Truckin' on the Western Branch

Dad ran a convenience store. All the white neighbors—the Lillies, the Coles, and more—would come in and sit and talk with my parents. My brother Jack and I always played baseball. He was a pretty good pitcher, left-handed, another Dwight Gooden. Jack played for nine years with the Boston organization and then was drafted into the Army.

Success? I think it’s all in the training we got at home. Without that, I would have been a militant black man—it’s far better to forgive and move on. One day at Tech, I was walking on campus in my ROTC uniform and got egged. My father’s lessons saved the life of the little shrimp who egged me. I rushed over, grabbed him by the shoulders, and the guy’s lip was quivering.

When I graduated from Tech, I was going to be an interpreter or a pro athlete. Western Branch High had just opened and needed a Spanish teacher and a coach for track, football, and cross-country. Art Brandriff was principal, and it seemed like the job was made for me. In the beginning there were few black students, maybe only 10% of the student body, and I felt a responsibility to be a role model. Teenagers taught me everything I need to know. You can’t be a phony with teenagers—they’ll know right away. Sincerity is all important.

In 1993 I went to the Chesapeake tech center as an assistant principal, then to Great Bridge High as assistant principal for 12 years. I retired in 2010.

Now Gaines devotes his time to a bit of fishing in the Western Branch and his service as chairman of the “My Brother’s Keeper NOT My Brother’s Killer” foundation.

Lee Armistead Lee Armistead was born in Port Norfolk, in the 13-room house his grandfather built in 1918. He graduated from Wilson in 1964 and from Frederick College in 1968. He taught business in public schools. He went to Virginia Commonwealth University for a master’s in information systems and got into the doctoral program at Virginia Tech for educational administration. I taught for 13 years in Chesapeake, teaching data processing at Chesapeake Tech center. Then I was promoted to assistant principal at Western Branch Middle School before I went to Crestwood Intermediate in 1996, then Deep Creek Central Elementary. Middle school was the hardest job I ever had—dealing with the politics, parents, and neighborhood problems coming into the school. I saw changes in Western Branch—more people, more development, lots of transient people. It lost its sense of community. But there were good changes like the mall, but even that caused downtown stores to lose lots of business— and the soda fountains disappeared. But Churchland and Wilson remained the big rivalry. Mark Didawick Years ago Gracie Lee VanDyck’s college roommate married Mark Didawick’s tenth grade coach at Berkeley Springs High School in West Virginia—a classic small world–type connection for Didawick, who taught and coached at Churchland and is the athletic director at Western Branch High.

After West Virginia University, a year of teaching in Berkeley Springs, and a season playing pro basketball in Ireland, Didawick came to Churchland to teach math in the school on High Street.

As a new teacher I got pulled into things like kissing a frog at the pep rally, playing Santa Claus, etc.

From a coach’s perspective, the move to the new school on Cedar Lane was good—better facilities. But I didn’t notice as much difference as a teacher. Bigger is not always better. If you take a school out of a community, you take the

Lee Armistead. Image by Sheally

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