Truckin' on the Western Branch

Ward and Bruce Robinett Dr. Paul Ward Robinett moved his family to Churchland in 1961 after he opened his practice on Court Street in Portsmouth. His son, Ward, who was born in Richmond in 1947, was just starting high school and remembered We lived on Dogwood Trail in Pinecroft and had a whole gang that played on the ball field behind the house. There were plenty of people in the neighborhood—the Psimmas brothers, the Crones, the Boyces, the Morgans. We had four doctors on the street and three to four children in each family. Tom Kirk, who lived at the end of the street and had built a lot of the houses, worked in the shipyard and had a Pied Piper’s touch. He had the first zip line we’d ever seen—10 to 15 feet above the ground. The Boyces had a big game room and we shot pool there in the evenings. All of the neighbors had bells to call us home. Churchland was a great place for a young family—sort of an idyllic “takes a village” village. My father, Thomas Judson Wright III, was a banker who did some development. My parents bought the third house in Sterling Point. There was nothing there and we watched it develop. When I was 12 years old, I was biking home from the Maganns (they had the biggest driveway in Sterling Point) with my skates thrown over the handlebars. One of the skates caught in the spokes. Dr. Robinett sewed up my chin, but Ward and I didn’t know each other then. We built tree houses, sneaked onto George T. McLean’s property and played on his heavy equipment and watched the horses. Ollie was the caretaker, and he’d let us in and take us to the horse barn. Our horses were on a farm in Suffolk. We had impromptu horse shows and rode along Route 17. My family raised jonquils on the farm in Suffolk and my brothers and I sold them from a wagon in Sterling Point for 15 cents a bunch. Ward Robinett graduated from Churchland in 1965, Bruce in 1967. They both remember the teenage dances at the American Legion Hall. The dances were run by Pete Darden, who had a daughter in Ward’s class. “The bands were almost always student bands,” Bruce Robinett said. “The place really rocked after the football games on Friday night.” Bruce Wright Robinett lived in Sterling Point.

Ward and Bruce Robinett. Image by Sheally

They remembered some of the high school teachers. Miss Davis—the demanding English teacher with bright red nails who talked about authors as if they were personal friends. Mr. Neimeyer—the chemistry teacher who knocked the boys’ heads with his big VMI ring. Bobby Moore—the longtime Latin teacher who organized a special senior class of only three students including Bruce Robinett. Frank Beck—the principal who looked out for the students as well as the staff, Bill Holbrook who taught journalism, the Duke sisters, and the Murphy sisters.

“They were top-notch teachers,” Bruce Robinett said. “Kids back then didn’t usually go to private schools.”

The Robinetts chose to stay in the community when they married, so Ward Robinett forged a career in banking, recently retiring as the founding President of TowneBank Portsmouth. They bought a house in Edgefield before moving to Green Acres.

“When we came back to Churchland we still had a lot of old friends here, “ Ward Robinett said, “But a lot more left. About 10 out of the 300 I graduated with stayed here. For 25 years we’ve watched the traffic and housing patterns move to the northwest. The biggest drawback of the growth is the heavy traffic and no sidewalks.”

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