Last week I met the Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin, the man who thought Colonial Williamsburg could be brought alive with just a few million dollars.
Well, I didn’t meet Goodwin himself. I met Ed Way portraying this wonderful Virginian as if it was 1937 and the restoration of the Colonial capital was well under way. It was a treat to stand toe-to-toe with 20th Century History in a place that usually shuns it.
The only thing missing was the sweet tea. Way’s new program at Colonial Williamsburg has him greeting visitors and chatting under the shade trees on the crisp lawn behind Bassett Hall. The man with the seersucker suit and gentle Virginia accent quoted Scripture, told tall tales about Congressmen and condemned cars. “I used a horse-drawn conveyance as long as I could, but it’s not safe anymore, with cars going by you at 30 miles per hour!” Way said as Goodwin.“I never have liked motor cars. Big old expensive mischief machines is all they are.”
Goodwin came out of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Williamsburg in 1903 to be the rector at Bruton Parish Church. The 1715 structure needed a new roof and other repairs. Goodwin pushed the congregation to completely restore the church to its Colonial appearance in time for the 1907 celebration of the 300th anniversary of Jamestown. His ability to mix History, politics and fundraising made the Bruton project a success and convinced him the same could be done with other surviving Colonial buildings in the small, dusty Southern town. He approached several industrialists (Ford, the DuPonts, etc.) before he found a partner in billionaire John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the late 1920s.
“I didn’t push him hard,” Way says as Goodwin. “He teases me, saying to people, ‘Some people get taken for a ride; I got taken for a walk that’s cost me $68 million!’ But truly, I didn’t have to press him. I just talked about the idea with enthusiasm.”
The irony is that the foundation Goodwin helped create is right now putting up fencing to pasture animals on the land where Goodwin died. Goodwin’s last home was a mile across the Historic Area from where Way gives his presentation on Tuesdays and Thursdays; CW tore that home down in 1993 (I wrote the newspaper story about it) because Goodwin’s home was on the edge of the 18th Century area and didn’t fit the storyline they focus on.
I miss that kind of physical marker, but the History is still there. That downtown city block actually has an amazingly dense story. Goodwin’s home stood behind a 1715 home, which is one of the oldest in Williamsburg. Just over the fence from where the historic animals will soon graze sits the Armistead family cemetery; the Armisteads fought in the Civil War and have fought Colonial Williamsburg since it formed (their antebellum home on Duke of Gloucester street is the last non-Colonial holdout). A few feet away from that cemetery is Matthew Whaley Elementary, which Rockefeller built to butter up the town and where my two sons attended elementary grades; Whaley is 77 years old now and is ITSELF on the National Register of Historic Places!
And I haven’t even told you about how Georgia O’Keefe lived in this neighborhood as a little girl . . .
These ghosts are all still floating through this one city block, whether a living actor calls them to mind or not! It’s all in how closely you can listen to them . . .
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 5:34 am and is filed under Colonial Williamsburg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
