NSU Part 3:

Of Buildings and of Teaching

By Gary Ruegsegger
Special To the Guide

     At the 1955 dedication of Tidewater Hall, Chairman of the Advisory Committee Plummer B. Young Sr. said, “I speak to you of buildings and of teaching.”
    That day the distinguished publisher spoke of the importance of foundations, both architectural and educational. From the beginning, teaching was the heart of the school.
     Standing nearby was Colgate Darden.  Dr. Lyman B. Brooks, the first Norfolk State president, once described the pair as “probably the most distinguished black and white persons in Virginia.”

Norfolk State’s L. Douglas Wilder Performing Center is named for Virginia and the nation’s first African American governor, L. Douglas Wilder.

 

    The Tidewater Hall complex at 2401 Corprew Avenue housed the classrooms and the administrative offices of the fledgling college.  Although surrounded by 55 acres of college-owned real estate, for all intents and purposes, that building was the entire Norfolk State campus.
      “Back then, the clock tower building was all there was.  Everything from admissions to classrooms was in that building,” recounted Myrna Matthews.

 
      As a teenager, she worked for G. W. C. Brown in the admissions office. Now, the old Tidewater Hall bears his name.
     Twenty years earlier, the Norfolk State campus was confined to rented space on the second and third floors of the Brambleton Avenue YMCA.  St. Paul Epps was the school’s first student and student body president.  Epps had 84 classmates.
    Known as the Norfolk Unit of Virginia Union University, the school did not have its first newspaper, The Norfolk Unit Gazette, until 1937.  George Walker was the first editor.  The enrollment had only grown to 115 full-time students.
    During those early years, Earl S. Braxton Sr., a Booker T. graduate, was one of the school’s honor students.  In many ways, Norfolk State was born for families like the Braxtons.

      Delivered by a midwife, Earl was literally born and raised in the Titustown community.  Except for his further educational studies and military service in two wars, Titustown was always home.
     His parents, Aaron and Beulah Braxton, valued education.  Going to school was never optional in the Braxton home.  All eight of their children graduated from high school and at one time or another “carried the Journal and Guide” to the homes in Titustown. 
     Three sons and a daughter attended Norfolk State.
    One of their daughters owned and operated Corinne’s Beauty Salon.  Two of the Braxton sisters became nurses. Four of Aaron and Beulah’s children worked for the U. S. Postal Service.  Earl eventually became the principal of Ruffner Jr. High School. 
     Their youngest son Harold earned a doctorate from Virginia Union University.
    Although their father never had a driver’s license or owned a car, Aaron Braxton was one of Norfolk’s first master mechanics.  After purchasing a set of automobile manuals, he taught himself the mysteries of the internal combustion engine. 
      People from all over Tidewater came to Mr. Hart’s Atlantic City garage to have Aaron service their vehicles.  Beulah did “day work” in the upscale Algonquin Park neighborhood. The Braxtons were never afraid of hard work.

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