Airport Acres

Short History of Airport Acres Neighborhood

WWII drove the need for ordnance production. In response, the US Government built the Radford Ordnance Works and the New River Ordnance Plant, two facilities on the New River and close to the railroad lines. The two facilities needed a large number of people in a short period of time, but workers and their families had to live somewhere. (note: the plants have had many names over the years, including the Arsenal, Hercules, and others)

That was the issue of the day which James J Pandapas responded to with solution. He created one of these wartime neighborhoods which soon dotted the Montgomery, Giles and Pulaski county maps. Airport Acres construction begun in 1942 with the first house finished in February 1943. This house, 501 Fairview, was occupied by the Pandapas family. The 60 houses were built and finished by September 1943 with Federal funding during this period of rapid wartime expansion. The land James J. Pandapas bought was in Montgomery County at that time, south of Blacksburg. At that time, route 8, Christiansburg Turnpike, lead to Christiansburg and onto Floyd County. It also was a short distance to Peppers Ferry Road and the powder plants. Route 8 is now call Airport Road which bends towards Main Street at Hubbard Street. At one time Airport and Ramble Road were joined as one because the airport runway did not bisect it until the runway was lengthened later. The 1965 USGS map above shows the road was still intact, but that changed with the 1971 update.

Mr Pandapas’ interview contains many interesting facts about the project and the social issues of the time. He also identified overt racism and prejudice in Blacksburg. He hired African American painters and described the abuse of these black painters by the white painters – “breaking the color line.” He also had to bank in Rocky Mount because the only two banks in Blacksburg, Farmers & Merchants and National Bank refused to loan him money. Also, the president of the college, Dr. Julian Burruss forbid any faculty from buying one of Pandapas’ houses, eventually calling it prejudice. To encourage sales he bought an interest in the bus service to the Powder plants, “Blacksburg Bus Lines.” He also bought a Blacksburg grocery store and moved it close the the neighborhood (corner of Airport and Hubbard.)

There is a lot of information about James J. Pandapas. His papers are available in the Virginia Tech Special Collections & University Archives, 1966-88, 1997. As stated on the website, “Resident of Blacksburg, Virginia, born in Peabody, Massachusetts. Played a large role in the development of business and residential housing in Blacksburg by establishing Blacksburg’s first industry, Electro-Tec, in 1947, and Poly-Scientific Corporation, in 1953, both manufacturers of electroplated slip-rings for radar antennae. Also developed various neighborhoods in Blacksburg, including Airport Acres (established in 1942) and Highland Park (1945). In 1948 Pandapas purchased a 500 acre tract of land on Poverty Creek in Montgomery County, Virginia, as a recreational area for the employees of Electro-Tec. By the time he sold this land to the National Park Service in 1987 it was called Pandapas Pond.”

Radford Army Ammunition Plant, Radford Virginia

The World War II Ordnance Department’s Government-owned Contractor-operated Industrial Facilities: Radford Ordnance Works Historic Investigation.

Radford Arsenal’s interesting history is found here. The site was surveyed in September 1940 and power production begun in April 1941. The image provides a before and after view of the area.

This document contains much history of the neighborhoods which housed a small fraction of the workers hired during the the height of the facilities’ peak production. Airport Acres (Freedom Homes) was one of these quickly assembled needed housing. Page 79 noted that, “The 65 houses at Airport Acres in Blacksburg were also built according to FPHA [Federal Public Housing Agency] plans.”

Bus which was used to transport workers from all over the New River Valley to the Arsenal. (courtesy of the Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration.)

Oral Histories

Robert H. Giles, Jr collected these oral histories and transcribed each. They are no longer posted on their original webpage, but fortunately the Wayback Machine, Internet Archive, captured these.

Mrs. Susan Roberts and daughter, Betty Jo Everette, 12 Dec 2000. Transcribed by Robert H Giles, Jr, 14 Dec 2000.

“I visited Mrs. Suzie Roberts at Warm Hearth, Christiansburg, Virginia, with her daughter Mrs. Betty Jo Everette on the afternoon of December 12, 2000 to try to learn things of interest about the Airport Acres neighborhood. I had no particular reason or project in mind; no special type of history to be written. I had just delivered the history provided by Mr. Pandapas for editing or approval and realized, again, how easily the past is forgotten or otherwise lost. It may not have significance or special meaning. At least we are who we were, and we are very interesting.

Mrs. Roberts is 91 years old and is recovering from a knee-replacement operation. She was in good spirits during our conversation though complained of some pain. I had a list of questions which I suggested would not be limiting and may only suggest other things. Her husband, Bill Roberts died in 1985. He was an employee of the arsenal, a guard. Bob and Betty Jo Davis are children by her first marriage, Al and Delores are children from her second marriage.

She and her daughter, Betty Jo, lived in the house now owned by Violet Oliver, 605 Fairview. 1943-1948. She had lived in Christiansburg, Roanoke, and then moved to Airport Acres. Betty Jo was born in 1931. Mrs. Roberts rented from Mr. Pandapas and Mr. Robert Smith (whose family lived at 511 Fairview) collected rent for Mr. Pandapas. Mrs. Smith worked at Arno Bowers’ restaurant on Main Street. All Airport Acres houses were sold and the Roberts had to move. They then rented a house on Main St.

Violet Oliver now lives there (605 Fairview). Mr. Oliver operated a grocery store. Theirs was the last house on the street. There were no other buildings beyond it (to the west). In 1938-39 David Oliver was with the national guard and ready to go to war. He contracted a tropical disease and died on the operating table.

Much of the conversation revolved around who lived where within the neighborhood:

The former mayor, Dr. “Torchy” Walrath (Agric. Econ prof. at Va Tech) lived at 504 Rose. Then the Chambliss’, Cassells, then Whites (rental), then the Giles’ starting in 1969.
Mr. Pandapas lived at 501 Fairview, the first house on the corner (the Garst’s).
Taws? lived in second house on Fairview (503? Bowers currently).
Sal Liskey lived in second house? (Fairview?).
Dr. Hobbs lived on Fairview. When she moved in, Arno and Beulah Bowers’ lot was empty. It was the place where concrete was mixed (comment from Beula (November, 2000) describing the difficulty of getting the yard cleaned up and grass growing.).
Mr. and Mrs. Neeley lived on DeHart.
The Everette [Everett] are only the third family to ever live in their house, 503 Rose. Betty Jo lived at 605 Fairview previously.
The 503 Rose house was owned by McGraw, then Fonteneau [Fontenot], then Everette [Everett, and still owners as of 2023].
The 506 Rose house was not one of the Airport-Acres houses. It was already there and the others were built round it. Mr. Adkins lived in it. Teresa Martinez now lives there. The garden and stone walkway was built by ???? who took off the concrete patio (east side).
The people who formerly lived in the Bowers house (McCormicks) had a small pet monkey that roamed the house. It was of special interest (pesky) when Betty Jo went to baby sit there. The Bowers children delivered newspapers.
The Andrews lived in the corner house (601 Fairview ?). Mr. Flow Andrews taught at Tech; Mrs. Andrews was a librarian and later was a secretary/librarian for Giles.

Mrs. Roberts remembers the area with it small trees.” It looked so bare”. The trees were no bigger than your thumb in thickness. The Radford plant opened in 1935. She made $1 a day and worked at Tech doing clothing alterations for cadets and others. Financial conditions became better when the Plant (Radford Arsenal) opened. Betty Jo worked at the plant.

There were no cars; gasoline was rationed; everyone walked. Every week or so they would call a taxi and go to get groceries. The taxi would be used to deliver pies which Mrs. Roberts baked for the local restaurants. One was Meredith’s Diner (an old street car on College Ave on the area where the CEC parking lot is located now, 2000). Mrs. Roberts regularly walked to campus (Airport Road, then down Southgate and across campus, often down Draper St.). (It was 1.7 miles from the Main and College stop-light to her home.) She was telephone operator for the University for the 3 to 11 shift. She also had the 1 to 9 shift. The phone operator sat high in the Burruss Hall tower. Walking home, even late at night, was never a concern. She was never afraid. On some evening the police, if in the area, would give her a lift home. Mr. Sanderson, “a nice man”, the dry cleaner (a building across from University Bookstore on Main Street) would also give her a lift home.

The train (its terminal now where the Town Hall is located) could be seen from Airport Acres. It ran on the right of way now the hiking/biking trail.

Margaret Beeks school was not there. The area was only a field. The Porters lived at the corner across from the school. Ms. Beeks was the principal and would come out of the school (the so-called “Media Building” on campus) and ring her bell to call the children in from playing. Steven Everette started primary school in the Media building. David Everette was the first of the four Everette children to go all years of school at Beeks school.

There were no dog ordinances and dogs ran loose. There were no recollections of crime, no large fires, no particularly memorable summers with bad insect outbreaks. The streets were all gravel but there was little traffic, thus little dust. All houses had septic tanks and fields. Eventually when the city sewage system came in it was rumored that some were not “hooked up”.

Some houses have a door configuration such that you cannot get a piano into the house. One person moved to the area with one, left it on the porch for months, then sold it. One person took out the front window (the large one typical on the houses) and put a baby grand in through the window.

Mrs. Price “who lived 2-doors away “played the piano and sang. The children made great sport of mocking the way she sang.

Basketball games were played in the armory (across from Mish-Mish). The big bands would come for the cadet major dances and Mrs. Roberts and her husband would go and sit outside the SAB (student activity building , Squires Hall) on the lawn and eat ice cream and listen to the music. There was baseball at the high school (the CEC parking lot now). There was a Town baseball team. Her husband was a manager. The team played at the Salem stadium and the VPI stadium.

There seemed to be more snow then. Snow would stay on all winter it seemed. In 1960 during Lent it snowed every Wednesday night. It totaled 60 or more inches that year. Snow was 2 times the height of the cars. It seemed that every year when the cadets would go by train to the VMI-VPI football game it would be the signal to the weather start snowing for the winter. The Roberts would watch them march to the train in the snow.

She recalled walking to campus when the ground was icy. She was coming down a set of stairs on campus and a senior cadet in his great cape fell and the cape spread out beautifully. She laughed too soon for, at the top of the stairs, she too fell – twice.

Kids played below the open field now known as “Sandy’s”. The field was bare soil of clay and sand. Children played on what they called the “sandy airfield” the unoccupied area at the end of Porter and Fairview.

The employment of the people was: military, lumber and construction, etc.

On Airport Road there were no houses, only one up to the Gate’s house, a 2-story brick house on Airport Road. The road was in use straight across the airport. The area was seldom in use and there was no need for security. The road was the original and only main road to Christiansburg from Blacksburg. Occasionally there would be offers of Sunday flights for $5.

There was a small store at the sharp corner of Airport Road at the airport. It was a grocery and convenience store only, not a bar.

They had no recollection of garbage disposal services. There were then, as now, no sidewalks. There was only a path from campus to Airport Acres neighborhood. There were apple trees at the end of Fairview. Al, Betty’s half-brother, was badly cut in a fall from one of the trees. Mrs. Roberts remembers having the flu so badly that she could not keep the coal furnace going. The houses had a furnace and a stove used for heating water. The children got in bed with her to keep her warm.

They went to the opening day at Legget store in the mall (now closed, torn down, and rebuilt as Krogers).

The Hubbards lived where Don Garst now lives off Airport Road.

They remembered Mr. Price who lived on Turner St. who had a large push cart with 2 very large wheels, from which he sold vegetables from his gardens. There were no horses or horse wagons. One field had horses.

There is an extension of Fairview St across Airport road. It is marked by 2 small gateposts. The road is almost completely overgrown. The Walkers lived down that road.

The Corner Drug Store building, (Main and College Ave, now a record store) was the Plank and Whitsett building.

In the old days, women were all at home. In the mornings they would often visit, drink coffee. It was a very different time. Later some went to school, then to work. Major changes seemed to occur about 1973. Betty Jo stayed at home with tending the children and house for 16 years. Now there is little socialization in the neighborhood. Everyone works, etc. The past was a much simpler time – no clubs, organizations, circles, etc. The stereopticon was a favorite way “to see the world”. Now everyone has cars; everything is different. People “want it all”, immediately.”

Robert H. Giles, Jr., December 14, 2000

A Builder’s History of Airport Acres – James & Anne Pandapas

A recorded conversation with James and Anne Pandapas, at the home of Lois and Bill Patterson, 1993. Transcribed by Laurie Good. Edited by Mary Giles. Corrected by James Pandapas, 12/19/00.

“When the first Airport Acres house was completed in 1943, it carried a Cambria address and its reason for being was the Hercules Powder Plant just outside of Radford. According to James Pandapas, who built the initial 60 houses in Airport Acres, When the War broke out, all construction beyond 14 miles of the critical installations like Hercules was prohibited. The War Production Board had to give a project like this permission, so to speak, to build. And it gave one the necessary priorities, with which to buy critical materials and so forth. And this project was within 14 miles of Hercules, so we qualified, whereas anything beyond 14 miles was just frozen.

At that time, the town was one square mile, 1,200 people. The College, the student body, was like 200. That was in the Fall of 1942. The College had practically closed except for one group of naval cadets, I think. They were teaching them how to fly at the airport. That was really the only activity that the College had. They had even suspended their other state-wide activity, like farm services, the extension service. It was really a ghost town. I should have realized that the project really wouldn’t be welcomed. I didn’t expect it. It was really a surprise after we got started.

The College didn’t want this project. It was labeled as defense housing. And it’s understandable. They just didn’t want … It was not appropriate. A small College town.

I should have realized that, but I didn’t. And we didn’t know about the objection to the project until after we had started. The first I knew about it was a guy came to my office, which was really just a field shack that I had set up before we started building, and introduced himself as the manager of the airport. He asked me what we were doing. He saw me using a transit, surveying and laying out the lots. I told him we were planning to build 66 defense houses.

He said, “You can’t do that”.

I said, “Really? Why not?”

He said the War Department had plans for underground hangers for this hillside.

And I said, “Really!? I didn’t know that. Are you representing the War Department?”

He said, “No, I’m just manager of the airport. I thought I’d just give you a friendly tip, that you just can’t build these.”

I said, “Look, I can’t abandon a quarter of a million dollar project.” A quarter of a million dollars then was a lot of money. “I can’t do that at just your say-so.” I laughed in his face when he told me that they had planned to build underground hangers on this hillside. The airport was a whole lot smaller than it is now. You couldn’t get anything but a Piper Cub out of it. Real small.

I apologized for laughing in his face. I told him that was the funniest thing I had ever heard. Incredible.

He said, “Well, you’re in real trouble.”

And I said, “My gosh, we didn’t intend to interfere with the War effort.”

In any case, he left in a huff and I heard no more about it.

I discussed it with my partners, who incidentally owned the New River Lumber Company. They had a plant here in Blacksburg and one in Narrows. That’s how I got to know them.

Well, after the manager of the airport visited me, we laughed about it. They speculated on who it could be, because the airport didn’t have a manager. We figured it was just some crank that was having fun. About a month later, I got a call from the director of the Federal Housing Administration [in Richmond]. F.H.A. originally financed the project. His name was John B____. I’ll never forget the old man. He asked me what the hell I was doing here.

I said, “What do you mean? I’m getting ready to build some houses.”

He said, “I know that. I’ve got a delegation here from Blacksburg, representing Blacksburg and V.P.I., that have a petition. I guess you’re the builder.”

I said, “What!”

He told me that the delegation claimed that I must have misrepresented the housing situation in Blacksburg because when the college practically closed down, all the garage apartments and basement apartments and attics that had been rented out as apartments were vacated. So there wasn’t really a shortage of housing.

But I told him that the War Production Board didn’t consider that. They considered the entire area. So it had been decided that the area within 14 miles of Hercules had a housing shortage. And anyone who applied to build defense housing was judged on that basis — not on what the situation might be in the exact locality. I told Mr. B_____ that this was the first I had heard of the petition.

This man was quite astute politically. He had been appointed as Director of F.H.A.’s office in Richmond. Very fine gentleman. I told him that it was unusual that they would go to F.H.A.. Why didn’t they come to me if they had any objection? I should have been notified of any objections.

“Well,” he says, “they obviously want to cut you off.”

Parenthetically, as a word of explanation, we had 66 F.H.A. commitments which provided that if we built the house according to F.H.A. requirements and sold them to people with approved credit, F. H. A. would guarantee bank loans for $3900 each. This gave us the option of either selling the houses subject to the F.H.A. guaranteed bank loans or we could retain title, close out each loan as the houses were completed, and rent them for $45.00 a month, as approved by the Wage and Price Administration in effect during the War.

Getting back to my call from Mr. B______, I told him that if I had fraudulently applied for these commitments, that that was a police matter. I could prove I did no wrong and that the delegation’s efforts to cut off my financing were unfair and illegal.

Mr. B______ said that I must have misrepresented the situation, or I certainly wouldn’t have gotten priority to building these houses. That stirred me, of course.

I asked him who these people were, what their names were. He wouldn’t give them to me. This was supposedly not the political thing to do. He wasn’t going to help me by telling me who the people were.

We weren’t actually disturbed about it. We speculated on what might be happening, but did nothing. The very next day, I guess it was very close to the Christmas holidays in 1942, I got another call. And this was a Mr. John V______ of the Defense Department in Washington. Apparently the same delegation had left Richmond and gone to Washington to talk to the War Production Board into withdrawing my priority, alleging that this was a waste of defense materials to build 66 houses that were not needed during the period when that war material could be used for more beneficial efforts elsewhere.

Mr. V________ said he wanted me to know what he told these people. “There are six of them; five men and one woman, sitting in my office listening to our conversation on the amplifier phone. I told them I was going to call you to hear your side of the story and they could listen in.”

He continued, “They allege that there is no housing shortage in Blacksburg. Is that true?”

I said, “It is true, since we moved here, a lot of student housing for large apartments, basement apartments, and so forth, have been vacated.” I said, “I know because I was hoping to move my family from Narrows to here, but of all the apartments I looked at, there was none that I thought suitable.” It would just be my wife and we had one baby child at that time. I said, “I would consider this really as suitable defense housing, but in any case I didn’t misrepresent. All I had to present at the time I applied for my priority was the affidavit from Hercules that there was, indeed, a shortage of housing.” And there were people living in garages and shacks and trailers and mobile homes. There was really a need for defense housing. And there were several projects in the area within 14 miles.

After I had told him and the listening delegation what my position was, I said, “What do I do now?”

He says, “I don’t know, but you’d better go see a lawyer.”

This was in December of 1942. The company had made about a dozen excavations, but nothing was completed at that time.

I told Mr. V_____ that Mr. B_____ at the F.H.A. wouldn’t tell me who these people were. . .”Do you have any reluctance in telling me who they are?”

He says, “No, I’ll be happy to tell you.” So he read off the names. These six delegates. Five men and one woman.

I told them I’d find out what I could and call him back.

He says, “OK, call me back at 3:00 o’clock.” He said the delegation had agreed to wait until you call back. This was in the morning, about 11:00 o’clock, I’d guess.

I got a hold of one of my partners who lived here in Blacksburg. He ran the Blacksburg branch of New River [Lumber Yard]. I told him what the story was and gave him the names. And he knew every one of them. And he knew also that they all had from 2 to 12 ( I think was the most anyone had) of these rental units. And so they were representing themselves and their private interests.

To check on whether they were officially from the town, we went to the Clerk’s office, and the town clerk went through the minutes of the meetings from several months back and there was no resolution or anything objecting to the project.

To see if they had been sent by the College… we went to the President’s office. . . We did get to see his assistant. And we told him what the story was and he says, “All I can tell you is that there is no delegation appointed by the College.”

So I came back to my shack and called Mr. V_____ and gave him the name of the assistant to Dr. Burruss and his telephone number, the telephone number of the Clerk in the town of Blacksburg. And I also gave him a list of the rental units of each of these six people.

He said, “I sort of thought something like that. And I wanted you to hear what I’m going to tell these people.”

And he dressed them down. I mean he called them everything but traitors. That they had had the effrontery to object to a project that the War Department decided was necessary in order to protect their own selfish interests.

I understood later that they walked out of there as meek as they could be. And he says, “I think you’ve heard the last you’re going to hear about this.” And he also told me again, “If I were you, I’d go to your attorney. I think you have something actionable… for these people to be doing this, alleging what they’re alleging. I’d sue [them]”.

This, of course, gave me reassurance so that I thought the whole thing was over. But after the Christmas holidays, we got a summons to court from V.P.I., enjoining what we were doing, which, in effect, told us to quit. . .[because] we were interfering with plans that the College had for the improvement of this land. And the College had the right of eminent domain. They could condemn any property, and in which case the court sets a price, a fair price, that they had to pay for the property.

It’s just unbelievable what power, conditions and political influence they had. They ran everything according to their laws of what they thought was best for the College. And apparently, this delegation of people, some of whom were connected with the College, thought it was against the better interest of the College, or had convinced Dr. Burruss that this was going to be another slum project that was just inappropriate for a College town. The injunction, of course, didn’t state that. It just simply said on such-and-such a date, we had to appear in the circuit court to answer the Court’s injunction. In effect, the temporary injunction forced us to quit work and lay off employees just before the Christmas season. Any money we spent after we got this notice was not going to be recoverable.

So we went to our attorney then. Mr. W_____ was my attorney at Narrows, and he suggested that he would get in touch with their attorney John S_____ who was also a state senator at the time. But he also did all the legal work for the College.

John S_____ was really a dynamic man, and a very influential politician. As I said, he was senator, a state senator who aspired to go to a national level. Never did get there. Ran for governor and missed. In any case, was a reasonable man. Of course, he represented the best interest of his client. And he suggested that maybe it would be a good idea if we all got together, had a meeting, discussed the whole thing.

He told Mr. W_____, “You know, the College would give your clients relief. It owns land in other areas — Prices Fork, and some beautiful farm land on the new Route 460 to Christiansburg and Route 114 — that’s closer to Hercules. They can’t sell it to you, but you could all exchange the land and the College might even pay the difference and reimburse you for the problems you have had. I feel sure that F.H.A. will go along with the transfer.”

They obviously were really serious; they just didn’t want these houses built. In any case, we decided to leave work and go to this meeting.

We agreed to meeting in Burruss Hall in January of ’43. And representing our company were the three of us — the Mason brothers and myself. Keep in mind, they had a complicated situation, because they [the Mason brothers] sold a whole lot of material to the College. The College was their best customer. And they were in a delicate situation . . .

Of course, my interest was to keep going. We had already started the project and we had it in full swing. Actually we had started framing some of the houses.. We had poured probably a dozen foundations by that time. And we went to the meeting. In addition to the three of us and our attorney, there were Mr. S_____ and the assistant to the President. Dr. Burruss was not there, but his assistant was representing Dr. Burruss, and three or four other V.P.I. people, one of whom was dressed in a military uniform. A major in the Army.

And after the preliminaries and amenities, John S_____ outlined what the College’s problem was. The College had plans for the expansion of the airport. They had already condemned Airport Road, which was the road leading to Christiansburg at that time. And actually cut it off. To extend the runways. And the Federal Aviation Administration was going to participate in the cost of expanding the airport. And one of the FAA rules was that a certain clearance, 1 in 20 off the end of the runways, and 1 in 7 from the side of the runways. There couldn’t be any trees, houses, or any obstructions before they could qualify for assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration. And what we were planning to build was going to interfere with that clearance of 1 to 7. And therefore, the College had to have this property to make sure that nothing would be built that would interfere with this clearance requirement.

I asked the assistant to Dr. Burruss, “Why didn’t you notify us before we started construction? When you found this out, why didn’t you buy the land? It was for sale.”

They had no answer for that. It seems that no one thought that anyone would be building.

And then, I said, “You knew that we were doing this.” It was well known in town that we had started this project; we had advertised for construction workers and so forth.

And this man in uniform said, “Look, Jim, I came and I told you.”

And I looked at him.

He said, “Don’t you remember? That you were looking a transit and laying out lots, I guess. I stopped by and I asked you what was going on, and you told me that you were planning to build some houses. I told you that you couldn’t do that. That the College was getting ready to condemn that land in order to qualify for FAA assistance for the expansion of the airport.”

And I looked him straight in the eye for a second, and then with a loud voice for emphasis, I said, “Major W______, I respect that uniform you are wearing, but that’s a damn lie.”

And of course everybody stood up, expecting this man to lean over and hit me or something. And everybody was just really upset at my reaction. It was a lie. It was a damn lie. He’d never done this. I certainly would have remembered if a man in uniform had visited me with such an important statement.

But what he was trying to establish was that we had already ignored this notice, informal as it was, that we had had from the College.

And I said, “Look, gentlemen,…” and I briefly outlined the order of events since we announced our plans to develop Airport Acres — how we negotiated with the town for our water connection and with the Appalachian Electric Power Company for our electricity, and the newspaper ads for construction workers. I concluded by saying “You all knew about Airport Acres for more than six months and did nothing about it. Now you are threatening to bankrupt us.”

Then I said, “In any case, you’re all playing dirty pool. And I, for one, am not going to stand for it. You’re used to having things your way. And if this is the way you’re going to do things, I’m going to have to do what I have to do. I’m going to leave this meeting and I’m going back to Airport Acres and I’m going to go to those lots closest to the airport, and I’m going to start excavating. And if I finish excavating, I’m going to start pouring concrete. And we’re going to work around the clock until I’m arrested. And [when] I’m arrested, I’ll have enough money left to buy a full-page ad in every newspaper published in the State of Virginia to tell the people of Virginia how you conduct the management of your institution.”

And I left. And, of course, my attorney and partners followed me out of the conference room. My partners were really upset. After all, V.P.I. was their lumber company’s best customer.

They got me real angry. This guy misrepresented having talked to me. And to show that he was lying, which was obvious to everyone in the room, he meekly kept his seat; he didn’t even stand up when everybody else did, which was prima facie evidence that this guy was a liar. And had lied, of course, for the benefit of his employer, because he was employed by V.P.I..

And I did what I said I would. I came out and moved my excavating equipment such as it was, to the lot closest to the airport and actually had excavated the basement when my partners and attorney came. They said that they had “compromised.”

And I said, “Well, what is the compromise?”

They said, “the College is going to buy six of the lots closest to the airport runway, and is going to remove the injunction. And you can go ahead with 60 of the 66 lots.”

I was still mad. I wanted to sue them. I didn’t want to go through with the agreement and wanted to take these bastards to court. — young and impetuous at that time. ( I was born in 1915, December, so in 1942, I was 27 years old.) In any case, my attorney suggested that we go ahead and complete the agreement — which was going to turn us loose and we could start building the remaining 60 houses, which we did.

The first house that was completed was on the corner of Fairview, now numbered 501 Fairview. Mr. Pandapas and his family moved into it in February of 1943. Once the construction process began, it went rapidly. Mr. Pandapas described how they accomplished the building so quickly.

We were well organized and we had specialists in all of the crafts and so forth. They knew what to do because we built 38 similar houses in Narrows and it was a valuable experience. We had the nucleus of an experienced crew.

The construction people that we picked up — that was something else. We were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Construction people were scarce and anyone that had any skills at all was already working. Hercules had hired most of them. Others had left the area.

The saving grace was that we did have a nucleus of a good crew, an experienced crew from Narrows. In any case, we continued building efficiently in spite of the many problems. . You can imagine the shortages of materials. The shortages of labor. But they were usual problems at that time during Wartime.

For example, let me tell you about our water problems. We had negotiated an agreement before we started with the manager of the town water department. The closest main that they had to the project was a 2-inch line, that ended about a quarter of a mile on Airport Road, close to where the town limits were at that time. Our line continued along what was then called the Christiansburg road, or turnpike.

Unfortunately, the War Production Board wouldn’t let us put anything larger than a 2-inch main, because there was only a 2-inch line to the point of our connection. So, we hooked up there with a 2-inch line. And we had to buy a meter, a 2-inch meter. Our corporation agreed to pay for whatever water went through the meter. For whatever the use was — concrete, or later on, connections to the houses or whatever. They didn’t want any kind of a deal with the occupants. They wanted one contract to cover the entire project. So we had to lay out the mains with just 2-inch lines, without hydrants. And without meters. But, you had to do things like that during the War, in order to save critical materials.

It was difficult to find materials. And if you could, if you didn’t have priority, you couldn’t buy. Like, for instance, the plumbing fixtures, the plumbing supplies, faucets and valves, and so forth. The best the War Production Board would let us buy were actually finished in black. You couldn’t buy any chrome fittings, or any brass valves. And so they were all inferior material, although some of them were surprisingly good quality. They cost more than the original material that they replaced. The same thing with wiring. They wouldn’t let us put but so big a box for the mains. I think it was a 60 amp box. That was the biggest we could put in. In addition to the 220 line to the range, we only had four circuits for the entire house.

And we had a lot of other restrictions. We couldn’t get screens for the windows and doors. You couldn’t buy a screen door, for instance. You couldn’t buy screens for the windows. If people wanted to put screens up they had to have these temporary ones. But even with those restrictions, we tried to build a decent, honest house. It was admittedly minimum, but perfectly suitable for the young couples that they were expected to serve.

We had a lot of disadvantages, like, for example, we had other real problems. Like we couldn’t buy sand. You can’t imagine anything as elementary a problem in the construction business as not being able to buy sand. There wasn’t any sand available in the area. The closest sand came out of eastern Virginia and came in by train. It was a beautiful white sand, but it was awfully expensive. It just made the cost of concrete prohibitive. The College used it because cost is not as big a factor. But we had to work on a very tight budget. We mixed our own concrete. We set up our own concrete plant but we couldn’t buy sand.

Finally, we had to compromise and buy sand that some enterprising man over in Pembroke used to sell us, that he used to dig out of the bottom of the New River, where the New River made a sharp bend and deposited whatever sand was in suspension. He would dig this up and load it on his truck and bring it over to us. He would charge us $2.00 a ton, which is a reasonable price, except the sand was dirty. It was sand, all right, but it had soot, wetted silt, topsoil. There was no way we had of washing that sand, so we compromised and mixed that sand with the Petersburg sand. It was a compromise I hated to make, because of the economic considerations. . . In any case, we did mix it with good clean sand, so we came out with reasonably good concrete. That’s what’s in your walls. I’ll tell you, you’ll have a hard time drilling through it, if you ever have occasion.

We eventually mixed it with limestone sand which was a by-product in the process of crushing limestone into gravel. The local quarry people would screen out the dust and fine particles and sell it as sand. But it really wasn’t sand. It wasn’t cubical like sand has got to be in order to be good for concrete. But, any concrete you make using this limestone sand cures out as extremely hard concrete, but it was difficult to work with. It wouldn’t flow, for example. You just couldn’t fill a form, a honeycomb — all that sort of thing. But we started combining Petersburg sand, limestone sand, and this dirty sand out of the New River to meet all of the necessary preliminary tests to determine what mixture was tolerable — how much of the River sand we could use in order to get the flexibility we needed for construction that still wouldn’t detract from the strength of the concrete. And we had to use it for plaster also. All our plastering was done with this dirty sand. The plaster was more tolerable because it didn’t have to have any strength.

There is a crack that appears every five years or so across the center of the living room in each Airport Acres house. Mr. Pandapas was asked if he had any explanation for this idiosyncrasy.

Because the ceilings of the living rooms are the largest expanse between walls. Although we reinforced all corners between ceilings and walls with steel mesh and although we used metal corner beads to reinforce the exposed edges of the arches, there was no practical way to reinforce the plaster over rock lath in the ceilings, so the cycles of expansion and contraction because of temperature changes eventually resulted in the cracks.

Otherwise, we maintained high standards of workmanship as any comparison with similar housing projects would prove. For example, all our doors were hung with what we called “nickel and dime.” You could put a nickel between the jamb and lock side of the doors, but the cracks between the jamb and the top and hinge side were no wider than a dime, a standard unheard of for housing in this area at that time. We built these houses to last longer than the length of the mortgages, but not expecting them to be in this good a shape 50 years later.

As we were finishing the project, Hercules Powder Company went through its periodic shift of products, which resulted in a huge lay-off. All of a sudden, there were vacant houses all over the area, many of them closer to Hercules, at Fairlawn, for example.

That was in the spring of 1943. So now we had real problems. Anyone that wanted to buy had to have $475 — the difference between $3900, the F.H.A. loan, and $4375, which was the sale price of the house. Or, if they didn’t have that, at our discretion they could sign a 30-month lease, with a lease-purchase agreement whereby they would pay $45 a month, $30 of which went to service the F.H.A. loan, and the other $15 a month would accrue to their benefit to offset the $475 down payment.

We sold only one house on that basis — that was the second house, next to the one we lived in. To make a long story short, we kept finishing these houses, but nobody wanted them. And by the time, in September of 1943, when we had finished the 60 houses, 30 of them were empty.

When we found out we couldn’t sell them, we tried renting them at $45 a month. When we closed the last F.H.A. loan, we had 30 vacant houses. Brand new houses that nobody wanted. Couldn’t sell them, couldn’t rent them, which presented a problem because although we had closed all the 60 loans, we now had to make the payments on those loans. And that was $30 a month a piece. Whether houses were empty or not, you still had to make those payments. The rent that we collected on half the houses didn’t make up the payment, let alone other expenses that we had –maintenance expenses and so forth. So we personally, my partners and I, had to subsidize. So every month we had to dig deep into our pockets and come up with the difference between what we had collected in rent and what we owed. . . .

And we had other problems during construction. I remember we had the reputation of breaking the color line. Up until that time, no colored person had ever worked on construction projects in Blacksburg. All the building that was done at V.P.I. was all done by whites. I didn’t have any policy one way or the other because no colored person had ever applied for a job.

We had an urgent need for painters. We hired everyone that claimed that he was a painter and we still didn’t have enough painters. So this colored man came by and he was wearing the white uniform of a painter, and convinced me that he was a painter. He particularly liked to paint trim. This met a real shortage because none of my painters wanted to paint windows. So I hired him without giving any thought to the fact that he was black.

So, the minute he showed up to work, here comes this contingent to my field office. There were about a dozen of them. They were all painters. And by some fluke, they were all from Merrimac. So they as a group came to quit. They weren’t going to work with any damn n____.

I was appalled. They wanted their money. And I said, “Gentleman, it’s a free country. If you don’t want to work, you don’t have to work. But I don’t have to pay you on demand But come Saturday, I’ll give you whatever is due you. You’ll get paid for every hour you worked.”

So they all piled into a couple of pick-up trucks and I wound up with just one colored painter. The others didn’t come back until the end of the week. They ran out of money, I guess, and we compromised. If any of them was offended working with a black man, I would let him work in a house by himself. Following up, the black man painted the trim around the windows and the doors, painting the inside of windows. So they all went to work, but none of them worked with the black man.

So that was supposed to be a compromise. But we got the reputation of breaking the color line. As for other trades, black people, some of them decrepit, some of them too old — anyone who could claim that he had some kind of construction experience kept hanging around my shack, looking for a job. Some of them came to know me real well, calling me, “Master Jim, isn’t there something I can do?” Obviously, some of them really needed work because we didn’t have the unemployment relief systems that we have now.

At the height of the construction, the building crew was probably 50 people, all told. We did everything, plumbing, electrical, concrete work, concrete finishing, painting, plastering. This is the system I started over in Narrows when I first came to Virginia. And it worked.

At Narrows at that time we had good people. We had the pick of the crop. To give you an example, minimum wage was $0.25 an hour when I first came to Virginia.. I paid $0.40 for labor. Carpenters were paid $0.65 per hour –I paid $0.75. Paid at least a dime more than the prevailing wages for the classification. And of course I got the pick of the crop.

And we treated them decently. Gave those who wanted to work overtime, overtime. Those who didn’t want overtime were not required to. We planned the projects so that there was always inside work to be done. So if we planned to pour concrete and it was raining, then the whole crew would go to the houses that we had and do inside work. Construction people were not used to working every day so we had employee loyalty.

V.P.I. continued to oppose the project and would not permit their employees to live in any of the houses. I went to Dr. Burruss and told him that their objection to the project was not only hurting me, but hurting the College. I said, “If you prohibit anyone coming to work for V.P.I. from living in Airport Acres, then I’m going to be forced to rent them to the very people that you don’t want in your community.”

To persuade Dr. Burruss to change his policy, I told him, “Houses don’t make a slum — people do!” I added that we proposed to be were very selective about who we would sell or rent to, because we had a vested interest to protect. “If you’ll cooperate, we’ll practically reserve these houses for the employees of the University so that it ought to be a nice congenial community.”

Well, he wouldn’t have this; he just didn’t want to change his policy.

And then I said that I wasn’t going to burn the houses down. “If I have to rent them to prostitutes, I’ll rent them to prostitutes. I can’t afford to leave them vacant.” In the meantime my partners got tired of subsidizing and they wanted me to give them up, just let them go. Let F.H.A. do it. And just call it a war casualty.

But I couldn’t do that because at that time I felt that housing was going to be my future, and I just couldn’t afford to have the reputation of giving up on Airport Acres. In any case, I bought their interest and went to my banker, who was in Rocky Mount. That’s another side story. V.P.I. wouldn’t let either of the banks in town — we had two small banks at that time, The Farmers & Merchants and The National Bank. Of course, the Board of Directors was mostly V.P.I. people. And so both banks were run for the convenience of the College and were not interested in our financing, even with F.H.A. guarantees.

It was just more-or-less a selfish interest from people who had influence with the administration of the College. We were going to bring 60 families into the community that only had 200 all -told. It was a significant addition to the town, which should have pleased them. So, I had to go to Rocky Mount for my financing.

I even went into the bus business — Blacksburg Bus Lines –I bought an interest in that so that we could have a bus coming by to pick up tenants that worked at Hercules. You just couldn’t get gas to drive your own cars, as long as there was other transportation. We did everything in the world that we could to promote the rental of the houses. We’d given up trying to sell. I even bought a grocery store downtown and moved it close to our project.

I finally got a break because two months after I bought my partners out, Hercules had another shift in production, opened up a new line, brought in new people. And all of a sudden the houses were filled. That was in 1945, in January, I think.

There were other problems, like we couldn’t get telephones out here. We were the only ones that had a telephone. And we had that because when we finished the project I transferred it from my construction shack to my house. So, we had the only telephone on the project. If our tenants had to make an urgent telephone call, they had to come to our house, which was a perpetual nuisance. We eventually got a pay phone in the grocery store we owned. The tenants used that during the day, but they still had to use our phone at night. It was probably a year or so after the War was over before people could get [telephones].

We had other serious problems with the telephone company when it decided to meet the need for phones at Airport Acres. They wanted to set their poles along the streets for the most economical installation. I insisted that they should use the electric power company poles already in place along the rear of the lots. Persuading them and with the cooperation of the electric power company which owned the necessary easements, we finally prevailed.

Unfortunately, the V.P.I. resistance policy continued. We had a woman that, after the war, was over wanting to buy a house. She was single, but her boyfriend was coming out of the service; they were going to get married. He was going to go to school on the G.I. bill. And she wanted to buy the house, have it furnished, have it ready for him. And so, she made a $100 down payment. Oh, she wasn’t sure whether they wanted to buy or rent, so she gave me $100 as a down payment, and was going to decide within the month whether to buy or rent.

And less than a month later, she came and she wanted her deposit back. And I told her that the deposit was a deposit, that I was going to go through with my end of the deal — she just had to go through with hers, unless she would tell me why.

She said, “Well, I just changed my mind.”

I said that I just couldn’t believe that. “If you’ll tell me why you’re not going to rent or buy this house, I’ll give you your money back.”

Well, I guess she wanted the $100 because she said that her boss told her that she couldn’t live at Airport Acres and work at V.P.I.. And I said, “You know, I could take what you told me to court and really hurt V.P.I.. You go back and tell your boss that I have threatened to do just that.”

And I went back and talked to the assistant to the College president, and told him that they’d better stop this foolishness. The War was over and that I didn’t have partners that were depending on the College for business. And if for nothing more [than] to retaliate for what they had done to me during the War, I was going to make their life miserable. He promised to talk to Dr. Burruss.

So, the word went out. But, they were also having problems because they were trying to attract instructors, but there was no place for these people to live. They weren’t going to live in somebody’s garage or basement apartment. And to prohibit them from living out here, was cutting off their nose to spite their face, so to speak.

In the meantime, Dr. Burruss died and John Hutcheson came and he didn’t have the same kind of prejudice. We started talking directly to the president of V.P.I. and told him how foolish it was to maintain this kind of policy. As soon as the word got out, the houses filled. And when and if somebody moved, somebody else was waiting for it.

In the meantime, we got tired of the inevitable problems you have with rental projects — collecting the rents, the deadbeats, people moving in the middle of the night, taking things that didn’t belong to them, stripping the light fixtures, ranges and refrigerators. At that time, we were furnishing ranges and refrigerators, too. We furnished the appliances on some of them in order to rent the houses. We charged $2.50 a piece per month if they wanted ranges and refrigerators. And I got into trouble over that because I didn’t have approval from the Office of Price Administration (O.P.A.) to increase the rent because of the ranges and refrigerators.

So, they all got the rental back that they had paid for ranges and refrigerators because it exceeded the $45 a month maximum rent that I could charge for the houses. So, we got rather fed up with the whole thing. . . So, we started selling the houses. As each house became vacant for whatever reason, we put it up for sale.

Mr. Pandapas’ father would quote an old Arab proverb to him. “I came into this world crying, while everybody around me was smiling, and then when the time comes for me to leave this world, I hope that I’ll be smiling when everybody around me is crying — smiling with the satisfaction of leaving this world a little better than when I found it.”

I had that as my credo, that whatever I touched, I was going to do the very best I could. And I was determined to leave this world a little better that I found it.

As he reviewed this document in December of 2000, making corrections and adding explanations, Mr. Pandapas wrote, “I have never forgotten my wartime experiences with Airport Acres. Now, 50 years later, I am just as proud of it as I am with all the other, more impressive accomplishments in my lifetime. I believe I will die smiling.”

A Conversation with Beulah and T. Arno Bowers, Saturday, January 20, 2001

I visited Beulah (age 85) and Arno Bowers (age 84) at their home at 602 Rose Avenue, Airport Acres, Blacksburg, Virginia. Their home was built in 1952. It (and 506 Rose) are interior houses not part of the Airport Acres construction described by Mr. Pandapas.

Their lot on which their house was built was owned by a lady in Merrimac. With the help of lawyer Mr. Scott, they bought the lot for $600. It had originally been the concrete mixing place for the Airport Acres development. Grass was difficult to grow in the early years because of the concrete and soil compaction.

Houses in Airport Acres did not sell well and some were not rented. A Rocky Mount firm sold them for $1,000 down. They could then be bought for $5,000.

Mr. Robert Smith worked on rentals. He died in 1957. His wife, Edna, worked at the store at the corner of Airport Road.

Arno had gone into the service June 30, 1943. He had lived in Floyd. He recalled stacking hay for a dollar a day. He worked in a Floyd restaurant. He was shipped to California where much to his surprise there were two others in his outfit from Floyd County. He ended up in the 567th anti-aircraft unit. He recalled being “in supplies” and seeing milk in paper cartons, the first he had ever seen. After maneuvers in Louisiana and Georgia he was in the Battle of the Bulge and awarded four combat stars.

Arno started in business at the College Inn in 1946. Edna Smith bought the 511 Fairview house. Arno and Beulah rented the 3rd house on the right (509 Fairview) and the attic apartment was rented to a student. Dick Hummel lived across the street. Lila Logan owned the house on the corner (501 Fairview). Becky Bower lived in the same place as now (503 Fairview). Margie Johnson owned her place (across the street at 601 Rose), currently listed for sale (2001) for $120,000.

The Town limits were shown by a sign on the corner of Airport Road and Draper Road. There were few houses along Airport Road. The Airport Road turned (as now) at the corner near the airport where there was a small store. In the center of town (College and Main) there was one stop light and a “round-about” with a monument in the center. He does not recall when it was removed.

All the roads in the neighborhood were gravel. They do not recall when they were first paved. There was little dust from the gravel since there was not much traffic.

Arno remember Flood Andrews (601 Fairview) who lived behind their house on Rose Avenue having two nectarine trees in the back. Mr. Andrews was involved in the Agriculture College insecticide spray program. Arno jokingly told that “One day he spent 10 minutes spraying those two little trees.”

They thought the neighborhood was “real pretty” from the beginning. There was little landscaping. The trees in front of each lot were small, “hardly up to the window.” There were no fences and the yards were all open.

There was a rabbit’s nest with young in their front yard that they remembered well — before there were as many dogs and cats. There was often the smell of “polecats”, or skunks bothered by dogs or people. (Several people have commented on how the frequency of skunk odor being noticed has declined from that remembered in the 1960’s.)

Last year, Arno saw seven squirrels at the corner — all at one time. He fed squirrels until they started climbing his back porch screens, waiting for him to feed them. Then, he stopped. (Squirrels and songbirds have increased as the trees and landscaping have grown.) The deer have now (2000) begun to bother the Garst’s garden (off Airport Road near the turn at the Airport fence.).

Each house had a septic tank and these” all had to be pumped out ever so often”. When the sewer system came in, people rarely objected because it was getting more difficult to find a place to dispose of the pumped waste.

All of the children in town or the nearby county went to the school behind the Town Armory (off Draper Street, now a College of Architecture building). There were plenty of children in the neighborhood.

The main grocery store was a Krogers in the building beside the bank (now Boudreaux’s Restaurant). Oliver had a store (now Annie Kaye’s Foods), but they later went to Radford Brothers since the prices and meats seemed better. The only ABC store (none on Blacksburg) was in Christiansburg.

The neighborhood has been quite. There have been no major fires; no crimes of note. There have been few cases, even lately. There has been little noticeable drunkenness. The police patrol occasionally. Last year was the first time they saw two police on their bikes. In the 1946’s there were only 2 policemen for the Town. One was very politically oriented and moved to Washington soon after Eisenhower’s election.

The coldest day was Sunday night, January 20, the Superbowl, 1985. It was -14 degrees on their porch thermometer. Mountain Lake reported -32 degrees. Beulah sat up all night tending the water in their pipes and tank to keep them from freezing.

That night was the beginning of the end of the College Inn. The next morning, Arno wen to the front door of his restaurant and found water running out of the front and back doors. Pipes had not been properly installed in an adjacent building. They froze and broke, and the basements filled with water. The oil stored there floated and leaked, and oil saturated the ceiling . . . everything. The odor never really left. Customers suffered from the odor, although some remained faithful. The owner, Mrs. Smith, didn’t want to go to court and so never sued for damages. Arno regretted never having money from a settlement surrounding all of the damage. They now are concerned about oil in their home; the price for heating and staying warm seems very high.

Robert H. Giles, Jr.

Arno died on June 24, 2003, Beulah a year earlier. I remember that while he was sick in a Blacksburg hospital bed and in some pain, he said “Let’s get something started,” as he thought about getting well. That’s my new slogan. I think he might like that. Bob

Rose Avenue Reunion in Tampa: 1999 – by Anne Giles Rimbey, Formerly of 504 Rose Avenue

For a few years when I was in my early teens, I would ride with my across-the-street-neighbor, Mrs. Betty Jo Everett, to Roanoke to Fink’s Jewelry’s annual sale. Both of us would save our money for a year and then splurge on a half-priced sparkler. Mrs. Everett tried on diamond clusters and I peered at garnets and peridots. We ate lunch at a cafeteria, admired our rings, and talked about people we knew, about swimming at Shawnee Swim Club, and listed what we liked to eat. I felt very grown-up and important to be considered a companion worth driving with all the way to and from Roanoke.

When I got a call in April from Mrs. Everett saying she was visiting her brother and sister-in-law near where I now live in Tampa, I knew exactly what we would do together. The only difference thirty years later was I would do the driving!

Good friends begin where they left off even when they’re separated by age, time or distance. Mrs. Everett and I embraced happily and started talking from the moment we saw each other. Over gourmet quesadillas – a food unknown to Airport Acres in the early 70s – we talked about, well, people we knew, swimming, and what we like to eat. She recognized and admired the ring I wore, one we had bought together. At the mall, we said, “There’s a jewelry store!”, but didn’t go in. With old friendships, there is room for new ways. We shopped for T-shirts for her grandchildren, blouses for us, and accessories for her remodeled bathroom. I loved the warm pleasure we took in each other’s company. I loved taking her where she wanted to go.

I wave at my neighbors in Tampa, but we rarely speak. I am the age Mrs. Everett was when she took her awkward, teenaged, across-the-street neighbor on special shopping trips to the big city. I have no idea whether or not I have a love of jewelry or books or anything else in common with my neighbors. It’s not that kind of place. But Airport Acres is a place where friendships between people of all ages have a chance. Mrs. Everett had three teenaged boys and a little girl and still made room in her heart for me. She enriched my childhood and, now, enriches my adulthood. What a gift my neighbor Mrs. Everett has given me. Anne Giles returned to Blacksburg in 2006.

Mills R. Everett: A Span of Two National Economic Depressions

This is a story of the life of a Blacksburg, Virginia, citizen. It’s a true story, uncontaminated by the writer, just the story of a citizen, his early hardship, military service, and his many roles in war, the church, work, and family life. Many people pass through our lives and we are unconscious of their contributions, the forces influencing them, the lessons learned, and the wisdom they can impart for our future. This story may be a brief honor but it is intended to be useful information about community and what has created it in the past and what will work in the future. Honor or not, people need to know about themselves. In summary, they need to have a basis for considering how they are alike or differ from others, and to hear or read that they are seen as a good person, and have gained conspicuous life success as honest worker, soldier, good father, loyal active churchman, and town citizen.

Julia T. Everett who traced the family and wrote “William and Some of His Family”, January 31,1979, said “It seems a pity that we cannot know more about those who preceded us a hundred or so years ago … A hundred years from now family may mean nothing if politics and/or science should choose more expedient ways of producing a race of what may be called human robots! In the meantime, surely, for most of us family will mean something.””

I met Mills in 1968 when we moved into a house on Rose Avenue “across the street” from the Everetts. We’ve been neighbors ever since.

Mills was born on May 3, 1922 in a farm house near what is now North Carolina highway 32 near Suffolk, Virginia, Nansemond County. His father, Elisha Lee Everett died in 1924 so he never knew him. He had one brother, Elisha L. Everett, Jr. who died when Mills was 70, and one sister Ruth Elizabeth who died when Mills was 86. His grandmother had a 100-acre farm with a large house built in 1919 where he and his family lived. His grandmother also had a 394 acre farm at Wine Oak, South Quay. The area near South Quay (Quay meant “port”) was the site where ammunition was brought up the river in the Revolutionary war . He never knew his grandfather, Elisha Lee Everett. In the depression years (1933) when Mills was a young boy, the family lost the land in a foreclosure. His grandmother, Ruth Elizabeth Howell Everett and family, could not raise the $5000 needed for the bank. Aunt Essey, (sister of Mother), Ruth, Mills and Lee stayed in Grandma’s house in the depression years before it was lost. His parents and grandparents are buried in a cemetery at South Quay.

He remembered his aunt getting his help in planting. He planted and she followed. He remembers staying bent over in the hot field for hours and she would walk behind him, dropping in a cut of a sweet potato in a hole he had dug and stepping on the hole to cover the cut. To him there seemed unfair division of labor. There was no time for school athletics or similar activities. But he does remember going to the circus with his grandmother.

Mills worked on the farm, “Everyone worked together then.” He did chores, fed chickens, mowed, and tended livestock. There were share-cropers that also worked then.

He lived with Uncle Putt for a year, working in the service station for him. He remembered the Ford cars with side doors that opened toward the front of the car (called “suicide doors” for if they were ever opened while driving, the wind would tear them off). The “revenuers” drove such cars. Mills found a pistol in the attic of the family farm house when they were leaving. It had a lever action beneath it to fix a bullet into place. It had probably been there since the Civil War. He put it on the back shelf at Uncle Putt’s store. One day a man came in, saw it, and wanted to buy it. Mills hesitated but Uncle Putt said to sell it. So he did … for 25 cents! He still regrets the sale as he watches Antique Road show on TV.

Mills broke his hip in an early morning fall in his back yard, October, 2013. He lay calling out for an hour and a half until he was heard by a neighbor and first-aid was called.

Part of the family tree: Mills’ Grandfather: Mills Everett Howell & Grandmother: Aseneth Cynthia Edney (Ruth Elizabeth’s mother). Mill’s Father:Elisha L. Everett & Mother: Ruth Elizabeth Howell. Mills’ siblings: Brother Elisha Lee Everett Jr. (Wife Virginia Featherstun), Sister Ruth Elizabeth Everett (Married Spivey)

Mills went to school in Cypress Chapel, about 9 miles out of Suffolk. Then he went to Jefferson Elementary School and with age transferred to Suffolk High School. That school building has been renovated and converted into a museum and arts center with auditorium.

There were family hardships during the move from the farm and so Mills went to work with pride (saying now, “I don’t want to brag about it”) at age 15 as a “soda jerk.” He did some curb service, then worked the counter in Russel’s Drug Store, then did cooking and preparing sandwiches. That’s where he did his first cooking and still prepares excellent dishes (I can attest to that from servings shared with us, the neighbor family). After school he would work from 3 to 11 p.m. and walk the 7 blocks home at night. Later, when he could drive, he would leave home at 7 am in a woody station wagon making dry-cleaning pickups and deliveries until 9 a.m. and then run to school … often being late. He was scolded for lateness but he remembers Ms. Brinkley saying “I understand.”

From an occupational guidance course late in high school, he got a job as a clerk in Ballard and Smith Department store. There after school he sold men’s ware and shoes until he was drafted in World War II. He helped out briefly doing odd jobs with a nearby home demolition and repair. Within a few months of graduating he asked for but got no deferment. He needed one course to graduate. He was in the Army and they brought him back for his graduation in June of 1943. The high school gave him credit for the last course based on equivalent military service.

He hated to leave home for the war, like everyone else, and went to Camp Lee (now Ft. Lee). A week after being inducted he went home to Suffolk with a friend. He was in the Army for almost 4 years, November 1942 to late April, 1946.

After basic training he was sent to Ft. Washington, Maryland, and was put in food service for the officers’ club. He worked with others in setting things up, peeling potatoes, checking and keeping stock, cleaning, and making salads … for 400 people. (10 people to a table and 40 tables). He worked there for about 18 months, serving many Officers Candidate School soldiers.

Then with a few others he was sent to Ft. Lewis, Washington. Others in his group were sent to Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. In Washington he went through re-training as a basic soldier and stayed there through Christmas, then was sent eastward to Atlanta, Georgia, to medical technician school at Ledderman General Hospital. He stayed in that school for three months.

Given a 15-day leave, he and a friend planned to hitchhike from Atlanta to Suffolk but soon gave that up and rode the train. They enjoyed a Pullman service.

Then he returned to Ft. Lewis, Washington, and stayed 30 days and was sent to Camp Hahn, California, at the edge of the desert outside of Redlands. There at March Field he saw his first P-38 fighter planes. At this Camp he was setting up special hospitals and preparing to go next to New Guinea.

Ordered to unpack, he was sent to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, (near Columbia and Frankfort, Kentucky). There he was a ward attendant in a general hospital with 48 wards. He remembered Dr. Midhoffer well. Mills was sent to school to further his abilities as a surgical technician. He was sent to Ft. Sam Houston, Texas, Brook General Hospital. There he stayed for two months and returned to Atterbury where he, as a surgical technician and ward supervisor, assisted with “rounds” and scrubbed to assist in minor operations. Much of the work there was “reconstructive” after war wounds. He remembered an event (as if one from “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”) in which a friend and he took four paraplegia to Indianapolis to “to have their special day”. He was pleased with the fun they all had. He remembered making a lot of good friends there, and that the nurses were friendly but “off-limits” to enlisted men.

He knew he would get out of the army in 1946 and went through a discharge medical screening. In that screening he was diagnosed with a hernia and one friendly doctor suggested it be done soon. He got the operation, was put in bed (as done then) for 15 days to heal, and then was put on a 30 day furlough. He returned from the furlough but found to his great disappointment that the doctor had departed the army. The discharge officer asked Mills “What do you want to do?”

“I’ll go home,” he said, and 5 days later he was out of the Army… a Sargent, Tech 4, April, 1946.

With early life centered in or near Suffolk, he frequently shares tid-bits about the place. Not sure if there is any family connection, there is a place out of Chuckatuck between Smithfield and Suffolk called Everet (with only one t); most other records have Everett with 2 ts. Records vary about the final “e.”

When he got home he returned to sales work with Ballard and Smith and within a few days he went to register at Elon College. To his surprise, his sister had already enrolled him. Aided by the GI- Bill he went from September, 1946, to May, 1949, “straight-through”, no summer breaks. He received an A.B. degree in chemistry, planning on medical school and on building on his past military experience. Still with financial problems, he worked in the Elon dining hall (family-style meals served and cleanup) and in a town drug counter as he had done in Suffolk. One summer he gained money by tearing down military buildings at Duke University to bring them back to Elon to be re-built.

After graduation he was employed by the Virginia Health Department for two years ($200.00 per month) as a Sanitation Inspector. His responsibilities were water quality sampling and restaurant inspection, etc. A friend working at the Arsenal called him about a job opening and he remembers coming to the Arsenal on a weekend, March 3, at 8 a.m. and was out of the interview by 8:15, hired. He immediately returned to Suffolk after giving a two-week notice to the Health Department.

Mills stayed with a cousin who lived in Christiansburg (March 1951) for three months, then moved to Blacksburg into the Whipple House on Turner Street. There he met Jim Dymock who became a long-time friend.

He worked for Hercules Co. at the Radford, Virginia, ammunition plant or Radford Arsenal where he was employed as a chemist. His first assignment in the chemistry laboratory was in testing water but the assignments diversified over 35 years within “the arsenal”

In December, 1953 he began dating Betty Jo Davis of Blacksburg and they were married, April 10, 1954. They remain married (2009).

He was assigned to Essential Materials lab working with the water plant. After 3 months there, he was transferred to the Internal Ballistics lab where tests were conducted on ammunition propellants for their burning rates, life service, tensile strength, heat of explosion and decomposition rates. In the lab he and others did tests of solid propellants and made test samples, cutting them to the proper sizes for tests. The materials, all machined there, were used in manufacturing munitions.

One test was the “closed bomb” used to determine pressure to be produced in a given gun barrel. He conducted such tests for 15 years.

He was then shifted to the ballistics and firing range, then to a section studying processing in different sections of the plant – bringing in new formulae, writing about procedures on “the lines,” then testing and evaluating procedures, writing more reports, and then transferred back to Internal Ballistics.

Mills had little time for community activity for he was always “on call” and could be called at any time if there were challenges or accidents at the plant, and he supervised three shifts at the Arsenal. He recalls having helped get a sand lot or little league ball team started in Blacksburg.

He remembered many meetings and educational units and once took a 6-hour statistics course at Virginia Tech in a “Rad-Tech” cooperative venture.

His boss called and asked him to join in “hazard analysis” trying to find dangers and to investigate and make reports if there were accidental explosions. One piece of equipment had been out of commission for 3 years or working poorly. It was supposed to measure the moisture content of the sampled material. Staff had worked on it off and on. His former boss transferred him to work on it, “an automatic single base line” all on computers.

The general operations involved bringing in nitro-cellulose into the plant, blending it and then extruding it into a powder, then storing it. After study, Mills called in an engineer from the manufacturer who discovered the diodes had been taped down for transport to reduce shipping vibration. The problem was solved. He was told to write it up but on that day he said “I’m 63 and retiring; let one of my colleagues do it” and retired.

He then began teaching school as a substitute teacher at Shawsville (various subjects but through the years, band, math, algebra, social studies, and history … the regular teachers had prepared lesson plans), Auburn, Riner, and Christiansburg Middle School. Needs became great at Christiansburg Middle School and Mr. Dobbins called him regularly at 6 am to request he substitute-teach for someone. He did that for 18-19 days a month for 12 years and stopped in 1999. There was a day when he realized that his macular degeneration had become too great. A teacher had asked that he check her roll while she was away. He tried to do so but could not see the names on the list and asked a front-row girl to call them out … and he never went back.

Betty Jo took care of Betty’s dad for 3 years. Later she worked as a legal secretary for Jim Hutton. Betty’s father is buried in Bonsack, Glade Creek cemetery, with others of the Davis family.

Mills has served the Lutheran Church of Blacksburg in many roles. He was once Chairman of the Finance Committee and Financial Secretary of the church, later served on the Church Council, and now (2009) serves as one of three Trustees.

Another part of the family tree …

Mills Robert Everett born 5-3-1922 and wife Betty Jo Davis Everett born 5-5-1931. Children: Stephen Douglas Everett 1955, David Lee Everett 1957, Michael Joseph Everett 1960, Julia Alison Everett 1967. Mills and Betty Jo have three grandchildren (2009) (Jessie, Nick, and Allie) and 2 great grandchildren (Hayden and Audrey).

Affected in many ways by the depression that occurred in his early years, Mills seems pleased now that the current depression has not hurt him or his family badly, though he knows of those who have been hurt.

Robert H. Giles, Jr. with the editorial assistance of Betty Jo Everett and Mary Wilson Giles.

The Future Airport Acres Neighborhood, Year 2001, a supplement to The Comprehensive Plan of Blacksburg, Virginia

Memories of Blacksburg the Way We Were Facebook Group Information/Recollections

Facebook Recollection Capture: H.B. Dillon Foods – “who remembers the small grocery store on Main Street that was run by a Mr and Mrs Dillon. I think they lived in Airport Acres? Carried an ongoing tab for my family. Made the most delicious chicken salad.” “The Dillon’s had a collie that Mrs would send to the store with a list & Mr would fill the list and send it home with the dog.” “My father closed in 1961… Opened in 1938. Bless your heart and thank you so much for remembering. I also remember your family as such a good customer and remember taking the Pearman orders over the phone. My Mother was proud of her chicken salad. I have never been able to do as well. when Daddy gave up in 1961, Sallie Oliver moved his Blue Grass Market from down town into the space. That was open for more years. As of now it is the anchor of The Brown Stone complex filing that whole block.” “The Dillons lived on the corner of Draper Rd. and Airport. ” “My grandparents lived on Wharton Street and I made several trips to Dillons’ store. I bought Brown’s Mule chewing tobacco from GrandPa and the afore mentioned chicken salad for grandmother but I did my part in consuming it. It was really good but one batch was different: it had a crunch to it. WE first thought it was ice but upon closer inspection we realized it was glass. I took it back and they realized a fluorescent bulb had burst in the show case. The Dillions made it right but that is a meal I’l never forget; no pain, just glass.” ” Sallie Oliver and Sallie moved in in 1961. Not many people remember H B Dillon Foods…there from 1938-1961.” “Leo Grissom worked for sallie oliver for years at blue grass market”

Facebook Recollection Capture: The store on corner of Airport Rd and Hubbard Street was owned by the Hardies. It was razed in 1989. “Clarence Bowles bought and lived in the house until he died.” “In the early 50’s it was a drive in restaurant called Anna’s.“ “At some point Edna and RO Smith were involved in a retail establishment there. They purchased one of the original Airport Acres houses on Fairview Street. They went on to found the College Inn Restaurant with her sister Beulah and husband Arno Bowers.” “Edna Smith and Beulah Bowers were sisters. Maiden name was Harman from Floyd County.” “Hubbard Street was named for Mr. & Mrs. Hubbard who had a farm in Airport Acres … (They did live in the House that Mrs. Mary Frances Garst lives in now) … We had a telephone party line with them and took turns using the shared phone line … Mrs. Hubbard said I sure was an “interesting” young man, always something going on … Mr. Hubbard plowed everyone’s garden each spring.” “Mr. Hubbard use to out out a huge garden and sold vegetables to the neighbors. I recall him having a strawberry area. You could come pick your own strawberries.” “Tilly and Hoot Gibson who lived in airport acres. W.L. Gibson Jr was a professor in the Agriculture School.”

“Here is one of the “Gilmer Maps.” A so-called Confederate Engineers map compiled in the 1860s. Notice southeast of Bburg a fork with three roads. I have labeled them “Airport Road,” “South Main & Ellett,” and “Highland Park.” I am just opening this discussion for any interested parties. I’ve been studying the early roads. The easy answer is to say “Airport Road was the early South Main” and it was…for a time…But Airport Road wasn’t there before the path we know as South Main. Airport was being called the “Road from Bburg to Cburg” by the 1810s, while the other path (South Main) was called “Lucas’s Path.” Capt. John Lucas and other early citizens owned land along Cedar Run and were charged with making/maintaining a road through there to the N. Fork of Roanoke by the 1790s. Eventually, part of Lucas’s Path was cut through to meet Old Main St (Airport Road/Ramble Road) up on the hilltop where it continued to Christiansburg. BUT… what really fascinates me (and has for a while now) is that third fork. Quite generally, it traced some of Palmer Dr. some of Grissom Land, heading down into the valley to Roanoke River near the Hoge home place.” Ed Marsh

Anna’s Milk Bar Drive-In

It is amazing how pieces of the past float your way, then all the puzzle pieces fall into place!

Anna Gregory operated “Anna’s Milk Bar” in the little store that was once owned by the Hardie family. The building below was located at the corner of Airport Rd and Hubbard, but razed in 1989. Thanks to a few Facebook post, we now know more about this business.

Anna was the daughter of Cleve J. Gregory and Sara Leslie Gregory. They built and ran the Montgomery Bakery in Christiansburg (N Franklin St), selling baked goods to restaurants and grocery stores. When C.J. Gregory died in 1945, Anna and Sara continued to managed the successful family bakery (noted as the only bakery in Christiansburg at the time) and the restaurant which was connected to the Camp Jackson hotel, located near the current Southern States store on Roanoke Street (gone).

As Kay noted, in the early 1950’s Anna ran her “Milk Bar Drive-in” which sold ice cream, milkshakes, and baked goods from the family bakery. According to her family, this adventure ended after only a few years when Anna left the area with her new husband.

Her family gifted Anna’s Guest Book of her establishment to the Montgomery Museum of Art & History. Check out the local names.

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