http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-chris-jones-fort-monroe20130510,0,1563794.story
Del. Chris Jones: Defending Monroe from Hampton?
Suffolk Republican shows interest in Hampton property
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
May 10, 2013
HAMPTON — Del. Chris Jones has placed himself in an unlikely role: Defender of Fort Monroe.
In the past six months, the Suffolk Republican has introduced legislation and sought an attorney
general's opinion concerning Fort Monroe. In both instances, his efforts have limited the city of
Hampton's role on the historic property's redevelopment.
Jones said his interest in the historic property is both regionally and financially based.
"I'd like to see the property become as self-sufficient as possible," Jones said in an April 30
interview. "They need to maximize their income opportunities while reducing expenses."
He called the $6.2 million provided by the state for Fort Monroe last year "a hard level to
maintain."
Despite his active role, Jones said he has not sought input from Del. Gordon Helsel or Sen.
Mamie Locke, whose districts include Fort Monroe.
Helsel and Locke also sit on the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees.
Messages left on Helsel's cell phone throughout the week and messages left for Locke at her
office on Thursday were not returned.
Jones' interest in Fort Monroe has been felt in a few ways.
He introduced a bill in January that limits Hampton's ability to charge Fort Monroe — and the
state — for services it provides. That bill becomes larger as the state takes possession of the
land from the Army.
The Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees initially requested the bill be drafted last
December, although Helsel, Locke, Hampton Mayor Molly Joseph Ward and Vice Mayor George
Wallace all opposed the request. At the time, Ward and Wallace were still on the board.
Ward and City Manager Mary Bunting lobbied legislators for changes that would reduce its
impact on the city. The bill was revised and passed both the House of Delegates and Senate
unanimously. Helsel and Locke voted in favor or the legislation.
"The House bill now isn't as onerous as it was when it was first introduced," Bunting said.
Jones also asked Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli for an opinion about whether City Council
members could serve on the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees. Cuccinelli, the
Republican nominee for governor, issue an opinion on April 12 stating that City Council
members could not sit on the board as it would create a conflict of interest.
"It seemed pretty straightforward to me," Jones said. "They're conflicted when they receive
briefings in executive session and they can use that information when it might not appeal to the
city's interest."
Jones said Cuccinelli's opinion was "spot-on."
Ward cried foul at Cuccinelli's opinion and said it was politically motivated. Ward, a Democrat,
has raised money for Terry McAuliffe, Cuccinelli's Democratic opponent in the race for
governor. Cuccinelli's office rejected Ward's contention.
The opinion sent the City Council scrambling to meet on a weekend to appoint a pair of citizens
to replace Ward and Wallace on the board.
Fort Monroe Authority Executive Director Glenn Oder said Jones' interest in the property is not
unusual.
Oder meets with staff from the Senate Finance Committee and House of Delegates
Appropriations Committee in the late summer and fall each year to describe Fort Monroe's
financial outlook.
Jones sits on the Appropriations Committee — as well as other committees — that review
budget requests, including the funding needed for Fort Monroe.
"It's important for him, in this particular case, to be informed about what is happening here,"
Oder said.
Even without Jones' involvement, the state contribution to Fort Monroe is shrinking.
The state budget approved by the General Assembly this year capped the amount the authority
will pay the city for municipal services at $562,540 in the current fiscal year and $983,960 in
fiscal 2014, which begins July 1.
"The cap concerns me," Bunting said Wednesday. "The city can only provide services that are
being paid for.
"If their needs go beyond their expenses, then I don't know what we can do."
Bunting said the $983,960 paid in fiscal 2014 will cover the city's expenses.
So will the Fort Monroe Authority again turn to Jones to sponsor legislation in the coming year?
"As we begin to learn more about this Army transfer," Oder said, "I wouldn't be surprised if
there are legislative amendments needed to help the Fort Monroe Authority better operate
and maintain Fort Monroe."
http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-nws-edt-letssat-0511-20130510,0,7387039.story
May 11 Letters: I-64 median, GOP agendas, Fort Monroe
Economic benefits
Re: "Fuel for the long haul," May 5.
As your editorial points out, Hampton Roads needs a better economic plan for dealing with the
inevitable decreases in military spending.
One way to help compensate for those cuts is to unify Fort Monroe National Monument by
incorporating the state-owned land that divides it. This will create a strong attraction for local
visitors and tourists and allow Phoebus and all of Hampton to participate fully in Virginia's vast
tourism industry, which netted $20 billion in 2011. It will also create a magnet for knowledgebased companies that value a high quality of life.
According to a business article by Marty Weil, "For companies relocating a relatively high
proportion of professional talent, quality-of-life issues can even make or break the deal. Quality
of life will directly impact the ability of a company to entice people to move with the job; for
national recruiting, it will make the difference in whether or not they can attract the best
talent." And, says Weil, outdoor recreation is a "top quality-of-life concern … especially for
companies that need highly specialized or cutting-edge talent. It is critical for an area to have
strong outdoor recreational attributes."
An optimal national park at Fort Monroe with unbroken, extensive parkland, hiking and biking
trails, beaches, and shoreline access, will appeal powerfully to young professionals.
For the sake of the region's economic health, the Fort Monroe Authority should aim at unifying
the National Monument.
Scott Butler
Newport News
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-tsq-hpt-walking-audio-tours-050920130509,0,5410599.story
Take a tour of Hampton on the go
Walking tours available through iTunes
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
9:49 a.m. EDT, May 9, 2013
HAMPTON — Anyone with a smart phone and a taste for history can access the six walking
tours available for select locations in Hampton.
The tours were created by the Hampton Convention & Visitors Bureau. They cover downtown,
Hampton University, Fort Monroe, Phoebus, the Virginia Air and Space Center and Hampton's
historic neighborhoods.
The tours are available through the visitors bureau website and can be accessed through any
smart phone.
"They are a dynamic, multimedia tour that are GPS-coordinated," said Mary Fugere, visitors
bureau director of media & community relations. "Each chapter has interviews, period music
and lots of information about the sites you are visiting."
Each tour is free to download.
The tours were produced in 2009; the Fort Monroe tour includes historic information, although
some of the contemporary references about the Army need to be updated, Fugere said.
Fort Monroe was decommissioned in September 2011, meaning uniformed personnel are no
longer present on the base. Visitors also do not need identification to enter the property.
"They're all just providing a really great experience," Fugere said.
The visitors bureau has also recently worked with Hampton University to place QR codes
throughout the campus to point out significant areas.
QR codes, also known as quick reference codes, use unique symbols that can be scanned by
smart phones to access information about a particular subject.
"People are using them while touring the campus and using their smart phones to see what's
happening at those specific buildings," Fugere said.
Audio walking tours
Available online: http://www.visithampton.com/play/ipodtours/
iPod/iPhone tours are also available: http://www.visithampton.com/play/ipodtour
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-tsq-hpt-cp-pet-cemetery-050920130509,0,389683.story
Pet graves at Fort Monroe line casemate wall
Cemetery closed for burials in 1988 though a few still occurred; now burial a felony since
designation
Pet Cemetery at Ft. Monroe
By Rich Griset, Special to the Daily Press
9:48 a.m. EDT, May 9, 2013
HAMPTON — The heat was getting to Princess.
While visiting Fort Monroe with her owners one summer day in 1971, the Boston Terrier
suffered a fatal attack of heat shock. Instead of transporting the animal back to Martinsville,
Va., the Gravely family buried Princess atop the ramparts of the historic casemate.
"We appreciated being able to bury the little dog there," said Gene Gravely, the family's
patriarch. "She was a loving pet. She was a real sweet dog."
Princess is just one of more than 400 pets that have reportedly found their final resting place in
the pet cemetery on Fort Monroe's casemate wall. The former Army post was decommissioned
and designated a national monument in 2011. The Army is continuing its environmental
cleanup efforts, even though the Fort Monroe Restoration Advisory Board - which is supposed
to offer community input - hasn't met with a quorum since November 2011.
The cemetery's earliest known grave dates back to 1936, but Ranger Aaron Firth said it's likely
that pets were buried on the wall even before then. With names like Sarge McFerren, General
Mac Davey and Cpl. Corky, the graves are indicative of the military families that buried them.
One marker eulogizes a pet named Fang, "A member of our family on four different
continents." Some of the graves belong to war dogs, which were often adopted by the
serviceperson they served with upon retiring.
The cemetery was open to all military personnel at the fort regardless of rank, and for a time,
citizens from nearby Phoebus were allowed to bury their pets on casemate as well. Fort Eustis
and Langley Air Force Base also had pet cemeteries at one point.
At first glance, visitors might see the fort as cold and forbidding as its stone walls, but Firth said
the cemetery helps make the installation seem more personable.
"You're going to see those graves, and you're going to get that personal connection," said Firth,
a Newport News native. "It's a very personal thing. Some people love their pets as much as
their children."
Princess was one such pet. The Boston Terrier had been a gift to then 6-year-old Terry G.
Wilson and she vividly remembers that day she buried Princess.
"It was like leaving a child behind," said Wilson. She has visited the grave several times since.
"She was my baby."
The cemetery was officially closed for burials in 1988 after Congress questioned the
expenditure of $16,674 for a pet burial ground in Fort Gordon, Ga. Though the cemetery was
officially closed, a handful of people have buried their pets on the casemate since, with two
markers reading 2007 as the date of burial. The land is now protected as a historic landmark,
and burying new animals is a felony.
"It's a great thing that they had, especially for people that were in the service," said Wilson,
who is pleased that the cemetery will remain as part of the historic landmark. "They can always
come back and see their animals, their four-legged children."
In April, Firth established Fort Monroe's Junior Ranger program and made a Great Dane named
Sgt. Patches the program's mascot. Sgt. Patches served as the mascot of the Second Coast
Artillery, Battery G at Fort Monroe during World War II. One of the dog's tricks was firing a 12inch disappearing gun by pulling a lanyard with his teeth.
"He was a mascot during World War II, and he's a mascot today," Firth said.
Firth has also begun to search for the war records of service dogs interred at the fort.
"There's a story to be completed," Firth said, "and we're in the beginning phases."
Rich Griset is a freelance writer based in Richmond.
Want to go?
The pet cemetery is located in the Jefferson Davis Memorial Park area on top of Fort Monroe's
casemate wall. All areas of Fort Monroe that are open to the public can be visited from dawn to
dusk year-round.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-fort-monroe-environment-cleanup20130506,0,1339541,full.story
Fort Monroe cleanup continues as community board falls behind
Restoration Advisory Board created to oversee environmental cleanup
Fort Monroe's Dog Beach remains closed as the Army clears the property of contamination
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
May 6, 2013
HAMPTON — The Army is continuing its environmental cleanup at Fort Monroe, but has been
doing so with little participation from the volunteer board created in 2005 to offer community
input on the process.
The Fort Monroe Restoration Advisory Board is supposed to meet four times a year, but has not
had a quorum since November 2011. That pattern continued this past Thursday, when seven of
14 members attended the scheduled meeting. At least nine voting members must be present
for a quorum, according to the board's bylaws.
The Army never consulted with the board prior to announcing on March 28 its plans to transfer
313 acres of the fort to the commonwealth.
Robert Reali, the Fort Monroe Base Realignment and Closure environmental coordinator, said
the board wasn't notified because no environmental issues were found in the area the Army
wants to transfer.
Meanwhile, the Fort Monroe Authority and the Army continue to tap dance around the
property's environmental cleanup.
The Army believes the 313 acres transferring in late May are free of contamination. The
authority contends the cleanup is one of a number of issues the Army still needs to address on
the property.
"What you're getting is billable hours from the lawyers," board member Ray Spunzo said at the
Thursday evening meeting. "You'd think that any politician within sniffing distance of Fort
Monroe would want to help move this along."
BRAC creates boards
Restoration boards are created at each military installation shuttered by the Base Realignment
and Closure process. The Fort Monroe Restoration Advisory Board was created in 2005 — the
year that BRAC ordered Fort Monroe to close — to open a dialogue with residents as the Army
rids the property of harmful contaminants such as metals, mercury and construction debris.
The board's role is advisory — the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality must sign off
on the Army's cleanup.
For more than a century, dangerous objects were either buried or blown up on Fort Monroe.
That practice changed in the 1970s when Congress passed a series of safeguards for
communities neighboring military bases to make sure those properties were free of ordnance
and harmful substances when the military leaves town.
In the past two years, members of the restoration advisory board has reviewed reports from
Reali and asked questions about the cleanup. But the full board has taken no action. Lacking a
quorum, it has not even had to approve meeting minutes since November 2011.
"It's been a very engaging process and it's been educational," said Ellen Rubino Sanchez, a
board member who attended the Thursday meeting. "I would like to have been more involved
in the actual advising though. I still have some questions about that aspect of it."
Sanchez said she sees the board as the "eyes and ears" for the community, even if it has had
little influence over the direction the Army takes with the cleanup.
"I can't say enough nice things about Rob," she said of Reali.
Both Sanchez and Spunzo attended the Thursday evening meeting.
Board members are supposed to monitor the cleanup process and make community views
known to military officials. The Army is supposed to use that input to make final cleanup
decisions, according to military documents outlining the board's responsibilities.
The board consists of community members as well as representatives from the Army, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the Fort
Monroe Authority.
Dog Beach remains closed
Thursday evening, Reali flipped through slides outlining the Army's efforts to track down
pollutants on the property's northern tip, known as Dog Beach. The Army is focusing its efforts
on cleaning a roughly 20-acre area once used as a landfill.
Crews are looking at the sand dunes, the contamination in them and the dunes' ability to erode,
Reali said.
"We've found some sporadic landfill debris – some household trash and construction debris,"
he said. "Luckily, we haven't found any industrial debris."
The Army is resampling specific areas of Dog Beach to make sure it has a handle on locating
contaminants, Reali said.
"We're looking closely at reuse options and working with the National Park Service in this area,"
he said.
Dog Beach will likely remain closed for the foreseeable future as the cleanup process continues.
When it is deemed safe, it will transfer to the park service.
Fort Monroe Authority Executive Director Glenn Oder has said that the state is still reviewing
the deed and that unresolved issues remain before the state accepts the 313 acres the Army
wants to transfer now.
"The goal of the (Fort Monroe Authority) has not been changed one bit," said Oder during an
April 25 authority meeting. "We're creating the master plan as if its all one parcel, and we'll
remain strong in maintaining our focus designing a plan as one piece of property."
Fort Monroe Restoration Advisory Board
Community Co-Chair: Kim Vaughn
Installation Co-Chair: Robert Reali
Voting Members
Glenn Brazelton
W. Keith Cannady
Maureen Connors
John Dawson
Pat Gaskins
James Hammell
John Hutcheson
John Lowe
Ellen Rubino-Sanchez
Faith Tucker
Don Williams
Glen Ziemba
Ray Spunzo
Vacant: Monroe Family Housing representative
Non-Voting Members
Susan Booth (alternate member)
Correction was sent to the Daily Press to note that John Hutcheson is not a member of the
Restoration Advisory Board. He and other staff persons from the Fort Monroe Authority have
attended these public meetings in the past. No staff person has ever served as a board member.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-edt-sundiversity-050520130504,0,1095656.story
Editorial: Hampton Roads economy needs fuel for the long haul
Aggressive planning and a diverse economy are our best strategies for the future
8:28 p.m. EDT, May 4, 2013
Some things remain constant. One, at least on this planet, is gravity. Another, at least in this
region, is the continued, pressing need for economic diversity.
But why worry? If one considers an estimated 6,891 job loss for 2013 good news, things are
looking up in Hampton Roads. That's the glass-half-full translation for the latest economic
forecasts.
A February estimate provided by Old Dominion University's economic forecasting experts
calculated more than 26,000 jobs would disappear based on expected sequester cuts in defense
spending. At a recent presentation, Vinod Agarwal, director of ODU's economic forecast
project, revised that figure down significantly — by more than 19,000 jobs. The fact that more
than $600 million was restored to Department of Defense funding after sequestration took
effect likely had an impact on previous calculations.
Other economic projections also are not quite as grim: Unemployment, down year over year;
taxable sales, up; real gross regional product, up; hotel revenue, up; general cargo tonnage,
up; housing permit value, up.
Here's the rub: The problem with rose-colored glasses is that they're near-sighted. And times
really have changed. At the end of the past decade, as direct DoD spending steadily benefited
the region, there was concern that, sooner or later, reliance on that seemingly ever-rising tide
of support would begin to recede.
Obviously, when a region is ranked, in a 2010 Brookings Institution report, among the top 20
regions for economical performance while the nation is in the midst of a recession, it's difficult
to believe there's a wolf at the door. It's especially difficult when a 2010 ODU economic
estimate indicates direct military spending in the region had doubled since 2000.
That continued spending has helped the region maintain a measure of resilience. Gary Wagner,
a professor of economics with the ODU forecasting project, pointed out during this past week's
revised figures presentation that 50 percent — half of every dollar— spent in the region is
directly or indirectly related to DOD spending.
Each time there has been some sort of dire warning of potential economic disaster such as the
Fort Monroe facility closing as a result of BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) decisions paired
with reorganization affecting JFCOM (Joint Forces Command), somehow the actual blow hasn't
been as heavy as expected. Training and doctrine elements from Fort Monroe, for example,
were transferred to Fort Eustis.
But, because Naval Station Oceana almost was a casualty as part of that realignment equation
in earlier discussions, the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance (HRMFFA) was
created. Its focus, according to a recent piece on these pages: federal spending.
That's understandable. As mentioned on these pages just last year, ODU estimated the military
alone spends more than $20 billion in Hampton Roads. That amounts to more than 45 percent
of the gross regional product. There's no doubt that without DoD presence here in Hampton
Roads, dealing with the recession would have been much tougher.
Ironically, our greatest present asset — the military defense spending complex — continues to
be our greatest economic sea anchor. The region's next challenge, the continuing sequester,
contains threats much more severe. Also on the horizon: potential for another round of BRAC
decisions in 2015.
Clearly reacting to each challenge piecemeal can't go on. Our economic planning model would
prove more successful if it were patterned after chess rather than dodge ball.
Virginia is still fairly traditional in that it is generally risk averse. There isn't much in the way of
"angel capital" funding around, and that makes it difficult for start-ups to obtain financing for
new ventures.
To complement existing resources such as the Virginia Small Business Development Center
(SBDC), we must develop programs that allow the region to invest in our future — aggressively.
The Hampton Roads Partnership recently started a program called Economic Gardening, which
provides entrepreneurial support to growing businesses. We need more of this sort of thing.
Schools and universities have to be involved; we'll need an active, well-prepared labor pool.
And as suggested on these pages before, let's involve branches of the military. It's their home,
too.
Without a much better approach to economic planning and diversity, deep, painful military cuts
— regardless of how they occur — will resonate through our region.
Consider that another "constant."
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-fort-monroe-residential-shift20130426,0,3049209.story
Fort Monroe plan now calls for residential growth
Fort Monroe officials will approach utilities, city for new agreements
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
April 26, 2013
HAMPTON — Standing on Fort Monroe's stone casemates, visitors may some day see new
homes and athletic fields on the spit of land leading to the National Park Service monument.
An ever-evolving plan presented Wednesday afternoon creates a "waterfront community" that
focuses on residential development replacing existing buildings in the Wherry Quarter. Creating
such a landscape will help the property become self-sufficient in the next 10 to 15 years,
according to Fort Monroe Authority officials who presented the plan to the authority's Planning
Advisory Group.
Among its goals, the Fort Monroe Authority is charged with generating enough revenue that it
no longer needs to ask for annual earmarks from the General Assembly, Fort Monroe Authority
Executive Director Glenn Oder said.
The Fort Monroe Authority will need to also ask to renegotiate payments to the city, strike a
deal with area utility companies to take possession of the property's underground pipes, and
create a fee for homeowners and commercial tenants to help balance the property's financial
books.
That plan will play out over the next 10 to 15 years as the property transitions from military to
civilian uses.
"If all of these things happen, then we have a chance of marginally breaking even," said John
Hutcheson, Fort Monroe Authority deputy executive director.
The authority is creating a master plan for the property while negotiating the land transfer from
the Army to the Commonwealth of Virginia. The military plans to transfer 313 acres to the state
in the end of May although discussion about that decision is still under way.
"You couldn't create a more complex and challenging planning process," said Fred Merrill, a
principal at Sasaki Associates, the group creating the property's master plan. "When you get
done here, this is something that is nationally significant that others are going to look to."
Last December, Sasaki and the Fort Monroe Authority unrolled three options for the property
outlining three of the most likely scenarios for the property, all of which showed Fort Monroe
as needing the state's financial assistance for the foreseeable future.
Any options concerning new construction have revolved around the Wherry Quarter, a roughly
70-acre area north and east of the stone fort.
While public input has overwhelmingly supported green space in Wherry Quarter, state officials
have said developing that property may be vital to making Fort Monroe economically
sustainable.
Scott Butler, a member of the Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park, is also a member of the
authority's Planning Advisory Group.
"The eventual goal should be to unify the monument with the fort," he said. "Our position is to
see as little residential development in the Wherry Quarter as possible."
Butler said he sees athletic fields as a good use for Wherry Quarter.
"There's no need to be afraid of the future of Fort Monroe when you can look at the progress
and how we've already started here," Oder said.
The Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet May 23 at 1 p.m. at the Bay
Breeze Community Center.
http://articles.dailypress.com/2013-04-18/news/dp-edt-notables0419-editorial20130418_1_attorney-general-ken-cuccinelli-vice-mayor-george-wallace-mayor-molly-josephward
The Fort Monroe shuffle
We have been critical of the City of Hampton for moving slowly in the Bluewater Tobacco
investigation. Last weekend, on another front, the City Council demonstrated just how quickly it
can act.
Late last week, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued a written opinion that no City Council
members should serve on the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees. The announcement's
timing was somewhat of a surprise, given that Mayor Molly Joseph Ward and Vice Mayor
George Wallace have served on the board for more than a year. Coincidentally or not, this week
Mayor Ward testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Antiquities Act, the law which provided
the context for the Fort Monroe National Monument.
But even more surprising is how rapidly the City of Hampton responded.
Cuccinelli's opinion that it was a conflict of interest for Ms. Ward and Mr. Wallace to serve on
the Fort Monroe board is non-binding — a suggestion, not a directive. Yet within 24 hours, the
two leaders had resigned from the Fort Monroe board and the council had chosen two local
businessmen to take their spots.
The council members accused Cuccinelli of playing politics. So why not stand their ground on
this issue and challenge the opinion?
The historic and venerable U.S. Army post may have been decommissioned in 2011, but it's
obviously still a battleground.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-fort-monroe-casemate-changes20130428,0,3399859.story
Fort Monroe's Casemate Museum undergoes changes
Museum will close Mondays
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
April 28, 2013
HAMPTON — A treasure trove of artifacts are held within the fortified stone walls of Fort
Monroe's Casemate Museum.
The cannons, uniforms and thousands of other priceless artifacts are expected to remain within
those walls — and on display — even as the Army pulls out of Fort Monroe.
The military will continue to own those exhibits while the Fort Monroe Authority operates and
maintains the museum found within the fort's southwest casemate.
"The Army was telling a story about its history here at Fort Monroe, we'd like to expand that
story to show how Fort Monroe is relevant in the commonwealth and nationally," said Shawn
Halifax, Fort Monroe Authority director of public programs.
The Army decommissioned Fort Monroe as an active military base in September 2011, and has
since staffed and maintained the museum.
That will change this summer, likely in September, when the military leaves more than 400
artifacts at the museum, said Joseph Ranier, Training and Doctrine Command, museums and
historical properties chief.
As military staff is reassigned out of the Casemate Museum, the Fort Monroe Authority will be
asked to step into those roles.
The authority has already hired an operations manager, and an education and volunteer
coordinator. The authority is also looking for a museum director. The position is advertised as a
40-hour-a-week job with $55,000 to $65,000 annual salary.
This summer, the museum will close to the public on Mondays. Staff will use the day to rotate
exhibits and maintain the 179-year-old casemate, Fort Monroe Authority Executive Director
Glenn Oder said.
"It's not a result of funding or the sequester or anything like that," Oder said. "We've looked at
operations at other museums and we feel this is the best way to clean and care for the
Casemate Museum."
As the transition takes place, volunteers will greet visitors entering the museum to help them
navigate the facility and direct them to other features of the property, Halifax said.
The authority is still recruiting and training volunteers.
TRADOC artifacts will also be moved to the George S. Patton Museum of Leadership in Fort
Knox, Ky., Ranier said.
An exhibit featuring Gen. William DePuy's uniform will be moved, too.
The first new exhibits of the Patton Museum will open June 14 on the Army's 237th birthday —
the same day the Casemate will open an exhibit on the closing of Fort Monroe as an Army post,
Rainier said.
The authority and the Army are also creating an agreement that will allow the museum to loan
out artifacts to other museums and to accept artifacts from donors.
Oder said the authority and National Park Service are still discussing the role park rangers could
play in the museum.
"We have a vision for this museum that we think help tell all of the stories here at Fort
Monroe," Oder said.
Casemate Museum
WHERE: Southern casemate inside the moat at Fort Monroe
HOURS OF OPERATION:
Tuesday through Sunday, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Closed Mondays (except Memorial Day and Labor Day)
Closed Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day
May 6 is the first Monday that the Casemate Museum will be closed
http://www.dailypress.com/news/breaking/dp-families-gather-to-celebrate-kite-day-at-fortmonroe-20130425,0,236210.story
10:21 p.m. EDT, April 25, 2013
People gathered at Continental Park on Fort Monroe Thursday afternoon to fly kites. Park
Rangers were on hand to teach kite safety and inform guests of National Park Week and
National Kite Month.
Kite Day at Fort Monroe
( Jonathon Gruenke / Daily Press / April 25, 2013 )
Eddie Cantwell, center, 11, of Hampton struggles as he tries to fly a kite Thursday afternoon at Continental Park on Fort
Monroe. Park Rangers were on hand to teach kite safety and inform guests of National Park Week and National Kite Month.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-fort-monroe-residential-shift20130426,0,3049209.story
Fort Monroe plan now calls for residential growth
Fort Monroe officials will approach utilities, city for new agreements
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
April 26, 2013
HAMPTON — Standing on Fort Monroe's stone casemates, visitors may some day see new
homes and athletic fields on the spit of land leading to the National Park Service monument.
An ever-evolving plan presented Wednesday afternoon creates a "waterfront community" that
focuses on residential development replacing existing buildings in the Wherry Quarter. Creating
such a landscape will help the property become self-sufficient in the next 10 to 15 years,
according to Fort Monroe Authority officials who presented the plan to the authority's Planning
Advisory Group.
Among its goals, the Fort Monroe Authority is charged with generating enough revenue that it
no longer needs to ask for annual earmarks from the General Assembly, Fort Monroe Authority
Executive Director Glenn Oder said.
The Fort Monroe Authority will need to also ask to renegotiate payments to the city, strike a
deal with area utility companies to take possession of the property's underground pipes, and
create a fee for homeowners and commercial tenants to help balance the property's financial
books.
That plan will play out over the next 10 to 15 years as the property transitions from military to
civilian uses.
"If all of these things happen, then we have a chance of marginally breaking even," said John
Hutcheson, Fort Monroe Authority deputy executive director.
The authority is creating a master plan for the property while negotiating the land transfer from
the Army to the Commonwealth of Virginia. The military plans to transfer 313 acres to the state
in the end of May although discussion about that decision is still under way.
"You couldn't create a more complex and challenging planning process," said Fred Merrill, a
principal at Sasaki Associates, the group creating the property's master plan. "When you get
done here, this is something that is nationally significant that others are going to look to."
Last December, Sasaki and the Fort Monroe Authority unrolled three options for the property
outlining three of the most likely scenarios for the property, all of which showed Fort Monroe
as needing the state's financial assistance for the foreseeable future.
Any options concerning new construction have revolved around the Wherry Quarter, a roughly
70-acre area north and east of the stone fort.
While public input has overwhelmingly supported green space in Wherry Quarter, state officials
have said developing that property may be vital to making Fort Monroe economically
sustainable.
Scott Butler, a member of the Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park, is also a member of the
authority's Planning Advisory Group.
"The eventual goal should be to unify the monument with the fort," he said. "Our position is to
see as little residential development in the Wherry Quarter as possible."
Butler said he sees athletic fields as a good use for Wherry Quarter.
"There's no need to be afraid of the future of Fort Monroe when you can look at the progress
and how we've already started here," Oder said.
The Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet May 23 at 1 p.m. at the Bay
Breeze Community Center.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-tsq-hpt-old-hampton-community-center20130425,0,969279.story
Hampton City Council weighs Old Hampton Community Center closure
Lincoln Street facility is 40 years old
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
9:24 a.m. EDT, April 25, 2013
HAMPTON — As the City Council plies through the city manager's proposed budget, a chronic
debate has returned to the group's agenda: What should the city do with the Old Hampton
Community Center?
The City Council is now weighing a City Hall staff proposal to demolish Old Hampton Community
Center and to open a similar facility on Fort Monroe. The city may also look at building a larger
pool in a few years.
Thursday afternoon, children mingled on the playground and men shot a basketball on a nearby
court. But the facility has seen better days. The exterior siding is rusting, the roof leaks and
bugs occasionally take over the restrooms.
"It has not seen any significant improvements in a number of years," Hampton Parks and
Recreation Director Jim Wilson told the City Council during its April 10 meeting.
During his presentation, Wilson outlined a number of repairs needed for the building:
•Roof repairs: $600,000
•Replace exterior siding: $450,000
•Update interior lighting, ventilation systems and to improve accessibility for people with
disabilities: $800,000
•Kitchen upgrades: $20,000
•Repairs to the pool and pump system: $1 million
Wilson estimated necessary maintenance projects will cost just shy of $3 million.
Periodic debate
City leaders have identified the center as an issue for at least 8 years, although funding to
renovate and rebuild has consistently been delayed.
In 2005, a design firm found significant mechanical problems in the building, Wilson said.
The following year, plans were made to raze the existing center and build a new $11.5 million
facility on the same property, although the funding never materialized.
The city's downtown master plan suggests the park's setup is problematic because "it is hidden
from public view and has become a center of crime."
"Improve (the park) by acquiring key properties and creating important street connections that
will provide additional access, visibility, and surveillance on the Park," the plan states. "Establish
a new front to the Community Center oriented to Armistead Avenue and the historic alignment
of (the park)."
"What I'm trying to balance is the convenience versus capacity," Councilman Chris Stuart said
following Wilson's presentation.
Thursday morning, Councilman Will Moffett said he wants more information about staff's
proposal before he can come to a decision.
"I have mixed emotions about it," he said. "I certainly understand the economic positions, but I
also want to know what the users and the citizens in the community think about it."
http://www.dailypress.com/features/history/civilwar/dp-nws-civil-war-emancipationproclamation-20130424,0,3374030.story
Freedom planted under Hampton oak
By Mark St. John Erickson, [email protected] | 757-247-4783
April 24, 2013
Few of the thousands of fugitive slaves who lived in Hampton’s vast Civil War refugee camps
were taken by surprise when — on Jan. 1, 1863 — they received word that President Lincoln
had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
A hundred days earlier, the milestone executive order freeing slaves across the South had been
described in a preliminary announcement that circulated widely both behind Confederate lines
and in Union-occupied areas such as Hampton Roads.
That knowledge didn’t make the night before any less suspenseful, however, as the blacks who
had fled to the Federal stronghold at Fort Monroe gathered to pray for deliverance from
bondage in a New Year’s Eve observance that is still remembered by many African-American
churches today.
Not until these so-called “contraband” slaves mustered to hear the proclamation read near a
live oak on the east side of the Hampton River — where their sprawling “Slabtown” settlement
crowded shoulder to shoulder with a massive Union army encampment and hospital — did they
hear the words that transformed the war between the states into a struggle for freedom.
“They were quite aware of the changes that were being debated when the preliminary
announcement came out in September — and they were all prepared to celebrate it if it did,”
Norfolk State University historian Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander says.
“But they were holding their breath.”
Known thereafter as the Emancipation Oak, the great 100-foot-wide tree still stands today on
the grounds of Hampton University, the historically black college that sprang up from the
contraband camps and schools after the Civil War.
Listed by the National Geographic Society among the “10 Great Trees of the World,” it was
much younger and smaller when the reading took place in 1863.
But it was already recognized as a symbol.
Lewis Lockwood of the American Missionary Association noted that Mary Peake, the first black
hired by the group to teach the fugitive slaves and their children how to read and write, had
gathered with her students there long before the war when such instruction was illegal.
It became even more important after Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler’s landmark “contraband of
war” decision at Fort Monroe in May 1861, when he refused to return three escaped slaves to
their Hampton owner because their labor had been used to help build Confederate defenses.
Butler’s offer of refuge did not free the slaves. But it quickly prompted thousands of others
from around the region to leave their masters and seek haven in what quickly became known
as “Freedom’s Fortress.”
The Emancipation Proclamation left these residents of Slabtown in limbo, too, specifically
limiting the president’s order to slaves living in Confederate-controlled lands.
But it still constituted a giant step forward in a crucial shift of Union policy and purpose that
had started with Butler’s ad hoc military order.
“They could see that freedom was in the wind. They knew it was in sight,” Hampton History
Museum J. Michael Cobb says.
“And when they heard the words of the proclamation, they knew it was going to happen if the
Union won.”
Still, the “grand celebration” organized by the zealous abolitionist teachers and missionaries of
the AMA met with something less than jubilation from the contrabands.
As historian and former Fort Monroe resident Robert F. Engs writes in his pioneering 1979
study, “Freedom’s First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia 1861-1890,” these long-abused
“blacks were of less certain faith.
“They participated in the celebration, but with reserve.”
Across Hampton Roads, however, the black population in Union-occupied Norfolk celebrated
with one of the nation’s largest parades staged in recognition of emancipation.
Led by a fife-and-drum band, some 4,000 African-Americans joined to march in triumph
through the streets of the city, cheering the “downfall of African slavery” and waving American
flags.
As Newby-Alexander notes in her book “An African American History of the Civil War in
Hampton Roads,” the celebration concluded with the burning and burial of a Jefferson Davis
effigy in an outlying cemetery near the city fairgrounds.
“Considerable excitement was created in Norfolk, today, by a negro celebration,” a New York
Times correspondent reported from “Fortress Monroe.”
“It was understood that they were celebrating the birthday of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
Similar mass expressions of joy were reported by the Times among contraband slaves living in
Union-occupied areas of South Carolina.
In its Jan. 7, 1863 edition, the New York Herald described one such celebration in a page 5 story
headlined “News from South Carolina: Negro Jubilee at Hilton Head.”
Such accounts cast doubt on the oft-repeated tradition that the first reading of the
proclamation in the South took place under the boughs of the Hampton oak.
But there’s no question that — soon afterward — the tree took on widely recognized
importance as a symbol of African-America freedom.
Many graduates of what was founded in 1868 as Hampton Institute took seedlings from the oak
and planted them when they returned home, says historian William B. Wiggins, former chair of
the university’s history department.
Often they grew up to shade new black schools and mark their historic links to Peake and her
pioneering contraband students.
“The university had a seedling cultivated and gave it to President Obama on one of his visits,”
Wiggins says.
“It’s now growing in the garden at the White House.”
http://www.suffolknewsherald.com/2013/04/22/refugees-fill-union-town/
Refugees fill ‘Union Town’
Published 10:35pm Monday, April 22, 2013
To mark its 150th anniversary, through May 4, the Suffolk News-Herald is featuring a multi-part
series by Suffolk historian Kermit Hobbs detailing the 23-day Siege of Suffolk.
Part 10: The contraband camp
By Kermit Hobbs
Special to the News-Herald
In Suffolk’s Kingsboro neighborhood by the Nansemond River, there stood an interesting
settlement known as “Union Town,” “Greeley Town,” or more often “the Contraband Camp.”
Several months after the outbreak of the war in 1861, three slaves, who had been working on
Confederate defenses at Sewell’s Point, escaped during the night and rowed across Hampton
Roads to Fort Monroe, which was still in Union hands.
There, they petitioned the fort’s commander, Gen. Benjamin Butler, for refuge and protection
from their former owners and from the Confederacy. When a representative of the
Confederate army requested their return from Gen. Butler, Butler refused. His rationale was
that since the Confederacy regarded the slaves as property, the slaves were “contraband of
war,” that is, property of the enemy. The term caught on, and slaves who had run away from
their masters and into the protection of the United States forces became known as
“contrabands.”
Technically, the name “contraband” became obsolete after Jan. 1, 1863, when the
Emancipation Proclamation declared freedom for slaves from states in rebellion. Those former
slaves were no longer “contraband,” they were freed slaves. Still, the word, “contraband,”
continued in use.
Before and during the Siege of Suffolk, able-bodied freed slaves worked alongside Union troops,
constructing fortifications. Many of them later joined the United States Colored Troops of the
Union.
Across the south, such refugees flocked to areas under Union control, and dozens of such
camps were built and survived until after the war. The one in Suffolk was probably begun soon
after the Union occupation of Suffolk began in May, 1862. A year later, the population of the
camp was estimated to be more than 2,000.
According to one Union infantryman, “A large camp had been established for (the
contrabands), and laid out in streets. They proved themselves quite expert in building their
temporary homes, riving out material for their construction from the pine and other growths of
timber in the surroundings. Schools were established for the children and the activities of a well
ordered community were set in motion.”
Another soldier remarked that some of the houses “were built of split pine, thin and larger than
our clapboards, and the style of the exterior of some of them would be credible to a summer
resort like Martha’s Vineyard.”
R.W. Rock of the 11th Rhode Island Infantry wrote, “some twenty-five of us walked over to
Uniontown, not far from our camp, on the banks of the river, entered the large chapel of the
contrabands and remained standing while they carried on their worship, for more than an hour
and a half. The building was crowded with colored people of all ages and shades. There were
old and gray-haired men and women, numberless children, and infants at the breast all
engaged in worship with the utmost intensity and earnestness.”
“The dresses were in the most wonderful and fantastic variety; the manifestations unsuited to
any other place. The singing defied all description. If we should attempt a description of what
we saw we should be open to the charge of fun-making; yet it was one of the most serious and
affecting religious assemblies the writer ever attended. They sang frequently, the melodies set
to the most singular words. Some of the tunes were lively and adapted to dancing, but most of
them were very plaintive in their character. The Jubilee singers have given us the only
specimens of the peculiar music of these ex-slaves and their plantation melodies. The choruses
were powerful and moving. An exhortation of an elderly gray-haired brother was full of pith
and point, and would not disgrace a better educated mind. It was a regular plantation
conference and prayer meeting, to be enjoyed only south of the Mason and Dixon’s line.”
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/hampton-matters-blog/dp-fort-monroe-groupmeets-behind-closed-doors-20130423,0,5154203.post
Fort Monroe group meets behind closed doors
4:38 p.m. EDT, April 23, 2013
Wednesday was one of the shortest public meetings I've ever attended, and yet it felt like it
went on for hours.
Terrie Suit, the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees Executive Committee chairwoman,
gaveled in the meeting just after 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in a small conference room of the plush
Williamsburg Lodge.
Within two minutes, the public was ushered out and the doors were closed.
For the next two hours, a reporter and members of the Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park
waited in the hallway just outside of the hotel's Allegheny Room.
At 3:30 p.m., the doors were opened and Suit adjorned the meeting before everyone had time
to sit down.
Fort Monroe Authority officials said little about the executive session both before and after the
meeting.
For some perspective, the Army announced March 28 it will issue a deed to nearly 313 acres of
Fort Monroe. The decision has sent the Fort Monroe Authority into overdrive to determine
under which circumstances the property will be transfered.
The Army believes it has met its obligations toward the property, the authority is claiming there
are still terms to discuss.
Suit cited these exemptions before the committee entered executive session:
2.2-3711. Closed meetings authorized for certain limited purposes.
A. Public bodies may hold closed meetings only for the following purposes:
1. Discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment;
assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or
resignation of specific public officers, appointees, or employees of any public body; and
evaluation of performance of departments or schools of public institutions of higher education
where such evaluation will necessarily involve discussion of the performance of specific
individuals.
3. Discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for a public purpose, or of the
disposition of publicly held real property, where discussion in an open meeting would adversely
affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body.
4. The protection of the privacy of individuals in personal matters not related to public
business.
5. Discussion concerning a prospective business or industry or the expansion of an existing
business or industry where no previous announcement has been made of the business’ or
industry’s interest in locating or expanding its facilities in the community.
6. Discussion or consideration of the investment of public funds where competition or
bargaining is involved, where, if made public initially, the financial interest of the governmental
unit would be adversely affected.
7. Consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members or consultants pertaining to
actual or probable litigation, where such consultation or briefing in open meeting would
adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body; and consultation with
legal counsel employed or retained by a public body regarding specific legal matters requiring
the provision of legal advice by such counsel. For the purposes of this subdivision, "probable
litigation’’ means litigation that has been specifically threatened or on which the public body or
its legal counsel has a reasonable basis to believe will be commenced by or against a known
party. Nothing in this subdivision shall be construed to permit the closure of a meeting merely
because an attorney representing the public body is in attendance or is consulted on a matter.
29. Discussion of the award of a public contract involving the expenditure of public funds,
including interviews of bidders or offerors, and discussion of the terms or scope of such
contract, where discussion in an open session would adversely affect the bargaining position or
negotiating strategy of the public body.
The people allowed into that closed door meeting included committee members Terrie Suit,
John Lawson II, Jay Joseph, Larry Cumming, Anthony Moore and Colin Campbell as well as
Executive Director Glenn Oder, Deputy Executive Director John Hutcheson and the authority's
"legal team" although those people were never introduced.
The Fort Monroe Planning Advisory Group is scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. Thursday in the Bay
Breeze Conference Center. An agenda had not been published by 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-fort-monroe-natural-forest-park20130419,0,5580941.story
Natural landscape on Fort Monroe considered
Group wants to see native plants, shrubs restored to property
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
April 19, 2013
HAMPTON — What did Fort Monroe look like in the 1600s, well before the military pegged the
site as being crucial to the country's defense?
As plans for Fort Monroe develop over the next few years, the York River Group of the Sierra
Club is asking whether a portion of the 325 acres within the National Park Service monument
could return to the habitat as it might have existed 400 years ago. That native area would then
attract birds and other wildlife back to the property.
Infusing those grasses, shrubs and trees back into the property's landscape is a strong
possibility, Park Superintendent Kirsten Talken-Spaulding told club members Wednesday
evening.
"It's stated specifically in the presidential proclamation," she said. "So it's something we're
planning for."
The National Park Service is creating a series of documents that will address how rangers will
tell the history of the property while creating a park setting. The service plans to hold a scholars
round table this summer to help create those documents.
The state and city are creating plans to capitalize on the park monument's expected popularity.
The state is creating a master plan, including a land-use plan, for the more than 300 acres that
will revert from the Army. The city is updating its land-use rules in nearby Buckroe and
Phoebus.
Tyla Matteson, chair of the York River Group of the Sierra Club, said the group would like to
plant native grasses, shrubs and trees in an acre area near an existing view stand near Guilick
Drive. That area, as well as the marshland in Mill Creek, will be under the National Park
Service's jurisdiction.
Just what those native species include will need to be researched. So will the soil's capacity to
still keep that vegetation alive.
"It's a great opportunity to create a historic and natural environment," said Patty Gray, of the
Virginia Native Plant Society. "It could be supportive to both the beauty and education of Fort
Monroe."
http://articles.dailypress.com/2013-04-14/news/dp-nws-fort-monroe-special-meeting20130414_1_hampton-city-council-vice-mayor-george-wallace-attorney-general-ken-cuccinelli
Attorney General boots Hampton mayor, vice mayor from Fort Monroe Authority board
City Council holds special meeting to pick appointees
April 14, 2013|By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827 | By Robert
Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
HAMPTON — Mayor Molly Joseph Ward and Vice Mayor George Wallace can no longer serve
on the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees, according to an opinion released late Friday by
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.
The attorney general's decision sent the Hampton City Council scrambling to find replacements
on the Fort Monroe Authority board. The council met Saturday in executive session in the
Hampton Roads Convention Center to discuss the appointments. The meeting was announced
late Friday evening.
"Fort Monroe is in the city of Hampton and we are clearly a very important stakeholder and
partner in the future of Fort Monroe," Ward said. "It's critically important to have city
representatives and city staff engaged and involved."
The city named Lawrence Cumming and James "Jay" Joseph to the Fort Monroe Authority
Board of Trustees following the executive session.
On the Fort Monroe Authority board, City Council members are representing two public offices
at the same time, which is a no-no in Virginia, Cuccinelli wrote in his five-page decision.
"To the extent that any FMA Board member serves in another position that would divide his or
her loyalties to the FMA, there would be a conflict of interests ...," the attorney general wrote.
Since its creation, the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees has included two voting
members appointed by the City Council. Those positions have historically been held by City
Council members and are now occupied by Wallace and Ward.
Differing opinions
While Fort Monroe board discussions have largely revolved around the property's reuse, the
board has at times talked about projects and positions that clash with the city.
The Fort Monroe Authority has pushed to find ways to reduce its payment-in-lieu-of-taxes
agreement to the city. Numerous city officials have also openly opposed Fort Monroe's interest
in a veterans care center proposed to be built in Hampton Roads.
"The opinion expresses a problem with a member having an alternate point of view and
representing the city. It literally demands a standard of 'obedience' and ignores the duty of the
board to provide oversight," Ward said.
The city can still appoint two people to the 12-member Fort Monroe Authority board as long as
those people are not on the City Council, Cuccinelli wrote.
"What this will do is lose the direct voice of those elected officials from the city," Fort Monroe
Authority Board of Trustees chairwoman Terrie Suit said.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-fort-monroe-transfer-reaction20130412,0,5342972.story?page=2
Army's Fort Monroe transfer: A sudden act with unanswered questions
Governor's Office reviewing deed
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
April 12, 2013
"We're only going to spend it if we know it's going to come in," she said.
The property debate does not appear to have any major impact on the activities being planned
for Fort Monroe this year.
Programs remain
The Army's transfer does not impact the National Park Service's planning process or the
programs it has scheduled for this summer, Superintendent Kirsten Talken-Spaulding said.
A portion of the 313 acres the Army wants to transfer will be included in the National Park
Service monument. That land, however, needs to be accepted by the commonwealth before it
can be reverted to the park service, she said.
The monument is comprised of 325 acres, 90 of which is included in the Inner Moat area. The
remaining land stretches from the northern fence down to about the southern tip of the
airstrip.
The northern most 122 acres known as Dog Beach will be transferred directly from the Army,
Talken-Spaulding said.
Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army, announced March 28 the Army is issuing a
quitclaim deed to transfer nearly 313 acres of Fort Monroe to the Commonwealth of Virginia.
At the time, Hammack said defining property boundaries and addressing environmental
concerns slowed the transfer process. The Army still needs to address property cleanup on
about 38 acres, she said.
"During the next 60 days, the Army will continue as a caretaker to make sure the buildings are
maintained and to provide a smooth and orderly transition to Virginia's management," she said.
"I'm delighted this has come to fruition."
The Fort Monroe Authority is also scheduling events throughout the property.
The National Park Service will continue creating a "foundational document" outlining the
monument's goals throughout the spring and summer, Talken-Spaulding said.
A junior ranger program also will begin by the end of April.
"Fort Monroe is still open to the public, and we're still proceeding with the master plan
process," Oder said. "We're still continuing to meet with business prospects, and we're excited about the
opportunities for the future of Fort Monroe."
http://insidehampton.com/stories/501258-hampton-council-names-new-fort-monroeauthority-members
Hampton council names new Fort Monroe Authority members
The Hampton City Council appointed two new members to the Fort Monroe Authority Board of
Trustees at a special meeting April 13.
According to a press release from the city, the council appointed land-use attorney Larry
Cumming and commercial realtor and Hampton Economic Development Authority Chairman
Jay Joseph to serve on the Fort Monroe board. Both have served on working committees for
the Fort Monroe Authority.
The special meeting was held in response to an official opinion published the previous day by
the state Attorney General's Office that the City Council cannot appoint any of its own
members to the Fort Monroe Authority board because of the potential for conflicts of interest.
http://insidehampton.com/stories/501258-hampton-council-names-new-fort-monroeauthority-members
Hampton council names new Fort Monroe Authority members
The Hampton City Council appointed two new members to the Fort Monroe Authority Board of
Trustees at a special meeting April 13.
According to a press release from the city, the council appointed land-use attorney Larry
Cumming and commercial realtor and Hampton Economic Development Authority Chairman
Jay Joseph to serve on the Fort Monroe board. Both have served on working committees for
the Fort Monroe Authority.
The special meeting was held in response to an official opinion published the previous day by
the state Attorney General's Office that the City Council cannot appoint any of its own
members to the Fort Monroe Authority board because of the potential for conflicts of interest.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-edt-notables0419-editorial20130418,0,4871527.story
The Fort Monroe shuffle
We have been critical of the City of Hampton for moving slowly in the Bluewater Tobacco
investigation. Last weekend, on another front, the City Council demonstrated just how quickly it
can act.
Late last week, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued a written opinion that no City Council
members should serve on the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees. The announcement's
timing was somewhat of a surprise, given that Mayor Molly Joseph Ward and Vice Mayor
George Wallace have served on the board for more than a year. Coincidentally or not, this week
Mayor Ward testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Antiquities Act, the law which provided
the context for the Fort Monroe National Monument.
But even more surprising is how rapidly the City of Hampton responded.
Cuccinelli's opinion that it was a conflict of interest for Ms. Ward and Mr. Wallace to serve on
the Fort Monroe board is non-binding — a suggestion, not a directive. Yet within 24 hours, the
two leaders had resigned from the Fort Monroe board and the council had chosen two local
businessmen to take their spots.
The council members accused Cuccinelli of playing politics. So why not stand their ground on
this issue and challenge the opinion?
The historic and venerable U.S. Army post may have been decommissioned in 2011, but it's
obviously still a battleground.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-tsq-hpt-notebook-041820130418,0,4034386.story
Fort Monroe debate frays
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
9:07 a.m. EDT, April 18, 2013
HAMPTON — Who is being pig-headed at Fort Monroe's negotiating table? Is it the Army, the
Fort Monroe Authority, or is it both?
The reams of paperwork and redline revisions passed back and forth between the state and
Pentagon have been constant in the past 20 months.
Exasperated and looking for answers, members of the Fort Monroe Authority and its board of
trustees discussed on March 28 just what has lead up to an Army decision to send a deed for
313 acres of Fort Monroe to Gov. Bob McDonnell.
The Army believes it has fulfilled its responsibilities addressing the environmental concerns and
cleanup on that portion of the property. The state thinks there are still numerous issues to
resolve.
To this point, it hasn't really mattered who is right and wrong. Everything looks smooth on the
water's surface: Tenants are moving into homes once reserved for generals, the fishing pier
remains open and the beaches are free to roam.
An agreement from 1838 states the Army must transfer the property back to the state once the
land is no longer used for military purposes. At the time no one probably considered how the
property would change, what would be built on it or the extrinsic issues that have cropped up
in the past 175 years.
But what happens when the problems from the transfer begin affecting visitors, taxpayers and
tenants?
The Army will remain the property's caretaker until May 28. What happens after that is
anyone's guess right now.
http://www.defensecommunities.org/headlines/questions-remain-following-armys-decisionto-transfer-ft-monroe-property/#
April 15, 2013
Questions Remain following Army’s Decision to Transfer Ft. Monroe Property
Plenty of questions remain for the Fort Monroe Authority after the Army last month
unexpectedly said it was ready to transfer 313 acres of the historic post located on the Virginia
shore of the Chesapeake Bay to the LRA.
For one, what will happen if the governor’s office does not accept the parcel from the Army?
The attorney general’s office is reviewing the Army’s quitclaim deed, reported the Daily Press.
Other questions concern who is responsible for the cleanup, long-term building maintenance,
and the transfer of utilities and roads. The Army and state officials had been discussing for
more than a year the terms of how the Army would transfer the portion of the 570-acre post
slated to revert to the commonwealth of Virginia.
“In my mind, there’s a huge question mark about how this is going to happen in the 60-day
window,” Fort Monroe Authority Executive Director Glenn Oder said. “We don’t have all of
those documents that we’re expecting.”
http://articles.dailypress.com/2013-04-08/news/dp-edt-fortmonroetransfer-editorial20130408_1_fort-monroe-authority-150-year-occupation-u-s-army
Editorial: Let's work together on Fort Monroe
Virginia's Fort Monroe is not under siege; all parties need to retreat and discuss
April 08, 2013
When the U.S. Army took over Fort Monroe in the 1830s, a simple condition was attached: if
the military ever decided not to use it, the property would revert back to the Commonwealth of
Virginia.
Although the U.S. Army decommissioned Fort Monroe in September 2011, the reversion has
been anything but simple.
For more than a year, state and Army officials have been negotiating several issues, including
the responsibility for environmental cleanup, long-term maintenance of certain buildings and
transfer of utilities and roadways. In addition, ownership of the marina and 38 acres along Mill
Creek — areas that were not within the property's original legal description — was in dispute.
Without a definitive resolution of these ownership and responsibility issues, disputes could
arise in the future and the Fort Monroe Authority would be hindered in its ability to proceed
with development plans.
The Army's sudden transfer on March 28 of 313 acres of the property to the state was,
therefore, both surprising and disappointing. If two parties are engaged in good-faith
discussions about how to resolve legal issues, one would think there might be interim steps
before such a unilateral, conversation-stopping move.
Furthermore, the property the Army intentionally left out of the transfer includes waterfront
land that is necessary for full enjoyment and use of Fort Monroe. The Army argues it should
receive compensation for the fill-in work and marina construction it did during its 150-year
occupation — improvements that added acreage to the land described on the original deed.
While we're sympathetic to the Army's fiscal constraints, the time to bring up the
compensation issue was back when the Army did the work, not now. The fact that it did not
obtain an amended reversion arrangement when it was incurring the expense of building the
marina or boosting the shoreline could be interpreted as a waiver of any right to future
reimbursement. And clearly the Army made the improvements for its own use and benefit
during its occupation. Would it really have not made these improvements without a promise of
payment years later?
Fort Monroe Authority officials suspect the deed transfer was retaliatory because they had
sought help with the transfer from members of Virginia's congressional delegation. If so, that's
unfortunate and short-sighted. The "here, take your property" gesture neither resolved the
legal issues nor advanced the closure and smooth transition everyone was hoping for.
Perhaps it's time for a mediated settlement. All of the stakeholders can benefit from making
sure there are no loose ends in the reversion of this historic site to the state. If members of
Congress can play a role here, then by all means bring them in. Fort Monroe is a treasure that
deserves everyone's best effort.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-cuccinelli-fort-monroe-response20130416,0,2416843.story
Attorney General's Office responds to Fort Monroe opinion criticism
AG ruled that City Council members cannot sit on Fort Monroe board
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
April 16, 2013
HAMPTON — The Attorney General's Office is defending an opinion Ken Cuccinelli issued late
Friday that sent City Council members into a rush to find replacements on the Fort Monroe
Authority Board of Trustees.
Just 24 hours after Cuccinelli's decision was published, City Council members met Saturday
evening with a handful of staff in a back administrative office at the Hampton Roads
Convention Center as volunteer firefighters dined at a nearby reception.
Hampton City Council members are not allowed to sit on the Fort Monroe Authority Board of
Trustees because it constitutes a conflict of interest, according to the attorney general. The
city's seats had been held by Mayor Molly Joseph Ward and Vice Mayor George Wallace.
The City Council announced at 9:45 p.m. Friday its intention to convene Saturday. Following a
short executive session the group agreed in a split vote to appoint Lawrence Cumming and
James "Jay" Joseph to the Fort Monroe Authority board.
Ward, a Democrat, also accused Cuccinelli, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, of playing
politics in issuing the opinion.
Response to criticism
A request for comment left Saturday with Cuccinelli's campaign staff was directed to the
Attorney General's Office.
"The attorney general was asked to research the law, and doing his legal duty, he responded
with what the law states," wrote Brian Gottstein, the Attorney General's Office spokesman.
"The mayor can deflect all she wants, but the law and the Virginia Constitution are clear: the
Hampton City Council cannot appoint its own members to the Fort Monroe Authority."
Cuccinelli's opinion is a recommendation and not legally binding. So why did the City Council
rush to fill those seats without allowing the public to offer input?
The city should have representatives at any upcoming Fort Monroe meetings, Ward said.
"For the good of all parties, we want to ensure that the meeting is able to be about the future
of Fort Monroe and not the removal issue," she said.
It was unclear late Monday whether the mayor and vice mayor plan to challenge Cuccinelli's
opinion.
"I'm surprised, the mayor and Mr. Wallace had been on there for some time," said Mark
Perreault, Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park president. "It's curious that it was done at
this time."
Perreault said the citizens group will discuss the attorney general's opinion at an upcoming
meeting.
New appointees
A real estate attorney and the vice president of one of the area's largest commercial real estate
firms will replace the mayor and vice mayor on the Fort Monroe Authority board — both men
also sit on the Fort Monroe Authority Planning Advisory Group.
"A majority of council felt they wanted people who were up to speed on the issues facing Fort
Monroe," the mayor said.
Joseph — who is Ward's brother — is a vice president at Harvey Lindsay. He also chairs the
Hampton Economic Development Authority Board of Directors.
"Jay's real estate experience spans twenty-five years and includes activities as diverse as
development, property management, loan placement, investments and brokerage," according
to the company's website.
Joseph said the Fort Monroe Authority staff has already offered to meet with him.
"I think I'm fairly well up to date on the planning exercise and the discussions on economic
sustainability," he said. "I'm sure there are many more issues that have been handled on the
board level that I need to get caught up on."
Ward abstained from the vote appointing Joseph to the Fort Monroe board.
Cumming is a partner at law firm Kaufman & Canoles who "works with a wide variety of
individuals and business owners," according to his profile on the firm's website.
He is also a member of the Coliseum Central Business Improvement District Board of Directors.
Contacted Monday, Cumming said he wants to become better acquainted with the Fort
Monroe Authority Board of Trustees before he comments on his new role.
Councilman Donnie Tuck also abstained from the individual votes for Cumming and Joseph.
"I don't have anything against them personally," said Tuck on Monday. "I thought there might
be an opportunity for different citizens to participate in the process."
As for Ward, she is scheduled to testify Tuesday morning on Capital Hill in support of the
Antiquities Act, the law President Barack Obama used to designate parts of Fort Monroe as a
national monument.
The mayor is testifying at the request of the subcommittee on public lands and environmental
regulations as the House of Representatives holds hearings on several bills, including one that
would make changes to the Antiquities Act.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/hampton-matters-blog/dp-mayor-ward-to-testifyon-capital-hill-on-tuesday-20130415,0,4431837.post
Mayor Ward to testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday
3:39 p.m. EDT, April 15, 2013
Per a city of Hampton news release:
Hampton Mayor Molly Ward is scheduled testify on Capitol Hill Tuesday in support of the
Antiquities Act, the law President Barack Obama used to designate parts of Fort Monroe as a
National Monument.
The House of Representatives is holding a hearing on several bills to change the act. The mayor
is testifying at the request of the subcommittee on public lands and environmental regulations,
with the support of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In addition to Mayor Ward, several other community leaders from across the country are
expected to join Denise Ryan, a director at the National Trust, to talk about National Monument
designations.
They include:
• Gail Morton a council member for Marina, Calif. and a local advocate for Fort Ord National
Monument.
• Bill Barthel, a council member from New Castle, Del. and a leading local advocate for the First
State National Monument.
• Marsha Bayless, mayor for Xenia, Ohio and a leading local advocate for the Charles Young
Buffalo Soldiers National Monument.
The hearing will be at 10 a.m. in room 1324 of the Longworth House Office Building. For more
information and to watch the hearing live, go here. The hearing may also be broadcast on
CSPAN.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/feedback/dp-nws-feedback-041520130414,0,2792642.story
Daily Press Feedback for 4/15: Furlough tips, Fort Monroe board
Ward, Wallace no longer on Fort Monroe board
Hampton Mayor Molly Joseph Ward and Vice Mayor George Wallace can no longer serve on
the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees, according to an opinion released late Friday by
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.
The attorney general's decision sent the Hampton City Council scrambling to find replacements
on the board. The council met Saturday in executive session in the Hampton Roads Convention
Center to discuss the appointments.
•Jon Adams: Could Cuccinelli actually be right about something?
Compiled from the Daily Press Facebook pages. To be part of the discussion, visit such pages as
facebook.com/dailypressnews, facebook.com/dpsports and facebook.com/savvyshopper.
http://www.suffolknewsherald.com/2013/04/22/refugees-fill-union-town/
Refugees fill ‘Union Town’
Published 10:35pm Monday, April 22, 2013
To mark its 150th anniversary, through May 4, the Suffolk News-Herald is featuring a multi-part
series by Suffolk historian Kermit Hobbs detailing the 23-day Siege of Suffolk.
Part 10: The contraband camp
By Kermit Hobbs
Special to the News-Herald
In Suffolk’s Kingsboro neighborhood by the Nansemond River, there stood an interesting
settlement known as “Union Town,” “Greeley Town,” or more often “the Contraband Camp.”
Several months after the outbreak of the war in 1861, three slaves, who had been working on
Confederate defenses at Sewell’s Point, escaped during the night and rowed across Hampton
Roads to Fort Monroe, which was still in Union hands.
There, they petitioned the fort’s commander, Gen. Benjamin Butler, for refuge and protection
from their former owners and from the Confederacy. When a representative of the
Confederate army requested their return from Gen. Butler, Butler refused. His rationale was
that since the Confederacy regarded the slaves as property, the slaves were “contraband of
war,” that is, property of the enemy. The term caught on, and slaves who had run away from
their masters and into the protection of the United States forces became known as
“contrabands.”
Technically, the name “contraband” became obsolete after Jan. 1, 1863, when the
Emancipation Proclamation declared freedom for slaves from states in rebellion. Those former
slaves were no longer “contraband,” they were freed slaves. Still, the word, “contraband,”
continued in use.
Before and during the Siege of Suffolk, able-bodied freed slaves worked alongside Union troops,
constructing fortifications. Many of them later joined the United States Colored Troops of the
Union.
Across the south, such refugees flocked to areas under Union control, and dozens of such
camps were built and survived until after the war. The one in Suffolk was probably begun soon
after the Union occupation of Suffolk began in May, 1862. A year later, the population of the
camp was estimated to be more than 2,000.
According to one Union infantryman, “A large camp had been established for (the
contrabands), and laid out in streets. They proved themselves quite expert in building their
temporary homes, riving out material for their construction from the pine and other growths of
timber in the surroundings. Schools were established for the children and the activities of a well
ordered community were set in motion.”
Another soldier remarked that some of the houses “were built of split pine, thin and larger than
our clapboards, and the style of the exterior of some of them would be credible to a summer
resort like Martha’s Vineyard.”
R.W. Rock of the 11th Rhode Island Infantry wrote, “some twenty-five of us walked over to
Uniontown, not far from our camp, on the banks of the river, entered the large chapel of the
contrabands and remained standing while they carried on their worship, for more than an hour
and a half. The building was crowded with colored people of all ages and shades. There were
old and gray-haired men and women, numberless children, and infants at the breast all
engaged in worship with the utmost intensity and earnestness.”
“The dresses were in the most wonderful and fantastic variety; the manifestations unsuited to
any other place. The singing defied all description. If we should attempt a description of what
we saw we should be open to the charge of fun-making; yet it was one of the most serious and
affecting religious assemblies the writer ever attended. They sang frequently, the melodies set
to the most singular words. Some of the tunes were lively and adapted to dancing, but most of
them were very plaintive in their character. The Jubilee singers have given us the only
specimens of the peculiar music of these ex-slaves and their plantation melodies. The choruses
were powerful and moving. An exhortation of an elderly gray-haired brother was full of pith
and point, and would not disgrace a better educated mind. It was a regular plantation
conference and prayer meeting, to be enjoyed only south of the Mason and Dixon’s line.”
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/hampton-matters-blog/dp-fort-monroe-groupmeets-behind-closed-doors-20130423,0,5154203.post
Fort Monroe group meets behind closed doors
4:38 p.m. EDT, April 23, 2013
Wednesday was one of the shortest public meetings I've ever attended, and yet it felt like it
went on for hours.
Terrie Suit, the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees Executive Committee chairwoman,
gaveled in the meeting just after 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in a small conference room of the plush
Williamsburg Lodge.
Within two minutes, the public was ushered out and the doors were closed.
For the next two hours, a reporter and members of the Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park
waited in the hallway just outside of the hotel's Allegheny Room.
At 3:30 p.m., the doors were opened and Suit adjorned the meeting before everyone had time
to sit down.
Fort Monroe Authority officials said little about the executive session both before and after the
meeting.
For some perspective, the Army announced March 28 it will issue a deed to nearly 313 acres of
Fort Monroe. The decision has sent the Fort Monroe Authority into overdrive to determine
under which circumstances the property will be transfered.
The Army believes it has met its obligations toward the property, the authority is claiming there
are still terms to discuss.
Suit cited these exemptions before the committee entered executive session:
2.2-3711. Closed meetings authorized for certain limited purposes.
A. Public bodies may hold closed meetings only for the following purposes:
1. Discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment;
assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or
resignation of specific public officers, appointees, or employees of any public body; and
evaluation of performance of departments or schools of public institutions of higher education
where such evaluation will necessarily involve discussion of the performance of specific
individuals.
3. Discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for a public purpose, or of the
disposition of publicly held real property, where discussion in an open meeting would adversely
affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body.
4. The protection of the privacy of individuals in personal matters not related to public
business.
5. Discussion concerning a prospective business or industry or the expansion of an existing
business or industry where no previous announcement has been made of the business’ or
industry’s interest in locating or expanding its facilities in the community.
6. Discussion or consideration of the investment of public funds where competition or
bargaining is involved, where, if made public initially, the financial interest of the governmental
unit would be adversely affected.
7. Consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members or consultants pertaining to
actual or probable litigation, where such consultation or briefing in open meeting would
adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body; and consultation with
legal counsel employed or retained by a public body regarding specific legal matters requiring
the provision of legal advice by such counsel. For the purposes of this subdivision, "probable
litigation’’ means litigation that has been specifically threatened or on which the public body or
its legal counsel has a reasonable basis to believe will be commenced by or against a known
party. Nothing in this subdivision shall be construed to permit the closure of a meeting merely
because an attorney representing the public body is in attendance or is consulted on a matter.
29. Discussion of the award of a public contract involving the expenditure of public funds,
including interviews of bidders or offerors, and discussion of the terms or scope of such
contract, where discussion in an open session would adversely affect the bargaining position or
negotiating strategy of the public body.
The people allowed into that closed door meeting included committee members Terrie Suit,
John Lawson II, Jay Joseph, Larry Cumming, Anthony Moore and Colin Campbell as well as
Executive Director Glenn Oder, Deputy Executive Director John Hutcheson and the authority's
"legal team" although those people were never introduced.
The Fort Monroe Planning Advisory Group is scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. Thursday in the Bay
Breeze Conference Center. An agenda had not been published by 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
www.dailypress.com/features/family/dp-civil-war-contrabands-20130413,0,5737398.story
This period image titled "Morning Mustering" shows contraband slaves at Fort Monroe assembling for work with the Union
army's Engineering Corps. (Courtesy of the Casemate Museum / April 12, 2013)
dailypress.com
Hampton slaves set sail for Haiti
By Mark St. John Erickson, [email protected] | 757-247-4783
April 13, 2013
When Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler decided to give three runaway slaves refuge at Fort Monroe
as "contraband" of war in May 1861, he barely described the incident in his daybook.
But by 1863, the epic consequences of his landmark order could be seen in the thousands of cabins and
tents that straddled camps stretching from the gates at Old Point Comfort to the charred ruins of
Hampton.
Arriving first in small groups — then in long lines of towed boats that carried as many as 1,200 from
outlying counties — this exodus surged to more than 20,000 men, women and children by the war's
end, writes Robert F. Engs in "Freedom's First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia 1861-1890."
And though regimented and policed by the army from the start, this teeming mass posed a political,
racial and human problem which had no easy answer.
That's one reason why just months after the Emancipation Proclamation President Abraham Lincoln
signed a contract for the transport of 500 contrabands from the docks of Fort Monroe to a new home on
the Ile a Vache off Haiti.
But less than a year after the Ocean Ranger departed on April 13, the experiment designed to absorb
5,000 refugees ended in failure.
"The military was making decisions ahead of the executive branch, and what emerges is a problem that
no one had thought about and which — once unleashed — was mostly uncontrollable. Nothing was the
same after Butler's contraband decision," Hampton History Museum curator J. Michael Cobb says.
"What Lincoln turned to was an old solution that goes back to Jefferson. People didn't know what to
with blacks who had been freed except to separate them and send them away."
Like many of Lincoln's often baffling responses to issues of race, his interest in colonization reflected the
politics of the war.
He saw the resettlement efforts as a way to sweeten the pill of emancipation for conservatives in the
North as well as the slave-owning border states. He also wanted to appease Northerners worried about
an uncontrollable deluge of black labor spilling above the Mason-Dixon line.
Lincoln wasn't the only one looking at Haiti and Central America, however, as solutions to the problem
spawned by Butler's contraband decision.
"People don't think of Lincoln and colonization — especially after the Emancipation Proclamation," says
Robert Bray of Illinois Wesleyan University.
"But there were many like him — including African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass — who
looked at Haiti as a good place for contraband slaves to go because they doubted that whites and blacks
could live together."
Resettlement appealed to inmates in the contraband camps, too, where rape, looting and pillaging by
Federal soldiers was common through the summer of 1862, then followed by an oppressive regime in
which refugees were routinely cheated of wages, rations and clothing.
Even after Butler's return to Fort Monroe and the creation of the Bureau of Negro Affairs in 1863, some
of Hampton's black residents were so embittered they wanted to leave for Haiti.
"The Ile a Vache company didn't have any trouble recruiting," Bray says, "because the camps didn't give
blacks many options."
Within hours of leaving Old Point behind, however, the would-be settlers were forced to sign contracts
foreshadowing the abusive post-war system of sharecropping. And when they arrived at Ile a Vache, the
food, clothing and shelter they had been promised were nowhere to be seen.
Instead the hapless blacks struggled under the rule of Bernard Kock, an American planter who intended
to grow cotton and timber the island through cheap contraband labor.
Armed white guards and the threat of the stocks kept the ex-slaves in line, as did Kock's insistence they
pay for food and water with the worthless personal currency he printed to pay their wages.
Not until June 1863 did the American consul hear about the miserable conditions and force his way onto
the island. His reports led the embarrassed Lincoln administration to send a special agent who faced
down the oppressors and summoned a rescue ship.
When the U.S. naval transport Marcia C. Day returned to the Potomac River on March 20, 1864, it
landed within sight of the White House, Bray says.
But no more than 365 survivors stepped off.
"The whole thing was a confidence game blackened by bad faith and entrepreneurial greed," Bray says.
"And it shows what was happening to many African-Americans as the country was struggling to decide
what to do about race."
Find more stories on Hampton Roads history at dailypress.com/civil war and Facebook.com/hrhistory.
http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2013/04/05/opinion/doc515f601010e74027760853.txt
FAITH MATTERS: Stories may sound different, but message is the same
Published: Friday, April 05, 2013
“Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land…” A seder staple I remember from the time of my
childhood and sung to this very day. Obviously a Jewish liturgical piece! Actually it turns out to
be a “Black American Spiritual.”
This is the history as I understand it. The story of the song begins in the early days of the Civil
War. In 1861, three slaves, Frank Baker, James Townsend and Sheppard Mallory, were sent to
the Confederate Army to help with construction. They escaped at night and rowed across the
harbor from Norfolk, Va., to Union-held Fort Monroe. They presented themselves to Union
Gen. Benjamin Butler, risking being returned to their enslavers and facing horrible punishment,
as dictated by the law in effect before the war. Butler refused to return them, classifying them
as a “contraband of war.” Laws were soon passed prohibiting returning them to enslavers.
The Contrabands at Fort Monroe built housing from burned ruins. Their community came to be
known as Grand Contraband Camp.
Defying a Virginia law against educating slaves, the African-American Mary Peake taught both
adults and children to read and write. Inspired by this opportunity for freedom (albeit partial
and haphazard) many escaped and made their way to Fort Monroe.
By the end of the war, less than four year later, there were Contraband camps and thousands of
Contrabands.
A song that some of the Contrabands sang when they arrived at Fort Monroe was recorded and
published by a chaplain, the Rev. L.C. Lockwood, as “The Song of the Contrabands: O Let My
People Go.” President Lincoln visited Contraband camps frequently and on one documented
occasion joined a prayer meeting and sang along, often overcome with emotion, to “Go Down
Moses” and other songs.
In a later celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation at a Contraband camp in Washington,
D.C., a woman improvised the immediately popular verse “Go down/Abraham/Way down in
Dixie’s land/Tell Jeff Davis to/Let my people go.”
But then I should not be surprised at this. For tragically/ironically, the Passover-Easter season
has historically been marked by pogroms against the Jews, while ironically its primary thesis of
liberation and salvation are in the heart of both traditions.
In fact, when one looks at the history of America, the abolitional movement, the anti-apartheid
movement in South Africa, the prophets’ call for justice and the sacred role of freedom, was
always conveyed in Biblical terms.
While it is true that Jews saw the story in the context of human freedom for all people,
Christians cast it in more theological terms such as death and resurrection. If you visit Israel
today — as 42 members of my community did just last month — and you visit Yad Vashem, the
Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, the physical structure of the museum is a wide cut, a slash
into the mountain. You will walk along a very long time line wandering through a darkened
museum.
Perhaps after an hour or two, you end up in a glass-enclosed overhanging patio and staring
back at you is a vista of amazing beauty; not of nature; but of towns, universities, hospitals,
concert halls just across a forested valley. Like the phoenix, this is the miracle of the Jews’
redemption, a redemption yet unfolding.
To Christians, the New Testament narrative is the story of God’s fulfillment and the emergent
act of forgiveness through Jesus suffering death and resurrection.
What is common here is that both stories, obviously important in their different ways, carry the
eternal message of hope and redemption.
A message for the world at this season.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/hampton-matters-blog/dp-fort-monroescasemate-museum-may-close-mondays-20130405,0,1518526.post
Fort Monroe's Casemate Museum may close Mondays
12:53 p.m. EDT, April 5, 2013
March 28 proved to be a busy day for the Fort Monroe Authority staff and board of trustees.
The Army unexpectedly transferred just shy of 313 acres of the property to the state, without
first notifying the authority.
Governor, here's a deed to most of the property. Good luck.
That left the authority and its staff scrambling to determine exactly what was happening on a
day when the board of trustees was scheduled to meet.
That meant an agenda full of topics was put on the table until a later date.
Here is a portion of that agenda:
After researching the opening hours of other museums in the region, including other state
museums, Casemate Museum staff propose that the hours of operation at the museum be
changed to closing to the public on Mondays beginning during the month of May 2013. This is a
common practice of museums which allows staff to accomplish building maintenance,
preservation goals, housekeeping responsibilities, exhibit installation and other "behind the
scenes" work outside of public hours. In the near term, this will also help provide adequate
coverage of the Museum as the Army staff assigned to the museum will be subject to
sequestration furloughs. Select FMA staff will continue to report to the museum on Mondays.
That agenda item leaves a lot of questions that Daily Press will ask about in the upcoming days.
http://www.forthoodsentinel.com/story.php?id=11053
Large portions of Fort Monroe returned to Virginia
By Lisa Ferdinando, Army News Service
APRIL 4, 2013 | ACROSS DOD
WASHINGTON - The Army has transferred back to the state of Virginia the most historic areas of
Fort Monroe, including Freedom’s Fortress.
The Army sent the quitclaim deed for the 312.75 acres to the Commonwealth of Virginia on
Thursday, said Katherine Hammack, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy
and Environment.
The deeds for the land date back to 1838.
“The Army has spent a significant amount of time surveying and refining property boundaries,
so that as this property reverts to the state of Virginia, it can be appropriately handled by the
state, whether it’s going to be sold or leased or used for other purposes,” Hammack told
participants of a conference call on Thursday.
The Army will continue to provide caretaker status for the next 60 days to ensure the buildings
are maintained and provide a smooth and orderly transition to the state of Virginia’s
management, she said.
Hammack said there are several smaller properties that need environmental assessments. She
said those studies are expected to be completed shortly. She said that property, about 38 acres,
will be reverted to the state in the future.
A portion of property at Fort Monroe will be transferred to the National Park Service, Hammack
said. However, those 122 acres are still under evaluation.
The land for Fort Monroe was deeded to the Army for use as a military reservation and to be
reverted back to the Commonwealth of Virginia when it is no longer used for military purposes.
Fort Monroe was closed as part of the BRAC 2005 process. The Army has been working with the
state of Virginia and the Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority to preserve the
historical site.
Construction began on Fort Monroe in 1819, after the British sailed up the Chesapeake Bay in
1814 and burned Washington, D.C. That action demonstrated a need for coastal defenses.
The unique seven-sided fort, which is surrounded by a moat, was designed by Gen. Simon
Bernard, who was once an aide to Napoleon Bonaparte. Lt. Robert E. Lee was among the young
engineers who eventually worked on the project. He supervised construction of the moat.
Later, the fort played a prominent part in the Civil War, helping keep much of the coast under
Union control. President Abraham Lincoln personally launched the Union’s attack on Norfolk
from inside Fort Monroe’s walls.
During the course of the war, more than 10,000 escaped slaves were temporarily sheltered on
Fort Monroe, and it later became the site of a cemetery for freed slaves.
After the war, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was held captive there for more than two
years in the casemate dungeon. Later the post served for many years as the Army’s Coast
Artillery School.
Fort Monroe, located in Virginia’s Tidewater region, became a National Historic Landmark in
1960. In 2011, President Barack Obama designated Fort Monroe a National Monument.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/dp-nws-memorial-presentation20130403,0,1800696.story
Hampton University students design Tuskegee memorial
Memorial may be placed at Fort Monroe
By Robert Brauchle, [email protected] | 757-247-2827
April 3, 2013
HAMPTON — Fort Monroe's visitors could some day approach a memorial with replica
airplanes, granite walls and a statue of a saluting Tuskegee airman.
Members of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc.'s Tidewater chapter are working with Hampton
University students and Fort Monroe officials to create a memorial for the famed AfricanAmerican aviators at Fort Monroe.
"We think memorials such as these are clearly appropriate for a place with such rich history like
Fort Monroe," said Glenn Oder, Fort Monroe Authority executive director.
Members of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc. Tidewater chapter will decide which of the six Hampton
University students' designs they prefer and will pursue to have the memorial built at Fort
Monroe. An exact location has not been picked and the project's cost will depend which design
is chosen.
The Tuskegee Airmen were formally the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment
Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps. They were the first African-American military aviators in the
United States armed forces.
While the group never flew out of Fort Monroe, the region is home to descendants of those
aviators.
Tuskegee chapter member Juan Choate said he is very pleased with the designs presented by
students Tuesday afternoon.
"We wanted these students to learn about these men as they were working on the project," he
said. "Based on their designs and the historic and symbolic elements they've put in place, I'd say
they did their homework."
The Tuskegee Airmen is not the only group to request a memorial at Fort Monroe.
Project 1619 and its creator Calvin Pearson are lobbying to build a monument on Fort Monroe
marking the 400th anniversary of the first landing of Africans in English-occupied North
America.
Hampton professor Wesley Henderson worked with the Tuskegee group to launch the project.
He began the semester showing students examples of other memorials. He then brought the
class to Fort Monroe to experience the property for themselves.
"I felt we were personally connected to this," Henderson said. "They could have chosen
anywhere for this memorial, and they chose Fort Monroe, and they chose Hampton University
to design it."
Graduate student Ander Taylor designed a memorial park he believes will meld into the
surrounding historic setting.
"I wanted to think about the audience and what they would enjoy," he said. "I didn't want to
create something that would take away from the rest of the area. It has to be low maintenance
but also very symbolic of what these men did."
http://www.defensecommunities.org/headlines/armys-sudden-transfer-of-ft-monroeproperty-alarms-lra/#
Army’s Sudden Transfer of Ft. Monroe Property Alarms LRA
March 31, 2013
The Army unexpectedly transferred 313 acres at the former Fort Monroe on Thursday to the
site’s LRA, leaving a series of unanswered questions regarding the ongoing environmental
cleanup, the border of the property reverting to Virginia and other matters.
The Army and state officials had been discussing for more than a year the terms of how the
Army would transfer the portion of the 570-acre post slated to revert to the commonwealth.
The negotiations were intended to resolve who is responsible for the cleanup, long-term
building maintenance, and the transfer of utilities and roads, reported the Daily Press.
Last week’s transfer still leaves those questions up in the air, according to officials with the
state and the Fort Monroe Authority.
Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment,
said the Army has addressed all environmental concerns on the parcel it conveyed, according to
the story. The Army will continue to clean up acreage it still retains that it plans to hand over to
the authority.
In February, the Daily Press reported that a dispute over the value of the parcels that the state
would be required to purchase from the Army had held up negotiations between the two
parties. About 375 acres of the historic post — located on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay in
Hampton — are subject to revert to Virginia. The LRA is applying for an economic development
conveyance from the Army to obtain the remainder.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-nws-edt-letstue-0402-20130401,0,5612970.story
April 2 Letters: Newport News budget, Fort Monroe, housing prices
Wherry Quarter and Batteries Irwin and Parrott now divide Fort Monroe's historic fortress from
the National Park . Governor Bob McDonnell is receiving many requests for his personal
support in saving and preserving them, for eventual inclusion within the national park. All
replies to these requests are coming from Ms. Terrie Suit, a member of the Governor's cabinet.
Ms. Suit wears two hats. She not only is the Governor's Secretary of Veterans Affairs and
Homeland Security but also is the Chairman of The Fort Monroe Authority (FMA), the governing
board for preserving, protecting and managing Fort Monroe.
Many are concerned Gov. McDonnell may not be completely aware of the nature and number
of requests for his personal attention. Perhaps requests to Governor McDonnell concerning
Fort Monroe are automatically directed to Ms. Suit, not really because of her position as a
Cabinet Secretary but because of her position as Chairman of The FMA,
Had citizens felt Chairman Suit and the FMA were listening to the valid justifications for saving
Wherry, or had they wanted to hear again what Chairman Suit and the FMA are saying about
Wherry at every Fort Monroe public meeting, their requests for the governor's help would have
been addressed to her in the first place.
Fort Monroe's entire bayfront is an integral part of the entire history of the U.S. military and of
our national and commonwealth heritage. If a part of that historic waterfront, i.e., the Wherry
Quarter area which divides the Monument , is lost to development, it will be lost forever. How
sad then will it be for this entire nation, if Virginia, thru Governor McDonnell and The Fort
Monroe Authority, permits the destruction of this wonderfully unique piece of American
history.
Sandra Canepa
Hampton
http://www.freelancestar.com/2013-03-31/articles/4773/bulk-of-fort-monroe-transfers-tovirginia/
Bulk of Fort Monroe transfers to Virginia
BY ROBERT BRAUCHLE / (NEWPORT NEWS) DAILY PRESS
HAMPTON—The Army dropped a bombshell on the Fort Monroe Authority last week,
transferring 313 acres of the old post to the state immediately while authority officials said they
were still working out the details.
State and Army officials have spent more than a year negotiating terms of how the Army would
transfer ownership of the former base to the state. Those talks included determining who is
responsible for its environmental cleanup, long-term building maintenance and transfer of
utilities and roadways.
“We don’t know if they’re agreeing to our terms, or if they’re throwing out those talks, or
another option,” said Steve Owens, senior assistant Virginia attorney general. “We need more
information from them.”
MOVE UPSETS AUTHORITY
Fort Monroe Authority Chairwoman Terrie Suit said the Army’s transferring the property with
so many loose ends in negotiations is “very disappointing.”
The authority learned of the transfer Thursday morning, about two hours before its regular
board meeting.
Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army, said the Army has addressed all of the
environmental concerns on the 313 acres being transferred to the state. It was time to hand
over the property, she said during a conference call Thursday.
Fort Monroe Authority officials contend their concerns have not been settled.
Authority Executive Director Glenn Oder said the state and Army have not agreed on:
A utility pact with Dominion Virginia Power
The property’s border reverting back to the state
Ongoing environmental cleanup.
LONG-TERM CARE?
Hammack said an Army caretaker team will remain on the property for 60 days “to provide a
smooth transition.”
The Army will continue its environmental cleanup on the property it still owns and eventually
will transfer to the state, she said.
The Army said the Fort Monroe Authority will need to pay for the marina and another 38-acre
area along Mill Creek. The Chamberlin hotel will also remain in Army hands, Suit said.
She described property not included in the transfer as areas that are “cherry-picked to be
economically beneficial to the Army.”
REVERTING TO THE STATE
The Army took ownership of Fort Monroe in the 1830s knowing the land would revert back to
Virginia if the military no longer needed it. The Defense Base Realignment and Closure
Commission agreed to decommission Fort Monroe in 2011, forcing a move to Fort Eustis.
During its more than 150-year occupation of Fort Monroe, the Army filled part of the property
along Mill Creek and built a marina along the west wall, muddying the deal with the state.
That new land and the marina are areas the Army says are not included in a clause stating the
federal government will return the property to the state if it is not used by the military. The
Army wants the state to pay for those parcels.
Thursday’s transfer does not yet appear to affect the national monument created in November
2011 by President Barack Obama.
CONGRESSIONAL HELP
Suit said she believes the Army’s quick decision to transfer the land is retaliation for the Fort
Monroe Authority seeking help with the transfer from members of Congress.
Suit said the authority was approached by members of the area’s congressional delegation,
asking for an explanation about the transfer after a Feb. 5 Daily Press article was published
about the Army transfer.
Oder then spoke to federal Armed Services Committee staff about the issue.
Suit said the transfer’s timing—after Oder spoke with federal elected representatives—is a
“punitive” act by Army officials in the Pentagon.
“It sends a ripple out to the local redevelopment authorities locally and nationally that if the
committees reach out to their elected representatives, then the Army will punish you,” she
said.
“This is something we’ve been trying to do for quite some time,” Hammack said. “I’m delighted
it’s come to fruition.”
http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/Army-Wants-to-Transfer-Some-Land-at-FortMonroe-200744431.html
Army Wants to Transfer Some Land at Fort Monroe
Army wants to transfer some land at Fort Monroe
Eds: APNewsNow. Will be updated.
HAMPTON, Va. (AP) - The Army plans to immediately transfer more than half of the land at Fort
Monroe to the state of Virginia.
The military deactivated the post in 2011 and a national monument was created on portions of
the property.
Fort Monroe was the third-oldest U.S. Army post in continuous active service until it closed.
The Army recently notified Virginia officials that it intends to transfer 313 acres of the 565-acre
Hampton fort right away, although there are issues that still need to be resolved.
Fort Monroe Authority Executive Director Glenn Oder tells The Virginian-Pilot that among those
issues are the boundaries of the land being transferred.
http://hamptonroads.com/2013/03/army-will-give-virginia-large-chunk-fort-monroe-land
Army will give Virginia large chunk of Fort Monroe land
By Sarah Kleiner Varble
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 30, 2013
HAMPTON
The Army intends to hand over a large chunk of the former Fort Monroe to Virginia
immediately - a move that took some by surprise.
The fort ceased to operate as an Army base in 2011. Since then, the Army and the Fort Monroe
Authority, a state board that oversees the preservation and redevelopment of the fort and its
surroundings, have negotiated about a land transfer.
The Army notified Virginia officials this week that it intends to transfer 313 acres of the 565acre fort to the state right away.
But Glenn Oder, executive director of the state authority, said there are still issues that need to
be resolved.
Among them is that the boundaries of the land to be transferred haven't been agreed upon,
Oder said.
The Army wants to retain some land that the authority says should be transferred to it, he said.
The negotiations about boundaries have been based on a survey produced by the Army in
2009, but Oder said that within the past six weeks, the Army began using a different survey one that's based on historical data.
"We've been asking for a meeting since the middle of February to review this survey - where it
came from and why they think this is the new survey - and we haven't even been able to get a
meeting with the Army," he said.
The fort's marina is part of 83 acres that the Army said this week are not reverting to Virginia at
this time. Katherine Hammack, an assistant secretary of the Army, said in a conference call that
the Army plans to offer those parcels to the authority as an "economic development
conveyance" in the future.
Also unresolved are arrangements for how the land will be environmentally cleaned, how it will
be used once it meets safety standards and how buildings will be maintained in the long term,
Oder said.
President Barack Obama declared a national monument at Fort Monroe in 2011. The National
Park Service website says it will comprise 325 acres. Though it's not clear how that land will
transfer to the park service, it appears from the Army's announcement this week that at least
some of it would pass from the Army to the park service via the state.
"I would hope that any visitors to Fort Monroe would not be affected by this latest
development from the Army," Oder said.
Sarah Kleiner Varble,757-446-2318, [email protected]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/army-wants-immediate-transfer-of-some-land-at-fortmonroe-to-virginia/2013/03/30/dac487d2-9947-11e2-b5b4-b63027b499de_story.html
Army wants immediate transfer of some land at Fort Monroe to Virginia
By Associated Press,
Mar 30, 2013 06:45 PM EDT
APPublished: March 30
HAMPTON, Va. — The Army plans to immediately transfer more than half of the land at
shuttered Fort Monroe to the state of Virginia.
The Army recently notified Virginia officials that it intends to transfer 313 acres of the 565-acre
Hampton fort right away, although there are issues that still need to be resolved.
Fort Monroe Authority Executive Director Glenn Oder tells The Virginian-Pilot
(http://bit.ly/108N5Lx) that among the lingering issues are the boundaries of the land being
transferred.
He said the authority wants some land that the Army hopes to retain. A 2009 Army survey has
been the basis of negotiations about boundaries. But within the past two months, the Army
started using another survey based on historical data, Oder said.
“We’ve been asking for a meeting since the middle of February to review this survey — where it
came from and why they think this is the new survey — and we haven’t even been able to get a
meeting with the Army,” he said.
Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment,
said 83 acres, including the fort’s marina, aren’t being transferred to the authority just yet, but
they’ll be offered as an “economic development conveyance” in the future.
Oder said other unresolved issues include environmental cleanup arrangements, future land
use and long-term building maintenance.
“I would hope that any visitors to Fort Monroe would not be affected by this latest
development from the Army,” Oder said.
Fort Monroe was ordered closed in 2005 as part of a base realignment plan designed to cut
costs.
The fort was the third-oldest Army post in continuous active service until it closed in September
2011. Two months later, President Barack Obama added 325 acres of the base to the National
Park Service by declaring it a national monument.
Dutch traders first brought enslaved Africans to the fort in 1619. During the Civil War it became
a place where escaped slaves could find refuge. Confederate President Jefferson Davis also was
imprisoned there after the war.
http://www.unitedpatriotsworldwide.com/ultimate-news/44404/bulk-of-fort-monroeproperty-is
Bulk of Fort Monroe property is transferred to Virginia
Stars and Stripes » Stars and Stripes » Bulk of Fort Monroe property is transferred to Virginia
Posted date: 2013-03-29 16:28:27
HAMPTON, Va. — The U.S. Army dropped a bombshell on the Fort Monroe Authority on
Thursday, transferring 313 acres of the property to the state immediately while authority
officials said they were still working out the details.
State and Army officials have spent more than a year negotiating the terms of how the Army
would transfer ownership of the former military base back to the state. Those talks included
determining who is responsible for environmental cleanup on the property, long-term building
maintenance and the transfer of utilities and roadways.
"We don't know if they're agreeing to our terms, or if they're throwing out those talks, or
another option," said Steve Owens, senior assistant attorney general. "We need more
information from them."
Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees Chairwoman Terrie Suit said the Army's decision to
transfer the property with so many loose ends in negotiations is "very disappointing."
The authority learned about the transfer Thursday morning, about two hours before the
group's regular board meeting.
Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army, said the Army has addressed all of the
environmental concerns on the 313 acres being transferred to the state. Therefore it is time to
hand over the property, she said during a conference call Thursday afternoon.
Fort Monroe Authority officials contend their concerns have not been settled.
Authority Executive Director Glenn Oder said the state and Army have not agreed on:




Utility agreement with Dominion Virginia Power.
The border of the property reverting back to the state..
The ongoing environmental cleanup.
Long-term building maintenance.
Hammack said an Army caretaker team will remain on the property for 60 days "to provide a
smooth transition."
The Army will continue its environmental cleanup on the property it still owns and eventually
will transfer to the state, she said.
The Army also states the Fort Monroe Authority will need to pay for the marina and another
38-acre area along Mill Creek.
The Chamberlin will also remain in Army hands, Suit said.
She described the property not included in the current transfer as areas that are "cherry-picked
to be economically beneficial to the Army."
The Army took ownership of Fort Monroe in the 1830s knowing the land would revert back to
the Commonwealth of Virginia if the military no longer needed the property.
The Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission agreed to decommission Fort Monroe
in 2011, forcing the Army to move to Fort Eustis.
During its more than 150 year occupation of Fort Monroe, the Army filled in a portion of the
property along Mill Creek and built a marina along the western wall, muddying the agreement
with the state.
That new land and the marina are areas the Army says are not included in a clause stating the
federal government will return the property to the state if it is not used by the military. The
Army wants the state pay for those parcels.
Thursday's transfer does not yet appear to affect the National Park Monument created in
November 2011 by President Barack Obama.
Suite said during the authority meeting she believes the Army's quick decision to transfer the
land is retaliation for the Fort Monroe Authority seeking help with the transfer from members
of Congress.
Suit said the Fort Monroe Authority was approached by members of the area's congressional
delegation, asking for an explanation about the transfer after a Feb. 5 Daily Press article was
published about the Army transfer.
Oder then spoke to federal Armed Services Committee staff about the issue.
Suit said the transfer's timing — after the Oder spoke with federal elected representatives — is
a "punitive" act by Army officials in the Pentagon.
"It sends a ripple out to the local redevelopment authorities locally and nationally that if the
committees reach out to their elected representatives then the Army will punish you," she said.
According to a statement from his office, U.S. Rep Scott Rigell, R-Virginia Beach, is aware of the
transfer, but his staff is still examining the details.
Hammack said she spoke with Rigell Thursday morning and the conversation was cordial.
"He and I talked about scheduling some sort of event ... where we'll have an exchange of keys,"
she said.
Hammack said the Army's decision to transfer the property is not a direct result of the federal
sequestration, although saving money to help further the Army's core mission is seen as a
positive step.
"This is something we've been trying to do for quite some time," Hammack said. "I'm delighted
it's come to fruition."
http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampton/hampton-matters-blog/dp-waiting-on-plans-forfort-monroes-wherry-quarter-20130328,0,3698369.post
Waiting on plans for Fort Monroe's Wherry Quarter
9:08 a.m. EDT, March 28, 2013
The Fort Monroe Authority’s short-term goals have been pretty apparent for the past eight
months, even if they aren’t necessarily laid out in a formal master plan.
Get people back into the historic homes. Then wrangle the biggest expenses into a pen where
they can be identified even if they can’t be immediately addressed.
Progress toward those goals has been up and down. More than 130 of the 176 available homes
are leased. A capital budget prioritizes infrastructure projects both above and below the
ground, even though the funding doesn’t exist to start many of them.
The big question remains though about what becomes of the Wherry Quarter, the area to the
north and east of the stone fort. The Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park want the 50-acre
area included in the National Park Service monument and protected from development.
The Fort Monroe Authority and master plan consultant Sasaki Associates have remained noncommittal about Wherry’s future.
The authority should focus redeveloping buildings on the property south and west and then
focus its attention on the north and east when the initial work is done, Fred Merrill told the Fort
Monroe Authority Planning Advisory Group during a March 1 meeting.
That means the Wherry Quarter could remain as is for another decade.
The citizens group also needs to decide how it plans to press on from here.
Fort Monroe Authority Executive Director Glenn Oder has said no one has been knocking on his
door to build in the Wherry Quarter. The interest, he said, is in reusing the existing buildings.
For now, it looks like the debate over the Wherry Quarter is not going away any time soon.