Truckin' on the Western Branch

Frank D. Lawrence —baseball promoter and team owner.

Ashton Lewis Jr.— NASCAR driver.

Alf Mapp Jr . and Ramona Mapp— educators/historians/authors, the couple lived in Churchland from the early 1970s.

Arthur Moats —five-sport athlete at Churchland High School, graduating in 2006, and NFL player (Buffalo Bills, Pittsburgh Steelers).

Tommy Newsom —saxophone player/orchestra leader/part of The Tonight Show for 30 years, retiring with host Johnny Carson in 1992.

Denny Riddleberger —Churchland High graduate, former MLB player (Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians).

Dave Smith— Churchland High graduate, poet, and professor whose work often reflects the local area.

Patricia Southall —Western Branch High graduate, former Miss Virginia USA, and wife of retired NFL star Emmitt Smith.

A dirty sales pitch led to the Sunray Settlement? In the early 20th century, Polish immigrants struggling to eke out an existence in the mines and factories of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania were lured to Sunray, “a farming community platted by the Southern Homestead Corp. of Norfolk,” according to a recently erected historical marker. The developer attracted future settlers by sending out glass sample vials of rich, fertile earth. As the 10-acre plots sold and eager future farming families arrived, they were surprised to find their promised land was undrained marsh on the edge of the Dismal Swamp. According to Gary Szymanski, local historian whose grandfather had bought four plots, many of the men found jobs in the shipyard or elsewhere while the women hitched up the mules, chopped stumps, and hand dug ditches to mark property lines and drain the farmland. The excavated earth supplemented the fields that were cultivated into prosperous truck farms.

“Bowers Hill women were tough—it was not unusual to see an 86-year-old woman jump a ditch carrying a bushel of potatoes,” Szymanski said. “Ladies here worked harder than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Sunray became the first long-term Polish settlement in Virginia with a church, a school, and the Sunray Farmers Association to look after the well-being of the community. The association sponsored the recently erected historic marker, a source of community pride. But who placed the stones—mini boulders carefully etched with the word Sunray—at the foot of the marker? No one seems to know. Image by Sheally

29