Truckin' on the Western Branch

I came back to the farm “as soon as I could” and married Audrey, a Portsmouth girl who taught second grade and played cards with my three sisters. The Gaskins’ dairy farm had 100 head of Holstein cows, all hand milked.

The Trotmans brought the daffodils to Churchland . When the highway was pushing Trotman off his land, we worked for two years to earn 13 acres of daffodil bulbs. We hired a lot of teenagers to harvest the daffodils, 50 flowers to a box. We’d ship to Boston in pasteboard boxes after soaking them overnight.

Coleman’s Nursery and Winter Wonderland Coleman’s Nursery and Winter Wonderland was a legendary landmark, drawing visitors from all over Virginia, North Carolina, and beyond. The nursery flourished on the corner of Cedar Lane and High Street, land that over the years had belonged to the Carney family and to Walter Meisenheimer, known as Mizzie. John Coleman opened Coleman’s Nursery in 1943 on the almost five-acre site. When he died, childless, he left everything to Arthur J. “Junie” Lancaster, who had worked for him for years.

Coleman’s Nursery and Winter Wonderland

Millie Lancaster Although Junie Lancaster and his wife, Millie, were generous with their financial and personal support to numerous organizations in Hampton Roads, they are probably best remembered for the Disney-inspired Winter Wonderland displays that became a holiday tradition at Coleman’s Nursery.

Coleman’s Nursery with (clockwise) Floyd Twiford, Hezie Banks, and Dabney Morgan

The Lancasters were both born in January 1919 in Westhaven. They lived around the corner from each other and were a couple almost from birth. They went to Westhaven Grammar School and Churchland High together, Millie Lancaster said.

We broke up once for a few weeks to try dating others, but that didn’t last, and we married in 1942 when I was 23. Junie almost immediately went into the Army for two to three years and was shipped to Alaska. He played baseball, shortstop and second base—played in Alaskan World Series when he was there. The Virginia Sports Hall of Fame wanted his cap and glove, but moths beat them to it.

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