Truckin' on the Western Branch

From the 1950s on, development took off across Churchland, marching west to Cavalier Forest, Edgefield, Merrifields, Armistead Forest, and more.

Pastor Ralph Richardson III Ralph “Rick” Richardson, pastor of Little Grove Baptist Church, grew up in Lincoln Park adjacent to Dales Homes, a housing project for white families in downtown Portsmouth. “There was an unwritten law that you didn’t go walking across that line between the two projects without expecting you were going to have ‘some fun,’” Richardson said. “I grew up knowing that I would do whatever it took to get out of the projects. There were lots of good folks, but I didn’t want to spend my life there.” He played basketball for I. C. Norcom High School. When they traveled up Cedar Lane to play Churchland High, Richardson would look out the bus window and tell his teammates, “One day I’m going to own a home in Merrifields.” His friends didn’t believe him, but in the late 1970s, he and his wife, Lynette, bought a house in Merrifields. “It was a dream come true,” he said. “Churchland was like another state when you crossed over the bridge from downtown Portsmouth.”

Pastor Ralph Richardson III. Image by Sheally

The family moved to Hatton Point in 1982. “We used to be the only black family at the Pizza Hut on Route 17, but we went every week and never had a problem.”

When their son, Roderick, joined community sports, he was one of the few black children who played. Rick Richardson said, In flag football all the little kids run to the ball even though they know the ball is going to go someplace else. I would be in the crowd and all the fans would be yelling, “follow the black kid” and that would be Roderick. He was the only black kid on the team. No one was being malicious—that was just a way to identify him. Over the years I saw more and more black kids getting involved. (Rod Richardson, who graduated from Norcom High in 1995, went on to play football at West Point and is currently a career army officer.)

Our reception in Churchland was always good. We never had any issues. We wanted our kids to grow up around all kinds of people and learn to respect them and act in a way that they would respect them.

Ed and Audrey Gaskins Ed Gaskins came to Churchland High as a junior and was president of the 1940 graduating class. There were 26 people in the class.

His father, Charles Edward Gaskins Sr., bought 400 acres on the old Route 17, a former tenant farm, from Bernard Godwin in Chuckatuck, for less than $10,000. They became neighbors of J. C. Matthews and developed a dairy farm.

Ed remembered, the highways killed truck farming—most people went broke growing truck crops. Dad was still working in the shipyard, and I was the oldest of five kids, so I became his right-hand man. I always dreamed of being a farmer and, at 17 years old, worked the farm on Bennett’s Pasture Road. We grew anything that would sell—hogs, produce, corn, soybeans. It was a two-horse farm—no tractor. I went to VPI (Virginia Tech) in the corps of cadets for three years; then they drafted the whole class for World War II. If you had two arms and two legs, you were drafted. The Army sent me to Tokyo with the occupation troops after the war, and I watched General Douglas MacArthur come to work every day.

Charles Edward Gaskins Jr. Image by Sheally

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