Making Up for Lost Time

"THE SOCIAL WORLD REALLY SHUT DOWN," says Henry Cabarrus, sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Farm-ville. On a Thursday morning after his night class, Henry is talking about the impact the closings had on him and on the community he knew, which was profoundly affected by the exodus of children. "When I left Prince Edward County, there were all kinds of family events that took place, on the weekends in particular, but when I returned, through the years, on vacation, there were fewer clubs. The family tradition of family reunions had broken down, so that the social structure of the community was starting to fade."

What Henry has found is that segregation and the shame associated with the closings instilled -- in everybody -- a powerful disinclination to talk about what happened. And that has been a problem for him in completing his final project. For students in St. Paul's accelerated business course, the final assignment is to identify a need that exists in a local institution and come up with a plan, based on interviews, research and ingenuity, to address it. Henry decided that the Moton museum -- the old high school -- could use a multimedia exhibit. He's right: While the museum displays photos and offers a few commemorative items, the building is still old and creaky. Henry felt there should be a way for visitors to access the large but disparate archives of the Prince Edward closings: court decisions, newspaper coverage, speeches, videos, photographs. He also thought it would be nice to have oral histories: footage of former students talking. But when he approached people, those who used to be willing to talk were sick of doing so-- "people had just been talked to death" -- and those who hadn't wanted to talk still didn't want to. "I've run smack up against a brick wall," says Henry, who dropped the oral history idea but pressed ahead with the rest.

But then he was over at the Moton building sizing up the project and realized that the wiring could never support a multimedia exhibit, because this is, after all, the very ill-equipped building that led to the lawsuit that led to the closings that led to his longtime departure from the area that led to the scholarships.

For Henry, ultimately, there is no way to repair the damage done to his life, his education, his future. True, there were moments when he thought the Brown scholarship program really could make up for the impact the school closings had on him and his, at one time, unlimited academic prospects. As a young man, Henry did attempt to do what Oliver Hill urged: The first year of the closings, he tried to educate himself independently. "I thought at first I could just collect books and continue by myself, but that dried up real quick when I was doing all the farm work; I would come in, and I would be so tired." Then he was sent by the Quakers to Ohio.

After two years, the Ohio program was disbanded, and he was sent to Cambridge, Mass. Then the entire Quaker program was disbanded, when, in the final year of the closings, some local "free schools" were established: ad-hoc, everybody-passes classes to get students ready to go back to school proper. Realizing the free schools wouldn't give him the preparation he needed for college, Henry, then in his senior year of high school, bought a bus ticket back to Cambridge, put up posters asking for a place to stay and found a minister to take him in. He got a scholarship to Northeastern University, where he became involved in the civil rights movement. But when his scholarship money dried up and he became dissatisfied by the movement -- long story short -- he left school and moved to San Francisco, where, instead of becoming the doctor he always thought he'd be, he worked for years in residential group homes for the homeless and juveniles. His grandparents had died; his mother worked in New York. "I felt like I didn't have a home to come back to."

Henry returned to the Farmville area in the 1990s, when his aging mother needed somebody to bring her home from New York to a more restful environment. He works in a residential facility, taking care of the mentally retarded. Forty hours a week, afternoon to midnight, Henry, onetime future doctor, cleans the residents, bathes them, talks to them, plays cards with them, feeds them. Which is okay, too. Over the years, he feels, he has become well-trained to care for the mentally ill and other disadvantaged people. When he heard about the Brown scholarships, he thought here was a way to make everything come together. He applied to Longwood University, a state-funded institution in Farmville, hoping to complete a full, four-year degree in social work. He planned to change his schedule, to work at night and take daytime classes. "I felt I could pull together a good program," he says. So he applied and heard nothing for a while.

Eventually he received a letter from the president, recommending that he contact an admissions officer to discuss the possibility of first attending a community college. There was no guarantee of admission afterward. There is no community college in Farm-ville. The intent may have been good, but it felt, to Henry, like "a nice way of showing me the side door." When Ken Woodley, the Herald editor, heard about this, he says, he was angry. Martha Cook, a Longwood English professor, says, "I think he would have been an asset to us." According to Robert Chonko, dean of enrollment management at Longwood, it was thought that Henry needed "a little bit of refresher and some prerequisites" from a community college, because he "was lacking some background in some areas, and some of his areas were fairly dated." Longwood has accepted two Brown scholars. One died before matriculating. The other, according to Chonko, enrolled in an art program but only completed one year. The Brown scholarship pays for tuition but not fees, and Chonko points out that the art fees "can get pretty substantial." There are no Brown scholars currently at Longwood.

Thinking that it would be hard to commute to community college while working full time, Henry decided to enroll at St. Paul's. He will graduate in May with a business degree rather than the social work degree he wanted. As much as he appreciates what St. Paul's has done, he is aware of the disadvantages. "The instructors have been very supportive, but their contact with us is very limited," he says. He and his classmates lack easy access to St. Paul's campus and its online and library resources.

And so Henry has decided to devote himself to getting decent infrastructure for the Moton building. He'll use his final project to identify a funder and figure out what's needed. Who knows -- maybe he'll learn to be a grant writer. After all, he's only 62. Life is long. He has contacted someone at Colonial Williamsburg, to learn how to update a historical building. Finishing his coffee, he leaves to go to work, and get up tomorrow, and get started on bringing some good new wiring to that bad old building, so that the things he and his classmates lost, and the things they came to stand for, will always be remembered.

Liza Mundy is a contributing writer for the Magazine. She, Aldrena Thirkill and Henry Cabarrus will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon.