Peninsula In Passage

And about the nickname “Bumps?”That came, he says, from when he was a child and tumbled down the steps of his parent’s home, the one he lives in now. John Eberwine, son of Fred Bruce Eberwine, and his wife Cindy Eberwine live in the 1880s house that was, she says, one of five summer homes built in Bennett’s Creek by the Ames of Ames and Brownley who owned a department store in Norfolk.The house overlooks the water on a point of land dotted with magnolia and tulip trees. From the backyard you can see the James River Bridge and watch storms approaching from the northwest. A commercial pier used to ship produce once stood where the boathouse is now. John Eberwine remembers – There used to be a rope ferry at the Bennett’s Creek marina site and Ferry Road was Route 17. Then a small ferry was used and then a bridge was built. A bridge tender would blow a horn to call all the neighborhood kids to turn the crank to open the bridge - it took 6 kids. A new bridge was built in 1967. During WWII German POWs worked the farms, picking corn and other crops and were housed somewhere in Chesapeake Such nice kids and scared to death. There was a Nike site at Bennett’s Creek Park and command center where the Armory is now. The farm was a great place to grow up We were rarely in the house, always outdoors. When the City of Suffolk and City of Nansemond merged there were only three houses between the Eberwine farm and Nansemond Parkway along Shoulder’s Hill Road and maybe only three houses at Respass Beach. Frederick College was once a Marine ammo depot and the officers were housed in concrete block houses. Pat Robertson later lived in one. When I was a boy I used to go play basketball in the depot gym .

John Eberwine and Maggie

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