Truckin' on the Western Branch

I joined the Navy and was a disbursement officer, a “Pistol Packin’ Mama” who carried a 38. The standard 45 was too heavy for me. I had two Marine guards escorting me to and from the bank after picking up the payroll. I was stationed in Washington, DC, and in Fort Lauderdale where the torpedo pilots were. I flew in the “yellow perils”—Steerman open cockpit trainers, perched on top of a parachute after being told the plane would not be flying high enough to use them. I was discharged right after Christmas in 1945 as a second grade lieutenant.

I went to Katherine Gibbs in Chicago for six months and then worked for Plantation Pipeline in Atlanta for 36 years.

Effie Ballard was my aunt, my father’s sister. The Ballard family was prolific, and the cousins still get together once a month.

Dr. Henry I. Willett Jr. Henry Willett, born in 1931, lived his first five years in his grandparents’ home, the Ballards’ Floral Point, and again when he came back to Churchland as a teacher. When he and Mary were married in 1961, they lived on Thornwood Street in Cavalier Forest. In seventh grade I was at Churchland and Emily Duke was my teacher. She had to go to an education conference for three days, and since substitute teachers were in short supply in World War II, she left a lesson plan and put me in charge. She challenged me.

I was interested in sports. When she tried to whistle us in from recess, I was at bat and wouldn’t leave, so the whole team stayed. She kept me after school, and I had to walk home to Waterview after the bus left .

He was drafted shortly after graduating from Washington & Lee in 1952 when the Korean War was at its height.

I studied the aptitude tests and aced the mechanical aptitude section. It became a family joke because I couldn’t use a screwdriver but scored off the scale so I was made a Sherman tank driver and got promoted to tank commander. It was a wonderful experience, but I never got to Korea.

He earned a master’s degree in education at UVA on the GI Bill and took a job with Ed Chittum, superintendent of Norfolk County Schools.

“My father told me I would learn the most there—and I did,” he said.

Willett opened the new Churchland Junior High as its first principal and worked in the system until the late 1960s when he accepted the presidency of then Longwood College.

Dr. Henry I. Willett Jr. Image by Sheally

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