BY MICHAEL KENNEDY
VIRGINIA BEACH — Mom and Dad knew Virginia Beach was something special. So much so that they came here for their honeymoon in April 1956.
Following their wedding and reception, they drove down from Fort Montgomery, New York, and spent a week in an oceanside cottage. While it was too cold to swim, they celebrated their marriage by enjoying the sand and the sounds of the waves lapping at the shoreline.
In April 1963, my father was offered a job promotion and had to choose between Battle Creek, Michigan and Norfolk, Virginia. He had been a civil service employee since the end of World War II, and he didn’t know a whole lot about either city.
But he knew Norfolk was next to Virginia Beach.
That was more than enough for him to decide to move the family south instead of west.
My parents never regretted their choice.
We lived in Norfolk to be closer to Dad’s work on the naval base, but we visited Virginia Beach regularly. I have fond memories going to Pembroke Mall when it first opened in 1966.
Dad loved Sears, and he and I went there just about every Saturday morning. At the time, the department store had a café. Dad often treated me to a burger and fries following a few hours spent in the tool department.
We went back to visit relatives in New York many times over the years – first on the ferry from Cape Henry to Cape Charles and then on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. “Go to sea in your car” was among the first slogans for the bridge-tunnel experience, and we enjoyed the 17.6-mile excursion a couple of times every year.
When I was old enough to work, I landed my first job in 1978 as an usher at the Terrace Theatre in Norfolk. It was a single-screen 800 seat house with rocking chair seats.
We did reasonable business, but our sister location, the Pembroke Mall Twin, was the local heavyweight. They had two auditoriums – 600 and 800 seats – and did several times the volume we did at the Terrace.
I often found myself envious and always hoped to work there one day. Finally, in 1983, I was offered the general manager position at Pembroke. I thought about it for all of three seconds before accepting.
I still commuted from Norfolk to Pembroke for a few years – gas was much cheaper then – but I always wanted to live in Virginia Beach. My parents did, too, but they never got the chance.
When the opportunity came to get out of apartment living and into a house, I took it. I moved to a neighborhood near Mount Trashmore.
So many of us come to a place for one reason or a another, whether it’s a job, the military, family, even love. If we’re lucky, it becomes more than a change of scenery or just an opportunity. It becomes where we are supposed to be.
I have lived here ever since with no regrets.
I had to learn the place, of course. That Hilltop and Haygood are not interchangeable. Baxter, Baker and Bonney roads are different from one another. These are the sorts of things that sometimes baffled me in the beginning.
I am still not quite sure how Princess Anne Road came to be a tad confusing with its directional change out of nowhere near the Nimmo Parkway and General Booth Boulevard intersection.
But Virginia Beach is a wonderful city with an ocean and bay, a boardwalk, a wonderful rural area in Pungo, a unique recreational mountain made from a trash pile, great schools, lots of places to dine, shop and be entertained, and fantastic year-round weather.
Current heat and humidity levels notwithstanding.
I am sure Mom and Dad would agree. I like to think that at some point, sitting in the sand in 1956, they knew this would be a great place to live and raise a family.
And that we were almost home.
The author recently retired after 44 years with Regal Cinemas and is pursuing a new career in business coaching and consulting. He remains active in community service projects and enjoys time with his wife, Kim, and daughter, Kara.
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