Peninsula In Passage

Tidewater Community College When Fred Beazley donated Frederick College to the Commonwealth in 1968 he set the stage for Tidewater Community College, the 35th largest community college in the country and the largest provider of higher education and workforce development in Hampton Roads. The General Assembly established the Virginia Community College System in 1966 to help meet the post- World War II need for highly skilled and well educated employees. The Frederick Campus was TCC’s original home and Douglas Montgomery, its first president. One of the most memorable events at the campus occurred when the Eagles - the band not the birds – arrived on campus in the early 1970s. About 20,000 people showed up at the campus for a rock concert featuring The Eagles, J Geils Band, Black Oak Arkansas and an English group named Spooky Tooth. A local news story mentions that even the promoters were shocked to see the crowd coming in on Saturday afternoon for the 1 p.m. concert on Sunday. Traffic jammed two miles of College Drive as people double and triple parked along the narrow road.

Police moved 100 cars and the limousines transporting the talent got as close as they could but the acts had to walk or hitch rides for the last mile. While the bands played the crowd sprawled on the grass, danced or took a dip in the James. The J Geils band had to be helicoptered out after the concert to make their flight out of Norfolk back home to Boston. “There was no real trouble –just people having fun,” John Eberwine, who was police commissioner in the City of Nansemond at the time. “It was Bennett’s Creek’s version of Woodstock.” In 1973 George B. Pass became the second TCC president. Three years later Deborah DiCroce began teaching English at the college’s new Virginia Beach campus. In 1985 after she earned her PhD in higher education at The College of William and Mary, she was named dean and provost of TCC’s Frederick Beazley campus, or the “Mother Campus,” as DiCroce calls it. “Rumor was that George Pass would not hire a woman for the provost post,” DiCroce says. “He called me and said, “All the bookies will lose money on this, but I want you to be provost. “ Years later DiCroce would deliver the eulogy at Pass’s funeral and toast him with a can of Bud Lite, his favorite beer, which she had smuggled into the service in a brown paper bag. DiCroce remembers - Deborah DiCroce with the infamous champagne bottle

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