Nancy and A. G. and Norge, made for each other

By JIM IZZO
—PART I

Every Sunday evening for the last 15 years, Mr. and Mrs. A.G. Bradshaw, their children and grandchildren, have gotten together for dinner. Each family brings something to eat, and the group shares conversation and fellowship as well as food.
“Church and family have always been my top priority,” says Mr. Bradshaw. “They’re really the same thing.”
“Then comes community service,” adds Mrs. Bradshaw. “I really love Norge.”
Although they have lived here most of their lives, Nancy Smith and A. G. Bradshaw were not born in Norge. She was born in Richmond; her family bought a house in Norge in 1933. “There was no electricity or running water in the area then,” Nancy said.
A.G. was born in Sedley, Virginia. “I spent many days barefoot out in the field with mules,” says A.G., adding, “the east end of a west bound mule.”
They met at Courtland High School in 1943. A.G., having graduated the year before, was there to pick up his younger brother; Nancy had begun her teaching career. They corresponded while he was in the service during World War II (“The army gave me a free tour of Europe”) and were married in 1947.
After the war, A.G. worked at Camp Manufacturing Company in Franklin until 1949, when he began college at William and Mary under the GI bill, which paid him $90 dollars a month subsistence allowance. “It didn’t go too far, even then,” he says. “We raised vegetables, which we supplied to two grocery stores in Williamsburg, and we raised chickens and eggs, which I delivered to restaurants before school during the week and to homes on Saturday.”
The Bradshaw’s’ first son, Butch, was born in July of 1949, two months before A.G. began college. They had two more sons, Andy (1950) and Dick (1952), by the time he graduated from college, the first one in his family to do so.
Larry, Nancy, Russ and Phil (twins) completed the Bradshaw’s family of seven children by 1962.
A year later Nancy, a graduate of Madison College, went back to teaching English at James Blair High School, for a salary of $4,000. “Having grown up during the Depression, we wanted our kids to have more than we did,” she observed.
The “kids” adopted their parents work ethic. Andy is an attorney and former supervisor of the Stonehouse district of James City County; he and his wife Ann, a teacher, have three children: Elizabeth, and her husband Mike Poland have a daughter, Angelica, the Bradshaw’s first great-grandchild; Allison and Helen are also their daughters. Dick Bradshaw is Commissioner of the Revenue for JCC. Larry, who now lives in Tennessee, is in the construction business; his children are Tom, Becky and Andy. Daughter Nancy, married to Chuck Sheppard, is an attorney; their daughter is Maggie. The youngest Bradshaw “kids” are twins Phil, who is in hotel management and married to Melanie, an auditor, and Russ, a teacher (in New Hampshire), married to Linda, manager of a historical museum.
When asked what she enjoyed most about her career (teaching), Mrs. Bradshaw responded, “Just being with young people gives me faith in this country; there’s so much good in them. I taught mostly average kids; they’re the backbone of society, they’re the ones we can depend on.”
After graduating from college, A.G. got a job at Fort Eustis; his post engineer work involved power plants and heating. Years later he did very different work at Fort Monroe, in the Civilian Personnel Division, Position and Pay Management Branch, performing job analysis and pay scale determination for civilian personnel positions. “I came here because of the new challenges,” he explained. “Both types of work gave me the opportunity to meet a variety of people.” He retired from Fort Monroe as Chief in the Positions and Pay Management Branch.
A.G.’s favorite type of work, however, has always been agriculture, because “that’s how I was raised. My father owned several farms. We still raise our own vegetables.” He calls the recently opened Farmers’ Market near the fire house “one of the best things to ever hit Toano.”
Mr. Bradshaw started raising Christmas trees in 1984 and selling them eight years later. He has mostly repeat customers, even from 1992. “I’ve always enjoyed watching the children help their parents pick out a tree. Sometimes they disagree, and the parents wait until the kids come to an agreement. I still help some people cut down their tree.”
See Part II in the August 29 issue.