Peninsula In Passage

Ken & Donna App

Ken App was still in the Navy in 1991 when he and his wife, Donna, discovered the fledgling development of Sleepy Point Estates, once part of the Sleepy Hole Farm. App, originally from Brooklyn, New York, and Donna, from Sanford on the Eastern Shore, were both intrigued, Donna App says, by nearby Driver’s air of “small town Americana.” “It was dark out here and we could still hear some train whistles,” Ken App remembers. But that changed as the neighborhood developed around them. They walked along the Nansemond shoreline when a major storm had pulled the river away the bank. After finding several old bottles there, they wanted to learn more about the local history. “We learned about the ferry and how the area lost its railroads and water ways,” Ken App says, “And we learned about the connections between the families around here.”

When App left the Navy, Talmadge Darden, then principal of John Yeates Middle School, hired him, as one of several veterans teaching there as a second career. “The people I worked with there were like a family,” App says. He later followed Darden to the new Kings Fork Middle School and taught there for several years before he retired. Darden died in May 2011, after working with the Suffolk schools for 32 years.

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