Peninsula In Passage

Community Icons

The Purple Lady Anyone who saw her was unlikely to forget Rachel Presha, The Purple Lady. Swathed in shades of purple and a wooly violet cloak, The Purple Lady walked for miles along US 17, Bridge Road and, unknowingly, into a legend that transcends geography, age and race. Children craned their necks from the back seat, hoping for a glimpse of The Purple Lady. They counted the purple utility poles, Rachel’s handiwork, lining the highway and watched for her purple house, not far from the entrance to Harbour View. They ran up to her at any of her usual resting places along the way, hoping for a word or a smile. They were never disappointed. Adults gave her rides and were as happy as children when she thanked them with a Biblical verse or a philosophical thought. “I picked her up years ago on a winter day when it was just beginning to snow,” Cindy Eberwine says. “I asked her how she liked the snow and she answered, “The snow is to the earth like cold cream to a woman’s face,” and I’ve never forgotten that.” For 20 years a Purple Lady sighting was a highlight of the day and a topic of conversation for months afterward. Robert T. Williams, developer of Harbour View, remembers being in Atlanta, mentioning he was from North Suffolk and a business acquaintance there asking “Home of the Purple Lady?” Ward Robinett, President of Towne Bank, Portsmouth, and his wife, chatting with strangers aboard a flight home, said they were from the area and immediately were asked “Have you seen the Purple Lady?” In the late 1980s Presha suddenly disappeared and the community wondered. Then a news report from the Toledo Blade confirmed a sighting there. Presha apparently had decided to settle in “Holy Toledo.” Little more was heard about her until 2010 when her daughter, Delzorra Presha, brought Rachel back to a white, not purple, house in Pughsville and threw a community celebration for her 85th birthday. The Purple Lady was home. And still smiling. And still especially fond of children. “I’m a child myself,” she says. If The Purple Lady has been a mystery to the community, she has, at times, been a bigger mystery to herself. Her parents Sarah Marie Roberts Presha and Samuel Lester Presha moved from Cleveland, Ohio, to Bennett’s Creek about 1920 to help Bishop William H. Plummer develop Belleville, the self-sustaining community of Temple Beth El, The Church of God and Saints of Christ, on Bridge Road. Samuel Presha was a hard worker and the

John H. Sheally II

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