Truckin' on the Western Branch

Jennie House Love and marriage also brought North Carolina native Myra “Jennie” House to Churchland in 1968. She met and married Robert G. House, the former city manager of Portsmouth, in 1951. His careers in the Air Force and in urban management kept them on the move—29 homes—before they settled in the Churchland area when he became city manager of Chesapeake in 1968. She said, “We built a house in Point Elizabeth. It was just developing and we had to tell guests to come over the ditch, go to the third hedgerow, and cross the field. When I traded in my car, the man asked me where I had been to collect two inches of mud under the hood.” They moved to Norfolk and Suffolk, as House took city manager posts in each of the cities. Finally, early in 1982 he took the Portsmouth city manager’s job, and they bought a house in Hatton Point. Tragically just months later, he was killed in a small plane crash on a trip to Baltimore to talk about developing the port in Portsmouth. She had been working as an in-service instructor in the operating room at DePaul Hospital but felt the need of a new challenge to overcome her loneliness in a “two-by-two couples world,” she said. She opened Jems from Jennie, a Churchland landmark since the 1970s.

“People ask if I ever considered leaving Portsmouth,” she said. “I have lived here since 1968 and this has become home, and Jems from Jennie is my haven—this is me.”

Jennie House and her late husband Robert G. House. Image by Sheally

Robert “Bob” T. Williams Developer Bob Williams left the Newport News shipyard in 1966 to become Portsmouth’s director of data processing. He

moved up to financial director and in 1975, city manager. He lived with his family in Edgefield and then Green Acres. His son, Steve, played football and baseball for Churchland High but lost his life in a diving accident in 1982. Williams has since built an indoor practice field at the high school where there is also a scholarship established in his son’s name. He remembers the annexation well . Chesapeake tried to annex the whole of Norfolk County, and a local judge ruled for Chesapeake, but the State Supreme Court reversed the decision, and a three-judge panel determined what the split would be. In January 1968, Portsmouth gained 12 square miles. Portsmouth had to help build Western Branch High School as part of the deal and pay 10 years of lost revenue compensation. The annexation turned volunteer fire departments into professional, so we had to staff up for the expansion of city services. Portsmouth’s population increased to 132,000 with its three annexations. Development brought more people and diversity to Churchland but people there didn’t want to lose the rural flavor. Williams was also involved with the push that started in 1968 to develop a new container port in West Norfolk and predicts, “We will be four years ahead of other ports when the huge Maersk ships come through the remodeled Panama Canal—the impact of the Panama Canal on Hampton Roads is huge.”

Dan Hoffler: “I credit our families with our successes. We were taught family values and honesty. No one lost their moral compass and success was something to strive for. Men were proud to wear a coat and tie to work. Learned to be the best you can be and do it the right way.” Image by Sheally

Robert “Bob” T. Williams. Image by Sheally

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