Peninsula In Passage

Boney’s Place Coldest beer around? You could find that at Boney’s Place, just east of the Driver crossroads. “Boney’s was a country store with everything from A to Z – anything George thought would sell – and driven by wants and needs of the community,” says Leah Whedbee whose husband George was the last proprietor of the store. “We sold fish bait, hunting supplies, cigarettes, tobacco – and we did have a reputation for having the coldest beer in Suffolk.” George Whedbee’s father, Nimville L. Whedbee, was the original “Boney”, a thin, rawboned man from North Carolina who came to Driver and bought the store from a Mr. Chapel. Leah and George Whedbee met at Chuckatuck High School and married in August 1962. Nimville Whedbee died three weeks later and George and Leah took over the store. They built a brick house in front of the store the next year and George Whedbee bought out his mother’s interest in the store in 1972.

“Boney’s was a gathering place for conversation and socializing, seeing who could tell the biggest story, people from all walks of life,” Leah Whedbee says. The store also drew celebrity visitors passing through town. Leah Whedbee worked in the store and recollects talking with Arthur Godfrey and Joe DiMaggio. Fats Domino and James Brown both stopped in while they were in town to play Midway Park down the road. Politicians Harry Flood Byrd and Mills Godwin came to the store as well she says. “Some people who came in were a real joy,” she says. “ Others were a thorn in the side.” “The area was pretty safe but crime moves in as years go by,” she says, remembering that she was robbed at gunpoint once and the store was broken into. “John Dodson bought the store in 1999 and owned it for a year and a half before he bellied up in the business, tore down the store and never rebuilt, “ she says. “He never used the Boney’s name.” George Whedbee died at 71 in 2004 and Boney’s Place is but a memory.

Leah Whedbee

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