Truckin' on the Western Branch

Ron Pack Ron Pack, born in Bladenboro, North Carolina, near Tarboro, grew up in Simonsdale. He graduated from Churchland High in 1963 with a group of friends who still enjoy annual reunion vacations together.

I remember Nat Howell was a paperboy. I started working at Suburban Pharmacy as a delivery boy when I was a freshman—so no extra-curriculars at school. I earned 55 cents an hour, one candy bar a day, unlimited drinks and I got to drive a Studebaker Lark. I thought it was a deal!

Dad had worked in the shipyard—NNSY—and wanted me to do that, but I didn’t see it for me. I became a pharmacy technician and went to the Medical College of Virginia.

I was a pharmacist for one year at the Suburban Pharmacy and didn’t like it. So I went to Old Dominion for an MBA and opened a pharmacy/medical supply business. I got into the nursing home business, which I sold later. When we moved to Smithfield, I, along with others, wanted to make Smithfield pretty. A consultant told us that to market the town we needed a place for people to eat, sleep, and spend money. I bought Tennis Seafood in 1983 and built a restaurant and a marina, Smithfield Station, that looked like an Outer Banks lighthouse. In high school I tried out for the baseball team with Coach Fearing and got fired from the team for missing a game to work. I saw him at the Station years later and helped tie up his boat. Fearing told me, “If you had hustled like that you would have made the team.” Tina Holtoff Pack Tina Holtoff was born in Baltimore but grew up on Tyre Neck Road next to Saunders Farm and its horses. When I was dating, guys would come pick me up and tell me I was living in the boondocks. Grandaddy, John Rattie, gave all his kids lots from his farm. He was a plumber who worked in the shipyard, a cock fighter, and my step-grandfather. He owned part of Silverwood with Charlie Russell and Jim Copley.

Ron and Tina Pack. Image by Sheally

My father built our home with his shop in the basement. He worked for McLean Contractors as a foreman and built the Cape Fear floating crane in Norfolk.

I was five years old when we moved in. The five of us kids went to St. Paul’s School, and we’d all walk down Tyre Neck Road to catch the city bus downtown to school. We played in the peanut fields across from the house. Now it’s the Silverwood subdivision. We set up lemonade and peanut stands on Tyre Neck Road but didn’t have many customers.

Churchland was a quaint little village. Mother used to let us go to Churchland shopping center on Sunday to roller skate when shops were closed. I worked as a soda jerk in the Churchland Pharmacy in 1965 and 1966 and graduated from Churchland in 1967. Ron and I married in 1972.

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