Truckin' on the Western Branch

Andrea Ciola Pizzanello Andrea Pizzanello grew up in Green Acres and remembers the neighborhood as one big playground for her and her four siblings and their friends. We’d all gather at the park by the old bridge and play there. We’d go clamming and looking for mussels on the sand bar where the old bridge had been. And the brave ones would cross under the bridge. There was a story that if you waded out you could stand on the roof of cars that had crashed off the bridge into the river but I never tried that. I went to Portsmouth Catholic but had so many friends at Churchland High. We’d go to the football games and then Pizza Hut or Burger King afterward. There were two places kids were not supposed to go. One was the Purple Possum, a dark bar and restaurant in the same building as the movie theater. They had dancing and a DJ, but my mother told us it was not a place for kids to be. Then there was the Irwin’s Pharmacy magazine section where you weren’t allowed until you were of age. J. J. “Jeff” Keever Jeff Keever, retired second-in-command at the Virginia Port Authority, grew up in Churchland and graduated from Churchland High in 1971. As a boy your world is small, and my whole world was Churchland. We knew everybody and ran the neighborhoods growing up. It was a great place to be a kid. I lived in Sterling Point/Green Acres and rode my bike to Churchland Pharmacy, played Little League ball. It was a stable community, not a whole lot of turnover. When GE came in, development built up. At some point it will all be built up as far as the James River Bridge.

Andrea Ciola Pizzanello. Image by Sheally

J. J. “Jeff” Keever. Image by Sheally

Walter William “Willie” Hodges: “Churchland folks aspired to be tough but honest and smart—that was the epitome. We find our own paths.”

112