Читать книгу A Small Town Love Story: Colonial Beach, Virginia - Sherryl Woods - Страница 14

A LIFETIME OF FRIENDSHIP:

Jackie Curtis and Jessie Hall

Though one was born on Tangier Island and one was a Colonial Beach native, Jessie Hall and Jackie Curtis bonded in first grade at Colonial Beach Elementary School and have remained friends for decades. Their shared memories of growing up in Colonial Beach are good ones, rooted in the school they both loved, the men they married and the churches to which they belong.

Jessie, the daughter of a waterman, was born in 1930 on Tangier Island in the middle of Chesapeake Bay, but came to the beach before starting school. Jackie, whose father was with the Virginia marine patrol, grew up right across the street from the school and remembers her fascination with watching the linemen when electricity was first installed. Her father was a patrolman on the river during the era of the Oyster Wars, and she recalls him finding bullet holes just above his patrol boat bunk during those wild days of confrontations on the water.

The two women laugh often as they tell tales from their childhood and from their teen years.

Jessie met the man who would become her husband, Donald Hall, in first grade, also. He was a year older. “He’d been kept back a year. He likes to say it was because the teacher liked him too much to let him go on to second grade.”

The two women reminisce about spending all day with friends, riding bikes, roller-skating. “We just had to be home before dark,” Jessie says. “Now you have to watch your children every minute.”

Her father, like so many others in town, worked at Dahlgren, but also, like others, ran a sideline business on the boardwalk during the summer months. He operated a shooting gallery on the boardwalk during the years when there were rides, casinos, a dance hall and a roller-skating rink. There was dancing and music at Joyland, and she and Jackie both loved music, “but our mothers wouldn’t let us go there.”

Jessie Hall, 1946

Donald Hall, 1946

Jessie Hall, 1946

Jessie and Jackie, 1945

Jessie and Donald Hall on their wedding day

There was little question in Jessie’s mind that Donald was the man for her. By seventh grade they were a couple. After graduation in 1948, he joined the army and served in Korea. They married on October 23, 1948 and had two children, Wanda and Donald Junior. After his military service in Korea, Donnie worked at nearby Dahlgren.

Jackie met Harley “Buddy” Reamy in fifth grade, and they went all through school and graduated together. Three years later, he joined the army and was sent to Germany. Happy to be back home and away from the war, he said, “I don’t care if I never go out the Beachgate again!”

Buddy later worked at Dahlgren and then opened a real estate office. They also had two children and had been married thirty-seven years when he passed away.

Ten years later Jackie remarried. Robert Curtis was from a much bigger town in Illinois, and she worried that he might not like small-town life. “But this is such a nice place to take walks, ride bikes and drive golf carts along the river,” Jackie says. “Bob enjoyed this so much. He told me, ‘I love it here.’”

A widow again now, she says softly, “I liked being married. I liked sharing my life with someone.”

Jessie as a hula girl

The two women recall their school days as if they were yesterday. They were “Drifters”—the name of the school mascot—through and through. They love the fact that their children went to the same school that they did and grieve over the wintry January night in 2014 when a fire—later determined to be arson—burned down the building where they’d attended classes and made so many memories.

One of their favorite teachers was Claudia Kitts. During her era the students performed Spotlight Revues, which were short skits or musical numbers. “Jackie, Donna Davis and I were the Andrews Sisters,” Jessie recalls. Some of the lyrics were surprisingly risqué, they thought, still laughing about the fact that they were allowed to perform them.

For one number the girls wore costumes that included skirts made of crepe paper. “Eleanor Inscoe’s fell off, and she ran off the stage,” Jessie remembers.

What they remember most about Mrs. Kitts, though, is that they enjoyed learning. “We’d dance the Virginia reel or an Irish jig at recess. She made learning fun,” Jackie says.

The town held a huge party for her when she retired in 1968.

Just because their own graduations and those of their children were long ago, it hasn’t stopped their loyalty to the Drifters. Jessie and Donald still attend every high school basketball game and talk with pride about their championship runs and the year they brought home the state trophy.

But if the school played a part in their early friendship, they both say that their separate churches are important in the lives they lived back then and continue to live now.

Colonial Beach Baptist Church, 1961

Colonial Beach Methodist Church

Jackie grew up in the Methodist Church, which took over a building that once housed the Union Church, the town’s first official church. It was used by various denominations for many years. One by one the denominations built their own churches. The Methodists took over the building in 1911, and the building was later demolished. Jackie now lives in a home that was made, in part, from that scrap lumber.

Donald on the basketball court

Her mother played the organ at the Methodist Church, and she fondly recalls a community Thanksgiving service at that church in 1951. The service was followed by cinnamon rolls and coffee. “That made a sweet impression on me,” she says wryly.

Meanwhile Jessie was a member of the Baptist congregation. “Our mother church was Round Hill Baptist Church,” which is located several miles from Colonial Beach. “They started a mission at the beach.” It began 120 years ago in a building on Bancroft Avenue across from the Hopkins store before moving to the main road in town, Washington Avenue.

She was two when she began attending services there and became a member when she was eleven.

Originally called the Colonial Beach First Baptist Church, members later realized that the African American Baptist Church had actually started earlier and gave them the designation of being the First Baptist Church. And when they tore down the church on Washington Avenue at the corner of Dennison to move to a larger building, they also gave their windows and pews to the African American church.

At one point, under Director of Music Steve Newman, they had several youth and children’s choirs with eighty children. “Now we don’t even have a children’s choir,” Jessie laments.

But both women see the churches as real anchors to the community for the members of their congregations. Many have food pantries, some have thrift shops; almost all hold events such as bazaars and dinners that draw neighbors regardless of their own denominations.

When asked about memorable characters in town, they mention everyone’s favorite, Mattie Hopkins, who, with her husband, owned a small neighborhood store. It was well known for its jam-packed shewlves and for Mattie’s willingness to turn a blind eye when it came to selling beer to young people without checking IDs.

Jessie at the Bank of Westmoreland, 1948

Everyone seems to remember Mattie, walking to church in her tennis shoes with taps on them. Though she attended St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Mattie always stopped across the street at the Baptist Church, sat on the steps and changed into her “good” shoes before crossing the street to St. Mary’s.

And, recalls Jessie, who worked at the Bank of Westmoreland for forty-four years, Mattie would always bring her store deposits to the bank tucked into her bra.

Mention the Bank of Westmoreland and Jessie’s eyes get misty. “I hope I never see the day that building is torn down.”

Standing on a corner in what was once the heart of downtown Colonial Beach, where the street was lined with crowds of tourists and locals every Saturday morning to shop at the A&P, the bakery or hardware store or to pick up mail at the post office, the Bank of Westmoreland, which was built in 1904, became Colonial Beach town offices for a time. The building was vacated several years ago, but many want to see it given the historic designation it deserves and used in some appropriate way to maintain the vital role it once played in the community.

Like so many others in town, the two friends lament some changes and embrace others. No matter what, though, neither would live anywhere else.

Donald and Jessie Hall