only in memory. We were at Upton’s place.

“There, on the corn-crib steps and steps no longer there, leading to the barn, is where I got my education from Grandpap.”

Let it be said that Upton saw something in a wild, headstrong, largely untamed boy that few others in the family did. For one thing, a desire to work, and work hard, even at a tender age. And so he became his defender and protector.

“As long as I worked for him, he thought I was No. 1,” O.C. says. “He was not real strict, but he was real fair.”
Though not a church-goer, as O.C. hastened to point out, Upton possessed a strong sense of right and wrong — and of how a man should act.

“Grandpap would take a piece of paper and draw a line,” O.C. said. “He told me, if you do good because you want the right feeling, put a good mark above the line. If you do good just because you want to impress people, put a mark below it. If you have more above than below, you’re a pretty good man.”

Words this gruff ol’ retired Army sergeant has tried to live by lo these many years, and words still resonating as we pulled onto U.S. 50, bound once again for Winchester, and “that Star office.”

O.C. Whitacre never seemed happier — an apple still falling from the tree of Upton Pugh.

First Pitch

Posted: Aug. 17, 2011

I awoke Tuesday morning and immediately started thinking of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. And Walter Barr.

OK, the linkage between the president and his immediate predecessor is obvious. But Coach Barr, too? What’s up with that?

It all has to do with the task I’d be undertaking later in the day — throwing out the honorary “first pitch” at the game sponsored by this newspaper at the Cal Ripken 10-Year-Old World Series.

A little performance anxiety? Perhaps. But why, for the life of me, I don’t know. Baseball has been a big part of my life ever since my dad, plastic bat and Whiffle ball in hand, took me out to our narrow driveway in Rutherford, N.J., for my first swings. Since then, I wager, I’ve thrown a baseball, what, tens of thousands of times?

So what’s the big deal about a simple toss of 46 feet?

Plenty.

Which brings me back to that unlikely trio, and their “first-pitch” experiences. President Obama received considerable flak for his lame effort at a Major League game a few years back. But, in his defense, baseball is not, and never has been, his game. The guy’s a “baller,” a hoopster — and a rather proud one at that. But, on the rubber, he was out of his element.

Mr. Bush is another story. He played the game, as best I can recall, through his adolescent years, and was a pretty fair country ballplayer. Still, when he took the mound at Yankee Stadium — during the World Series no less — a few weeks after 9/11, the stage could not have been bigger.

As Mr. Bush noted in his book “Decision Points,” it didn’t help in the least that, before the game, Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter had a few words of cautionary advice: “Don’t bounce it; they’ll boo you.”
And “bounce it” the president — and former owner of the Texas Rangers — did not. His toss was straight and true. He looked like he belonged. And the crowd cheered.

I claim no such All-Star voices whispering to me, but I do have Coach Barr — and that’s more than good enough for me. A few weeks back, the gridiron coaching legend told me his first-pitch story, in his typical self-deprecating way.

It seems the Winchester Royals asked Coach Barr to do the honors before one of their playoff games earlier this summer. Let’s just say his southpaw slant did not quite measure up to his standards. So he asked for another try. Same thing.

Coach can laugh about it now, but, at the time, what he perceived as a subpar effort rankled him. And I can understand why. Here’s a man who, as a teenager, pitched semi-pro ball up in Nova Scotia and, as a high-schooler at Clarke County, hurled back-to-back no-hitters against Warren County on the same day. And, at 75 years young, he remains every inch the competitor — and perfectionist.

Again, I claim no such athletic pedigree. I was a decent but never great ballplayer, epitomizing as I did the age-old scouting report of “good field; no hit.” My inability to hit the breaking ball doomed me as I worked my way along the time-honored Little League-Babe Ruth-American Legion continuum.

But I always felt I possessed good form afield, and so I hoped that muscle memory would hold me in fine stead when I ventured to the mound at Yost Field for my “big moment” on Tuesday.

I needn’t have worried, but still, when I saw my “target” for the toss — Joe Hulsey, catcher for the Mineral Area (Mo.) squad — my brow furrowed a bit. The reason: Joe is about the size of two old hats.

But a short chat beforehand — Lil’ Joe was all freckles and business — convinced me I was in able hands. So I strode to the hill with a measure of confidence.

In a second it was over. I pawed the dirt a tad and delivered. Passable steam, but a little wide, though not too. Joe handled it easily.

I only hope that the adjoining photo confirms that I, too, looked like I belonged.

The Collector

Posted: Aug. 10, 2011

“I collect anything and everything.”
— Jerry Strosnider

He had me, I must admit, at Mordecai Brown.

But then, Jerry Strosnider, who came to The Star last week bearing treasures, had prior knowledge. From conversations with Larry Wadsworth, proprietor of the Royal Lunch on North Kent, Jerry knew I was a big-time baseball fan. And so a century-old felt pennant of the great Chicago Cub hurler was first on his list for display.

Ol’ Mordecai — full handle: Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown — in case you didn’t know, was nicknamed “Three-Finger.” A pair of childhood accidents, one with a feed chopper, mangled the index and middle digits on his pitching hand. The resulting deformity allowed Brown to do amazing things with a baseball. “Three-Finger” developed one of the game’s more devastating curveballs, which he rode to 239 career victories, and a plaque in the Hall of Fame.

It also earned his pennant a coveted spot in Jerry’s dizzying array of memorabilia and collectibles.

Also on display for my private viewing pleasure last week: “Along Life’s Way,” a 1939 book of poems penned by Robert A. Whitten, a local Congregational Christian minister; a “High School Astronomy” text dated 1855; an 1854 letter written to Wardensville resident Annie McCone from her mom in Winchester; and a number of ’60s-vintage high-school football programs.

In addition to the “Three-Finger” pennant, two other items particularly caught my eye. One was a slightly tattered antebellum classroom map of the United States from the S. Augustus Mitchell Co. of Philadelphia. How do we know it pre-dates the Civil War? The State of Virginia extends to the banks of the Ohio River. West Virginia was yet to be born out of conflict.

The other attention-grabber? A 1921 “Handlian” published by the students of “Winchester High School.” Interesting, isn’t it, that the yearbook’s name predates the construction of Handley High, a schematic rendering of which appears just inside the front cover.

I’m a sucker for old yearbooks, so I thumbed through this edition cover-to-cover. I learned that Hugh Sisson Duffey was both principal and football coach. A few notable names: Bessie Corkey was “junior supervisor” and Lucy Sprint was school secretary even then.
OK, all such desiderata begs the question: What’s up with all this, Jerry, and how did you get started collecting?

Jerry, 53, is a bit guarded about his life-long passion, but does hint the bug bit early. He still has his first bike and says, coyly, it’s “not from the ’80s or even the ’70s.”
He also acknowledges an initial monetary incentive: “I found I could buy something at a yard sale for $3 and sell it for $35. But then I realized it would soon be worth $50, so I started keeping [stuff].”

Now, the Dixie Beverage driver and jack-of-all-trades says, “I can’t move.” His living room alone, he adds, contains roughly 900 treasures. His most cherished items: advertising memorabilia (e.g., thermometers), time pieces, and any gew-gaw that “moves.”

Small wonder, he says, that he lives alone with only a cat for company. And that furry pal, as Hoyt Axton once sang, is “cool” and “never says a mumblin’ word” — particularly about where they live.

In recent years, Jerry, a Handley grad, has restricted his quest for the next best “find” to flea markets and E-Bay. In other words, no more yard sales. And, true to that decision made long ago, he allows his collectibles to rise in value and is inclined to sell only occasionally — “depending on how broke I am,” he says with a laugh.
But Jerry’s ever on the lookout. “The next thing I find just may be my favorite,” he says.

Funny, but if it were me, that Mordecai Brown pennant would be hard to top.

'Feeting' fame

Posted: Aug. 3, 2011

White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. — Well, at least my feet appeared on national television.

My wife had hoped to see more of me, so she DVR’d the final round of the PGA Greenbrier Classic on Sunday.

Just as I did at last year’s inaugural tour stop at “America’s Resort,” I served as a marshal on the 14th hole of the Greenbrier’s famed “Old White” course.

Yeah, I was one of those folks who raise the ubiquitous “Quiet” signs — actually, “It’s QUIET TIME down South” — lest one of the paladins of the putting surface hears someone burp and then misreads a two-foot “gimme.”

One of the perks of the job — aside from standing in the heat for hours on end and occasionally wolfing down overpriced (for paying customers) concession-stand swill — is the chance to seize a moment of fleeting notoriety when the camera catches you, for a second or two, in the background manning your post.

Remove the “l” from fleeting, and you pretty much have my Andy Warhol-esque story — minus roughly 14 minutes and 58 seconds — my moment in the (scorching West Virginia) sun.

As Toni and I discovered when we went to the tape late Sunday night, it came on the last twosome of the day — third-round leader Anthony Kim and eventual champion Scott Stallings.

The latter had just dropped in what proved to be a critical birdie putt and was strolling across the green toward the slope leading to the 15th tee when the CBS camera zoomed in. Stallings stepped on the fringe, right past a matched set of sickly white legs attached to pair of well-worn, size-13 canal boats.

“Omigod (or something to that effect),” I said to Toni. “That’s me, those are my feet.”

I needn’t have looked down at the aged New Balances still covering my aching dogs, as I knew the camera had not lied. Nor had my memory. I distinctly recalled Stallings passing directly in front of me, a wide grin creasing his face — one that would grow even wider roughly an hour later.

An aside: A number of times during my five days of “marshaling” I wished I had slid over to Wilkins ShoeCenter beforehand for a new pair of tennis shoes, but only out of a concern for heightened comfort, not from any sense of sartorial necessity.

From a golfing standpoint, the tournament, despite the enervating heat, was a four-day sight to behold. “Old White,” pretty as a picture as always, surrendered little to the golfers — unlike last year when Stuart Appleby torched it en route to a 22-under-par triumph.

This go-round, the course played 200 yards longer, with narrower fairways, deeper rough, and denser fescue lipping the bunkers. The result: a more challenging test of shot-making, as evidenced by Stallings’ winning 10-under score.

If the maiden event offered a moment of history — Appleby’s final-round 59, only the fifth time in PGA history such a score had been achieved — this year provided something truer: heightened competition, not only among players, but between players and the course itself. Greenbrier owner Jim Justice and his team definitely kicked it up a notch.

As did Stallings, who needed a birdie on the 168-yard, par-3 final hole to join Bill Haas and Bob Estes in a playoff. Going back to the scene of these theatrics, the 18th, Stallings — the 26-year-old tour rookie who went to the Masters as a spectator in 2009 and vowed only to return as a player — duplicated his feat of moments before, lasering his tee shot to within two feet of his previous effort and then bottoming a slightly curling putt.

Stallings threw up his arms in triumph, obviously realizing he had earned that return trip to Augusta — on his terms.

I’d like to follow those footsteps some day, as attending the Masters is on my “bucket list.” And I’d even buy new tennis shoes for the trip.

Chasing Col. Drake

Posted: July 27, 2011

You really don’t know what you don’t know — until you learn it.

No, this is not a sly gem of down-home wisdom from the likes of Yogi Berra. Just something I realized in the past few days.

At the monthly meeting of the Newtown Heritage Festival committee, we were batting around ideas pertinent to the central (in more ways than one) word in our name — “heritage” — with particular emphasis on the ongoing Civil War sesquicentennial.

Now we in Stephens City have to strain a bit, relative to other communities, to come up with Civil War events and personalities on which to focus. The war swirled around our little burg, but, in truth, nothing of overarching significance happened there.

Still, Town Manager Mike Kehoe — who has forgotten more about the war than I’ll ever know — threw out a name known, it seemed, to all but me, the alleged local historian: Col. James Drake.

Who was this guy? Well, a resident of the Stephensburgh/Newtown area, for one thing. And an officer in the 1st Virginia Cavalry, for another. He sustained mortal wounds in a cavalry clash two weeks after Gettysburg in, of all places, Shepherdstown, W.Va.
I say “of all places” because I’ve been to Shepherdstown many times. My wife taught there, at the elementary school, when we were married. So when Mike told me the town boasts a monument marking the spot where Drake fell I wondered where it was and, how, after all this time, I could’ve missed it.

Off on Google I wandered, only to find that pretty much every time I drove to Shepherdstown I passed the memorial, which sits about two miles south of town on W.Va. 480, just across from the Morgana development. Erected courtesy of the United Confederate Veterans, Jefferson County Camp, in 1910, the monument is so close to the side of the road I could have clipped it — or at least should have seen it — heading back toward Winchester.

So what else do I now suddenly know about Col. Drake? Not much, really, except that he played a key role, perhaps, in extending the life of noted Newtownian, Milton Boyd Steele, also a member of 1st Cav.

Milton, at 18, was but a pup when he joined Co. A in 1863. July of that year found him at Gettysburg. As the folks at the Newtown History Center inform us on their web site, Milton was eager to see combat, but Drake, as his commanding officer, recognized Steele’s youth and lack of experience and sent him to the rear, back to the wagons.

After the war, Milton became a principal, along with his older brother, in a Newtown mercantile business, Steele & Bro.

Fate was not as kind to Drake. As I learned from reading a battle report (commendably linked to the “Col. Drake marker” web site) penned by none other than Jeb Stuart, Drake fell on July 16, 1863, during a brisk encounter with Union horsemen along the “turnpike” linking Shepherdstown and Leetown (now W.Va. 480).

Robert E. Lee and the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia were camped at Bunker Hill when Stuart aggressively opted to pursue the Union cavalry which, he believed had “designs” on Martinsburg. His intent: to attack in three directions — along the “turnpike” and from Martinsburg and Charles Town — in hopes that one of these pincers might roll up an exposed flank.

With the terrain not “practicable” for cavalry, Rebel troopers dismounted and formed a battle line. The Federals retired to positions “behind stone fences and barricades” as darkness fell.

Both sides sustained considerable losses in a fight now oft-overlooked. Drake, wounded during the spirited encounter, died that night — “depriving his regiment,” so said Stuart, “of a brave and zealous leader, and his country of one of her most patriotic defenders.”

And now you know all that I didn’t know.

'Back to Harpers Ferry'

Posted: July 20, 2011

Harpers Ferry, W.Va. — When I stepped off the National Park Service bus in this grand old historic town Saturday morning, I had no intention of writing a column.

As the words of the song that has become the town’s signature state, I came “back to Harpers Ferry” for a different reason — to watch the historical vignettes my wife helped produce for the edification of the park’s myriad visitors.

Over the past two school years, or since the start of the Civil War sesquicentennial, Toni, an eighth-grade reading teacher and Drama Club adviser at Harpers Ferry Middle, has worked collaboratively with the park’s education department developing student “vodcasts” about John Brown’s Raid and the coming of civil war.

This led to her summer job.

So I figured I’d pass a lazy Saturday watching her and her students/park rangers at work. With time to kill between performances, I decided to take in a few of the attractions. One was a film about the town’s rich and varied history.

Then and there I realized that, for all the focus on the town’s role in the Civil War — and understanably so — the Harpers Ferry story should not be so conveniently squeezed between the years 1859 and 1865. The town has a bigger tale to tell — of becoming and being, of striving and coping.

So, in the spirit of this larger picture, did you know:

That the town is named for Robert Harper who, in the mid-18th century, came to this gorgeous spot between the mountains at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers and, after acquiring land, started a ferry?

That it was George Washington, as president, who chose Harpers Ferry as site of the young nation’s second major armory?

That the growing town was the focal point of a spirited competition between the C&O Canal and the B&O Railroad to see which transportation entity could reach the confluence first?

For the record, ground was broken for the canal and the railroad on the same day, July 4, 1828 — President John Quincy Adams doing the honors for the C&O; Charles Carroll, last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, handling that chore for the B&O. The C&O reached Sandy Hook, across from Harpers Ferry, first — in 1833. The B&O arrived a year later.

That this “government town” made an important contribution to the development of the factory system when weapons-maker John Hall perfected machinery for interchangeable rifle parts?

That, just after the Civil War, Nathan Brackett, a Baptist missionary from Maine, came to town, laden with books, high hopes, and the grand intention to educate the area’s freedmen?

Brackett’s work inspired John Storer to contribute $10,000 to this cause. Storer College opened in 1867 and, five years later, held its first commencement, for eight students. The school closed in 1955.

That a miniature Coney Island was a popular destination for townspeople and tourists alike at the turn of the century? Built by the B&O, Island Park and its trademark carousel attracted as many as 7,000 visitors a day.

That frequent flooding — not to mention the advent of steam as an alternative to water power — doomed the town’s post-war development? No surprise, given Harpers Ferry’s setting.

Major floods — in 1889, 1924, and ’36 — cast a pall over Harpers Ferry. But the town, personified by railroad porter Shirley Johnson, never gave up hope. Johnson, called “Boomer” for obvious reasons, said the town would “boom again,” that it would never die.

And so it hasn’t. Declared a “national monument” in 1944, the town’s historic resources came fully under the management of the Park Service in 1955 — thus assuring that folks like me will forever come “back to Harpers Ferry.”

A week along Memory Lane

Posted: July 13, 2011

He brought the shirt. He just had to bring the shirt.

When I walked into David Sovine’s office last Thursday, the first thing Frederick County’s new superintendent of schools did, after shaking hands, was produce a T-shirt proclaiming East Bank High School the 1989 AA state football champions in West Virginia.

There are back stories galore to this gesture, starting with the fact that, before we actually met, David sorta knew me and I him — courtesy of county School Board Chairman Stuart Wolk. So David had it on good (check that, on Stuart’s) authority that the shirt would produce a considerable rise.

The oddity, though, is that most all things East Bank are a source of great joy to me. You see, that little burg east of Charleston is the hometown of “my dearly belove-ded,” as that great sit-com character Ernest T. Bass would say — and thus my second home.

But that particular state championship — in which David, as a student teacher/assistant coach, played a part — came at the expense of Musselman High in Inwood, whose gridiron fortunes I’ve intensely followed over the years.

Knowing the folks in South Berkeley as I do, let me just say they — no strangers to state football titles; they’ve won three — still consider this championship game the “one that got away.” They pushed East Bank up and down the field between the 20s, but the Pioneers scored twice on big plays en route to a 14-9 victory.

David admitted as much, and we had good laugh about the shirt. And then we started talking connections and marveling, as folks often do, about what a “small world” we inhabit.

How “small”? Well, consider these strands of connectivity:

The head coach under whom David served at East Bank, Ralph Hensley, was a student teacher himself the year (1973) my wife graduated from EBHS. Toni got to know him and his wife well.

Musselman’s star player in 1989 was Clay Grove. His wife Susan is social studies department chair at James Wood High, and now one of David’s employees.

As I learned at breakfast Friday, David played on the same high-school football team — in Hurricane, W.Va. — as Walter and Connie Barr’s nephew, Todd Robertson. Todd’s mom is Connie’s sister Peggy.

Because David graduated from West Virginia Tech in Montgomery, just a short, bumpy ride from East Bank, I had to pose this question: Benny’s or Frank’s? These are two notable “hangouts” in Montgomery where David has admitted sampling the local delights — fried baloney sandwiches at Benny’s, calzones at Frank’s. Rare is the time we venture “home” when Toni and I don’t mosey up to Montgomery on a calzone run.

In more ways than one was last week one long stroll down Memory Lane. On Friday, Star staffer Vic Bradshaw and I grabbed a bite at the Royal Lunch with a basketball coach from our sportswriting days — Rich Lyons.

We both covered Rich’s gut-’em-out teams at Albemarle High back in the ’80s. Now retired and living in Stephens City, Rich is helping out Tommy Dixon at Handley.
More connections: Rich attended RPI (now VCU) with Larry Wadsworth, proprietor of “The Lunch” who set up our meeting. Jeneane Webster, Rich’s “significant other” whom he met while coaching in West Virginia (wait for that link), teaches math at Handley.

But, for 31 years before heading south, Jeneane taught at Musselman, whose basketball fortunes Rich guided for a year (2001-02).

And Rich, in the past few years, has scouted opponents for the Appleman football team, still coached by the legendary Denny Price, who led Musselman to the brink of that state title . . . back in 1989.

What goes around inevitably comes around. Back to that shirt!

‘Band of Brothers (and Sisters)’

Posted: July 6, 2011

”Well, how did the tour go?”

If I’ve heard this query once over the past two weeks, I’ve heard it scores of times.

And since I heavily alluded to the “tour” in last week’s Pike about a wreath-laying ceremony in the French city of St. Lô, I figured that today I’d come totally clean.

Over a 12-day fortnight back in June, a band of 12 — Larry and Nancy Omps, Eddie and Mary Jo Strosnider, Jeff and Nancy Davis, Kirk and Karen Darrough (of Stafford), and a mysterious couple named Smith (in truth, Benny and Ann Butler, but that’s fodder for another column) as well as Toni and I — followed the footsteps of a “Band of Brothers” (Easy Company of HBO notoriety) across France, Holland, and Belgium.

The trip had its origins in an inquiry tendered roughly this time last year, when Larry, knowing of my interest in World War II, asked if I knew anyone who might put together such an trip. Fortunately, I did — our handy-dandy tour guide and driver, the estimable Clive Richardson of Ludlow, England.

Little did we know how ambitious an endeavor this would prove. But, bottom line: We came, we saw, we survived . . . particularly those mornings when the rather exuberant Dr. Davis insisted on waking us with renditions of “Reveille.”

To be sure, retracing the path of Easy Company dominated, though did not overwhelm, the trip. You’d be surprised how well its storied path has been marked by memorials — at Brecourt Manor, where, on D-Day, Dick Winters’ platoon took out four German guns trained on Utah Beach; at Neunen in Holland, where the company fought during Operation Market Garden; and in the Bois Jacques woods near Bastogne, where it battled German guns and Old Man Winter during the Battle of the Bulge.

Along the way were many war-related detours to:
Cemeteries — American burial sites at Colleville above Omaha Beach and Luxembourg, a British cemetery in Arnhem, and a German resting place in Luxembourg where Toni found, perhaps, a distant relative: one Seigfried Korb, an 18-year-old grenadier killed in the latter stages of The Bulge.

Bridges— Pegasus (still a favorite), first piece of French real estate captured on D-Day, and the span across the Rhine at Arnhem, Holland, “the bridge too far.”

Museums— Most appreciated were those with the most interactive (hands-on) features, such as The Bulge museum in Bastogne (the O’Connors’ favorite town, by far) and the Market Garden museum outside Arnhem (with its “Airborne Experience”).

Much to the ladies’ relief, we did not “fight the war” every day. The middle of the tour featured the better part of two days in Paris (boat trip along the Seine, dinner atop Montmartre), and our journey ended in Amsterdam (Anne Frank’s house, Rembrandt’s art).

As delightful as these diversions were, for me, this trip was a pilgrimage to American heroism, to undaunted courage, to inestimable sacrifice. And so my inner sensations ranged from the awe of striding yet again, at dawn’s early light, on the sand at the far end of Omaha Beach beneath the village of Vierville, where “The Bedford Boys” faced near-certain death, to the shock of standing at that crossroads near Malmedy in Belgium, where German troops mercilessly gunned down 84 American prisoners one December day in 1944.

And then there was one moment that, well, felt just perfect. It was 4:45 on a Friday afternoon, and we were walking out of the American cemetery in Luxembourg where Gen. George Patton is buried. “Taps” started playing on the audio system. We stood quietly at attention. A few moments later came the National Anthem, followed by “God Bless America.”

Toni sang them both. And thousands of miles from home, we felt very much at home. And proud — very proud — to be Americans.

Valley Pike by Adrian O'Connor

Adrian O'Connor has been the Editorial Page Editor of The Winchester Star since December 1992.

He has been writing his weekly column "Valley Pike" since March 1997.

Adrian has written a book about Winchester -- "Winchester Remembered: The Best of Valley Pike" based on his column.

Valley Pike
by Adrian O'Connor

He has been writing his weekly column
"Valley Pike" since March 1997.