Truckin' on the Western Branch

I graduated from Churchland High in 1956. Nancy Trotman, whose parents raised the daffodils on their farm, and I used to go to the youth group at Trinity Church—it was a gathering spot for kids from Western Branch and Churchland—on Sunday evenings.

I’m one of a group of women from the class that meet for lunch. We all knew each other and the Golden Girls started at a class reunion at Nancy Garrett’s house.

I used to ride the bus from Coleman’s Nursery to Blachman’s Pharmacy just to see George Watkins come in. He went to Wilson.

George was at William and Mary, now Old Dominion, for about six months and then got into the Pilots Association in 1958. I officially met him at a birthday party in Churchland. He retired as a pilot 13 years ago.

When we married we first lived on Briarwood Lane and then built this house on land my parents found for us near them on Hatton Point Road.

Paul Smith Paul Smith was born in 1927 and grew up on the Western Branch. He graduated from Churchland in 1944—with 64 grads, the biggest class to that time—and worked at the Naval Air Station as an engine mechanic and superintendent.

People came from all over to work in the shipyard during the war, and their kids were in Churchland and other Portsmouth schools. After the war there were layoffs at the shipyard and families moved back home, so our class lost track of many members. We could find only 18 classmates for the 25th reunion. I grew up on a farm in Hatton Point where Cypress Cove is now, and when my father, Ellsworth Smith, gave up farming, we moved to West Haven. He trucked produce from Churchland to the Norfolk waterfront to be shipped by boat to New York and other cities. Back then everyone was an aunt or an uncle, related or not.

I started the Churchland schools in seventh grade, the year my dad died, and remember a few teachers—Miss Frazier, Mr. Landis, Mrs. Bradley, Miss Gibbs, and the Duke sisters.

I was 12 years old when I started delivering for Suburban Pharmacy for $4 a week. I moved up to the soda fountain and then the drug counter, helping the pharmacist. I was off every other night, and in my free time I listened to the radio— The Lone Ranger , The Shadow . Mother always listened to the soap operas in the afternoon. I was in the Boy Scouts with Bobby Burnell and went camping several times to a farm in Churchland where we stayed in an old, abandoned tenant farmer house. Back then kids played outside a lot more. I went into the Army on January 2, 1946. MacArthur had signed the peace treaty on the Missouri on September 2, 1945. I was in the Army Air Corps and was sent to guard the nation’s capital. I came back to Portsmouth because, well, it’s home.

Paul Smith. Image by Sheally

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