A Small Town Love Story--Colonial Beach, Virginia Page 13
Riverboat on the Potomac OTB, 2013
A COMMUNITY’S SPIRIT
Though the very first school in Colonial Beach dating back to 1907 was a one-room building with seven grades and a single teacher, the still-tiny school district holds special memories for just about everyone who grew up in town. Even those who attended high school classes, when they were held outside of town at Oak Grove and the team was called the Vikings, hold tight to a sense of pride now that the high school itself is back inside the town limits and the students are known as Drifters, a name chosen by the students themselves.
The one-room Jefferson School outside Colonial Beach
The Second School built in Colonial Beach
Colonial Beach Elementary School, built in 1912
When enrollment outgrew the sturdier brick building erected in 1912, determined town residents and school officials held fund-raisers of every conceivable kind, including auctioning off a donated house, to raise the money needed to build a new high school.
It wasn’t just nostalgia or even the belief that the youth in town needed to have a school system with its own identity, it was the sense of pride people in town take in the school’s athletic achievements. For years basketball was the primary source of that pride, but other sports have increasingly added to the community spirit that centers around the school.
As a summer kid, I was seldom around during basketball season, but two of my friends back then played on the high school team. I managed to get to town once to see both Marge Owens and Mike O’Neill play in what is lovingly referred to as “the cracker box” gymnasium.
Alumni go to games. They offer scholarships to encourage college attendance. Some mentor individual students. When the school building that many attended burned down and was later demolished a few years back, a lot of people wept as flames consumed the building on a cold, wintry morning.
Perhaps no two individuals have done more to foster this sense of community involvement or to attract support for the school’s athletic programs than former Athletic Director and Coach Wayne Kennedy and Coach Steve Swope. Both now retired, they talk fondly of the young men they mentored well beyond their athletic feats in basketball, football, baseball and track. They boast proudly of individual achievements and records, of a hard-earned state championship. But mostly they talk about the sense of family that high school sports has created among players…and throughout an entire community.
School fire, 2014
School fire, 2014
Elinor Inscoe at bat at the foot of the school, 1946
2nd Annual Science Day at Colonial Beach High School
Last graduating class at the old school, 1988
DRIFTER PRIDE:
Wayne Kennedy and Steve Swope
In a town with under five thousand residents and graduating classes so small they’re barely the size of an English class in many school systems, sports teams are the pride of Colonial Beach, and few are more responsible for the local legends than longtime Coach Steve Swope and Athletic Director and Coach Wayne Kennedy.
Both retired now, they still have vivid memories of the players and the seasons that brought the town together. None is more memorable than the boys’ basketball team that went to the state finals and brought home the trophy in 2009.
An endless parade of cars, perhaps 350 or more, made its way back to town from Richmond that night. Once home the parade circled the Point, horns blowing, people cheering.
“I looked back and there were car lights as far back as I could see,” Steve recalls.
“And by the time the first cars made it around the Point, there was a traffic jam with cars still in line to start going around the Point,” Steve says. “It was like the movie Hoosiers. We were met by the police, the fire department and the rescue squad.”
Steve Swope with the “cracker box” table
The magic of that night is memorialized on a sign coming into town. And for Steve, it’s also memorialized in two mementos in his home. When the old school gym was torn down after a fire destroyed the original building in 2014, one section of the wooden floor from what was lovingly called the “cracker box” was placed in a shadow box created from an old school cafeteria window. Another, much larger section, was lacquered and turned into a picnic table that is obviously one of his prized possessions.
Coach Kennedy
For these two men, though, that night was the culmination of years of hopes and dreams.
For Wayne Kennedy, who came here with his pregnant wife, Charlotte, when he was just out of college and thought for sure he’d never in a million years take the job, it turned out to be the highlight of a forty-year career. He is quick to point out, though, that “our girls’ basketball, baseball and softball teams have won numerous conference and district championships.” In fact, the girls’ basketball teams, led by Coach Keith Dickerson, have been to the state tournament three years running. Football coaches Scott Foster and Jeremy Jack have taken their teams to the playoffs seven consecutive years.”
But if there have been a lot of successes through the years, Wayne recalls an early one with particular fondness. In his second year as a basketball coach in 1968, the boys’ basketball team beat their rival, Washington & Lee from Montross, for the first time in seven years. “The players were so excited, they threw me in the showers with my clothes on. Police Chief John Anderson then led us on a spur-of-the-moment parade around the Point in celebration.” It was just a hint of the parade to come so many years later when they triumphed in the state championship.
But as Wayne talks of those successes, he also recalls how it all began. When he and Charlotte visited Colonial Beach after getting a job offer, he was so unimpressed with what he’d seen of the town, he left Charlotte waiting in the car while he was interviewing, anxious to get back to North Carolina. To her shock, he said yes. They stayed for five years, left for two, and then came back to stay for good.
While the basketball team had been strong for years, they were just getting started in football in 1967. “Initially we barely had fifteen kids,” he recalls. “They had to play offense, defense and special teams. Some schools had bands bigger than our teams. We called it Iron Man Football.”
The teams might not have been big in numbers or the size of their players, but they had a lot of pride. They were successful playing bigger schools in the region and eventually were able to draw other players to the school and add to their roster.
Steve points with particular pride to Torrey Smith, whose family lived in public housing, and whose mom worked two jobs to provide for Smith and his five siblings. “He was our greatest success story.” Smith went on to play in the NFL as a standout for the Baltimore Ravens and then moved on to the San Francisco 49ers. He’s now signed with the Philadelphia Eagles to be close to home again. He’s a local hero, who served as grand marshal of the Potomac River Festival parade a few years back. “He’s got a good heart. He stayed close to home so he could help raise his siblings.”
Steve can list a long line of players who went on to play for big teams, including Chris Johnson, who played for Louisiana State University, then signed with the Celtics, Timberwolves and Trail Blazers in the NBA.
There were state players of the year, records broken. One player, in fact, T. T. Carey of the 2009 state championship basketball team, set a record in the state for total points scored in a season—880—that was third behind those of Allen Iverson and Moses Malone, other Virginians who went on to become NBA superstars.
Others set baseball records, too, crushing it at bat and pitching with outstanding arms or chasing down anything hit to centerfield. Two Steffeys—Ralph and his grandson Brent—had incredible DNA when it came to baseball. Players would run out to the field by the water tower in the spring when Ralph was still in elementary school in the ’60s to watch him hit batting practice. Years later, Steve declares that Brent Steffey “was the best baseball player to ever play at Colonial Beach High School.”
Steve Swope with
his family
Steve Swope’s grandparents
Steve Swope
There were outstanding athletes in track, too. Duck Watts—a four-sport star who was all-state in three of those sports—broke record after record. He was such a fierce competitor that, even though few spectators typically come to track meets, Wayne recalls one school in the region emptied just to watch him compete. “He was a great teammate in other sports, too. He was unselfish. He wanted everybody to be a part of it,” Wayne remembers.
“We were the smallest school, had the smallest teams, and we were the underdogs every day we woke up, but we embraced that role. It was fun to beat the bigger schools,” Steve says.
Wayne and Charlotte formed such bonds with their players that they often traveled to college games just to see them play.
That sort of mentorship was something Steve understood all too well.
He moved to Colonial Beach as a toddler with his grandmother, living in the area known as the Point. He recalls waking up every day and playing sandlot baseball with his friends. “Then we’d go to Denson’s for a bottle of pop for ten cents, play more baseball till dark, then go and play basketball at a friend’s house until his grandma would yell for us to go home.”
He remembers it as a simple way of living. “Sure,” he admits, “teenagers do some crazy things, but we were really good kids. Sometimes we stepped outside the box. I survived those years.”
It was Wayne Kennedy who taught him physical education. “Oh, the fun we had,” Steve recalls with a touch of nostalgia. “He inspired me. He was a huge mentor to me. I was a fatherless kid, and he was an important male figure.”
Steve went to college at Virginia Tech, then came home to Colonial Beach. “Wayne found me on the boardwalk one day and said you’d best get over to the school and sign a contract to teach elementary school PE.”
His wife, Ann, was from Aiken, South Carolina, and, just like Charlotte Kennedy, she wasn’t at all sure about making a life in such a small town.
“She changed her tune,” Steve says simply. She’s had an amazing career in the environmental field and was later chief of staff at Dahlgren’s Naval Surface Warfare Center. “Now she’s a die-hard fan of Colonial Beach.”
Superintendent Dr. Warner breaks ground for new school
Their three sons all graduated from high school at the beach and went on to college, two to Virginia Tech and one to Radford. One works at Dahlgren and commutes from Richmond. The other two work and live in Charlotte, North Carolina.
One of the things Steve loves is how important school games are to the whole community. Even those without kids on the teams or in the school come out to support the Drifters. If Wayne asked someone to work the snack bar or man the gate at games, they rarely said no.
Coaching didn’t end with the close of the school year. They offered summer basketball and baseball camps, summer leagues and Saturday morning leagues. “We’d take the kids to Virginia Tech or James Madison University,” Steve says, “to expose them to the opportunities that could be theirs through sports.”
They embraced special needs students, too, giving them roles as managers on the team. One young man, Jarod Flores, was designated as a special representative who was assigned to pick up trophies. In the state championship, Steve was told only the head coach could accept the trophy. “I picked him up, took him to center court and gave him the trophy to raise. There was a picture in the paper of him holding it. He was beaming. It made his life.”
Moments like that just added to the important role and mystique that high school sports played in town.
“We had stability with our program,” Steve says. “Wayne was athletic director for thirty-eight years, boys’ basketball coach for twenty-three years, football coach for seventeen years and boys’ track coach for ten years.”
Wayne shares credit with Steve, as well. “It was important to have Steve at the elementary level. He could light that fire, see the future Drifter in them.”
They name principals and superintendents who believed in their programs, who worked to help find jobs for the kids who needed them, who raised money or even stepped on the pitcher’s mound to throw at batting practice.
Longtime school superintendent, Dr. Donald Warner, was so caring and supportive, Wayne recalls. “He was such a motivator. He deserves a lot more credit than he’s ever been given. I’d wake up and think, I just can’t wait to go to work for that man.”
“I’ll second that,” Steve says.
It was Dr. Warner, in fact, who spearheaded a fundraising drive to build a new high school. There were bake sales, softball tournaments, car washes, pledges, basketball tournaments, restaurant nights and donations to support the proposed school. “Students collected one million pennies [$10,000] to make Dr. Warner’s vision a reality,” Wayne recalls. The accomplishment was recognized regionally and nationally for the creativity of their efforts.
Team members and supporters take such pride in their past as a Drifter, they come back to town. They want to be a part of that tradition.
“I tell the kids I stay in touch with that there’s a Drifter fraternity,” Steve says. “It’s the greatest association of friends you’ll ever have.”
AFTERWORD
So, there you have it, a little glimpse into my world and an introduction to just a few of the neighbors who make Colonial Beach, Virginia, into one of the most unique communities I could ever imagine living in. Some people are larger than life. Others are soft-spoken, but have made their presence felt in different ways.
There are those who enrich the lives of everyone around them with their community spirit of volunteering or giving, who quietly assist those in need or join together in times of trouble with an outpouring of support. This small community, some eighty miles from Washington, but filled with military veterans, rallied in an amazing way after 9-11, providing money and other assistance to those affected by that national tragedy. Members of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church took the train to New York to provide assistance in the heart of the disaster area.
Whether the suffering is large-scale or small, there’s usually a neighbor willing to rush in and help.
After so many extraordinarily unique periods in the town’s history, the evolution continues to determine exactly what identity Colonial Beach will have for the future. Way back when the town’s fate was in the hands of lifelong locals like Boozie Denson and Gordon Hopkins, there was always a sense not only of who we could become, but who we had been. Today’s town leaders, often “come-heres,” with no long-term roots in Colonial Beach, sometimes lose sight of the past and its importance or of the critical need to respect and preserve it, not only in our buildings, but in our values.
When I had my business, I operated with one major self-imposed rule (aside from good customer service), and that was to keep my nose out of local politics. I knew there was no quicker way to lose business than to take sides. But when town leaders in 2002 and 2003 were determined to sell prime waterfront property, including our town green, to a developer to build condos, I tossed that rule out the window.
Not only did I speak out and generate a petition against it—and lost business in the process—but I worked with others to create yet another event to keep that town green and its stage as a vibrant centerpiece for town activities. Market Days, combined with the Bluemont concert series, was officially sponsored by a local Realtor, run by the Ladies Auxiliary of the Volunteer Fire Department, with all proceeds from the booth rentals going to support the fire department. It was a win-win-win for the Realtor, the fire department and the community.
Hurricane Isabel, which caused sufficient damage to scare off the developer, may have had more to do with saving the green than anything we did, but that event, which lasted a number of years, combined with the long-running Potomac River Festival, the annual Rod Run to the Beach, the newly created Bike Fest and other activities, have preserved the green—for now, anyway—from those who would replace it with privately owned water
front condos and forever change the landscape along our prime, public waterfront.
There are so many more stories I could share from my past in Colonial Beach. There was the night my old gang went to see a Frankenstein movie at the Mayfair. The girls found it hysterically funny, which deeply offended the guys, so deeply, in fact, that one of them built a life-size replica of Frankenstein (“Frankie’s” hair was made from my friend’s grandmother’s old fur piece) and planted him at my front door one very dark night. After that impressive introduction, Frankie accompanied us on many a prank during those teen years. His head lived in the back of a closet until just a few years back and even became part of my bookstore’s Goosebumps float in the Potomac River Festival parade one year. After that I returned him to his creator to share with his grandkids.
And there was the very steamy summer night when we decided it would be a fine idea to buy crushed ice from the ice plant in town and have a snowball fight in the backyard to cool off. It was a very bad idea, by the way. It’s a wonder we didn’t end up with concussions. Those “snowballs” hurt like crazy, but we did cool down a bit.
I will forever treasure the memories of those days when we arrived at the beach on a Friday night, and other friends arrived just minutes later on bicycles, dogs tagging along. I can still hear the music of Johnny Cash or the Everly Brothers blasting in the dining room as we played cards, made pizza or, on one regrettable occasion, taffy. There were highly competitive badminton games in the yard. I recall Fourth of July picnics on the beach just down the hill—hot dogs, hamburgers and my mom’s potato salad in its orange Fiesta dinnerware bowl—with our carefully chosen fireworks being shot out over the water.