Truckin' on the Western Branch

Brad Cherry Like the Lynch family, Brad Cherry’s family moved from downtown Portsmouth to Craddock and then, when Brad was six years old, to Pinehurst in 1947. In 1959 as he was entering Virginia Military Institute, the family bought a house and 10 acres from George T. McLean. The land was part of the old Bidgood Farm, off Island Road on the Western Branch of the Elizabeth River.

Cherry, who is Chairman of the Board and Secretary of Cherry Carpet and Flooring, and his family live there now.

Cherry said, the road is named for the island on the Western Branch where, in the early 1900s, farmers built a stone causeway to cart their produce out to meet the barges. The river has a depth of 25 feet right off the island.

Once or twice a year, Dad would have oyster roasts for friends including Charlie Russell and George T. McLean, Fred Beazley, Aubrey Sweet, and Doug Parker. Hurricanes and nor’easters still occasionally cover the island with water.

I used to walk or bike here from Pinehurst as a kid to hunt. You could shoot a shotgun in any direction without worrying about hitting anyone. Buddy Martin and I used to swim across the river and would swim back because we didn’t want our parents to know about it. The Bidgood house, maybe from 1910, was on the property. All the kids believed it was haunted but used to party there. My father, Arthur Cherry, tore it down when he bought the property. I built my home on the point in 1996.

Dad was the oldest of 11 children and their father was not in the picture. At 12 years old Dad became the breadwinner, working four or five jobs to help support the family. He was a workaholic. He sold trucks, managed Hagwoods’ cleaning and laundry, and then went into the rug cleaning and storage business. The business, in downtown Portsmouth, was at the time the largest of its kind on the East Coast. My son Ross came into the business 16 years ago in 1997. My father died at 88 in 1999, and my mother, Martha Jane Cherry, died at 94 in 2008. My best Churchland High School memory is our camaraderie because we all came from the same neighborhoods and were with the same classmates from first to 12th grades. We had a heck of a good time. When part of the “new” U.S. 17 was being resurfaced near the high school, four or five of us guys went out and wrote our names—and our girlfriends’ names—in the wet concrete. The next morning Frank Beck, the principal, told us we had a choice of doing whatever it took to fix the damage or he’d tell our parents. So we went out to the highway crew, ‘fessed up and worked in the heat with trowels and cement to smooth out the concrete.

Brad Cherry. Image by Sheally

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