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Conversation with Blue Bomar and Mary Bomar Ritter
3/17/2022
Charlottesville, VA
The following are notes on the conversation-(draft written 3/21/2022 and revised 4/7/2022) by Beth Sutton. Photos taken on the day of this conversation, and archival pictures are shared courtesy of Mrs. Ritter are available on my Smugmug gallery on Cismont, all rights reserved to the Bomar family. Any reprint or usage by permission only.
I contacted the Bomar family through Ron Cottrell, director of Hospice of the Piedmont after I saw a story about Blue in the HOPVA newsletter. He introduced me to the family through Blue’s daughter Mary Bomar Ritter who was here from Indiana, visiting her father while he was in the Albemarle Health and Rehab center recovering from a fall. Blue is 93 years young, vigorous and recovering well.
E. H. Bomar, Jr. aka “Blue” and his wife Joan and three daughters moved to Cismont from Altavista, Virginia in the fall of 1953. A month earlier his wife’s family had moved to Cismont. In 1954 Joan’s father, H.E. Phelps purchased the property that included the Post Office and two gas pumps (located at the crossroad intersection of the Gordonsville Road, Stony Point Pass and Cismont lane) as well as the adjoining property with a house, garage, and some additional acreage. Mr. Phelps served as postmaster of the Cismont Post Office, and briefly ran a small grocery store in the back. Mary said she was an infant when the family came to Cismont. They moved into the upstairs of the grandparents’ house. In third grade the Bomars moved and rented the house across the road that was the original blacksmith shop owned by Mr. Ladd. Her grandfather was fond of music, and loved to listen to his radio programs, especially “Paul Harvey”, but he was a strict man. In the mid 1950s Phelps enlarged the building to include a complete service station branded Gulf Oil with a wash bay and service garage. He asked Blue if he wanted to take over the gas station after two previous managers had left.
Mary says that her father was the only person who was ever able to stay on as manager at the gas station because he insisted on having no interference. Blue commented, “I told Mr. Phelps I would have to be the only one in charge, and that was all there was to it. And I didn’t have any more trouble after that.” In 1982 Blue and Joan assumed family ownership of the entire property. On the southwest side of the property there had been a drive-in movie theater, “The Seven Pines Drive-in” that opened in 1948 and remained active until 1952, with a parking area large enough to hold 100 cars, and a large screen with benches in front and a projection house just off the edge of the lot. Only the screen support posts were left in 1953.The remnants of the concrete block walls and foundation of this projection house are still there, now home to a returning mother black buzzard who is currently watching over her clutch of 2 large speckled eggs. The theater lot is where Blue has his vegetable garden and continued to garden and mow long after his retirement until his recent fall.
During the 48 years that Blue worked on cars, and later on lawn and farm equipment at the station, the brands of fuel changed but his service remained steady and dependable. The building’s use changed over the years, and currently serves as a floral design studio.
The following are comments about life in Cismont, and more about race in the 1950s-1960s.
On school segregation:
Mary attended the all-white Cismont elementary school, located within walking distance of their property “just off the corner of Louisa Road and 600”. The Cismont elementary school building was a two- or three-story frame structure with no plumbing. “Outdoor potty and a wood stove” were the sources of comfort and convenience. According to Blue, “They used old motor oil to rub the wood floors”. Author Mary Carter Bishop, who attended the school through 8th grade, recalled her clothes getting grimy from these floorboards. She said there was a boys and girls out house, and recalled that on one occasion some naughty boys harassed the girls in their portion of the outbuilding. Mary had friends she thought might have memories and history of the schools: Sue Spicer Craddock, Jane Spicer, “Petie” Craddock as well as those who attended the Overton School. Current Cismont long time neighbors include Betty Rhodes Svetz and her mother Emily.
On Race:
“My parents were aware of segregation and the tensions of integration,” said Mary. “My mama always taught us to be kind to everybody-didn’t matter who they were.”
Blue agreed, “I worked on everybody’s cars-didn’t matter what color they were.” Blue serviced tractors, farm equipment, lawn mowers, and “anything that ran, I worked on it. And that was just about everybody in the neighborhood, from the really rich on down, both sides of the road!” The “road” meaning the Gordonsville Road. The western side of the road was where the predominant number of larger farms and estates were found, the east being a poorer type of clay soil and land that “doesn’t perk really well” according to Mary. (This area included the black community of “Scuffletown” on Maxfield Farm Road.) Regarding the class separations in both races in Keswick-Rich, poor, black, white-yes there was a definite class system in Keswick. But Mary commented, and Blue agreed, “that’s true, it has been and will always be that way. Everybody’s got to have someone they think is better than them or someone they can look down on.” I said, “Its human nature I guess”, and Blue nodded. “That’s it. That’s just human nature and it isn’t going to change.”
On change after de-segregation:
Blue said that during the years of social unrest in the larger community, his work remained unchanged. His workdays were long, often 16 hours a day except Sunday. The Bomar family attended South Plains Presbyterian Church in Keswick, and years later attended Gordonsville Presbyterian church where Joan Bomar served as the church organist. “I didn’t see much outside of every day working on what needed doing, and didn’t have time for much else. The blacks and whites around here got along, they all worked together on the horse farms and such but they didn’t mix. They lived in their own neighborhoods. Black Cat Road back then was all black, and same up in Cobham and around here over across the road,” he said referring to the Louisa and Maxfield Road areas. Mary and Blue recalled familiar families who lived and worked in the area and were well respected: especially folks like Bernice Bates and her family, Gene and Cleo Carr and the Carr family, the Chapman family, white families they knew well were Violet Stancil and her son David, who worked for Blue his whole career. Tom Hunter’s family (Tom Hunter was Dean of the UVA medical school and his children rode the bus with the Bomars), Donald Stevens family (Stevens owned the Gaslight restaurant in Charlottesville), the Chesters at Music Hall farm, the Spicers in Cismont.
Conflict was rare in the rural environment where whites and blacks lived in close proximity, working together on farms, but not mixing socially. One uncomfortable incident she recalled was a Halloween trick- or- treating encounter at their home that led to an act of vandalism. “Every year, Mom fixed candy for the neighbors’ kids, and there were not many children at that time so the basket of treats she had prepared was already taken when a large group of black children showed up on the porch, she had nothing left, and was a little surprised by the large group, and she was worried. This was not the typical Halloween group she expected, the kids were not familiar to her and she had no choice but to turn them away! She was a little scared too. She told them she was really sorry but she had already given out what she had!” Later that night, a rock was thrown through the window of the garage behind the Phelps residence. (The rock made a dent in Mr. Phelps’s Cadillac parked inside.)
Blue had an amusing story to tell about another chance encounter at the gas station. “It was late in the day, and a real bad storm was blowing in. Terrible wind, rain and all. A couple came by in a really nice sportscar convertible- and they needed help getting the top up. We had a time getting it on, and they got in and drove off. Later on, they asked if they could store the car there in the garage for a while, but I said no, too much liability. It was a real expensive car. Come to find out later the couple was Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson; they were making the movie “Giant” up the road in Keswick!”
On attending Stone Robinson school after Cismont school closed:
Mary was very young when she started at Stone Robinson which opened and began the school term after Christmas vacation in her second-grade year. She recalled being excited and apprehensive in a new, bigger school, and because she had never experienced playing or being close to black children, and though her parents had never said anything bad about them, it was just a feeling that something was different-and felt uncomfortable. She recounted an instance in 7th grade when the teacher organized a music activity where children danced together. A black boy, Walter White, was her partner, and she said that the experience made her feel somewhat anxious. She told her mother about it and afterwards the teacher stopped dancing as an activity in the class. Mary said, “...That saddens me now, but at that time it was just how things were!” Walter White graduated from Albemarle High School and the University of Maryland, was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers and later played for the Kansas City Chiefs. He died in 2019.
Mary said that after a few years, tensions lessened and she has fond memories of black classmates with whom she became friends, and she has warm memories of Walter, her dancing partner, as well as Darlene Quarles. She recalls riding the bus with Raymond Bates. Blue fondly remembered Gene and Cleo Carr, as well as George Bates, and Bernice Bates who worked for Ginny and Pruitt Semmes. The Semmes lived on the Gordonsville Road near the gas station, not far from Grace Episcopal Church. The Carr and Bates families lived in Scuffletown. Mary recalled a story about attending a funeral at Zion Hill Baptist Church, for their friend Bernice Bates. “My family and I went, and so did the Semmes- we were the only white people there. When we got there, the church was packed, and we had to wait in the back until everyone was seated, then one of the ushers came and got Ginny and Pruitt and seated them. Then the usher came and said he had one seat left. Mom pushed me forward and to my surprise- it was up in front with the choir. Being a singer, I was absolutely thrilled to be up there with the choir!”
The post office at Cismont was active until early seventies and up until then everyone went in and out to get their mail. Postmaster Phelps stood behind a tall counter and handed out the mail through a large opening in a wooden wall he built that housed little cubby holes with names tacked on, one for each resident. Lots of conversation passed through that opening. Preacher Robinson also was one of the people who came in and got his mail there,” said Mary. “My granddaddy Phelps had a Steinway upright piano in the back and he loved music.” Blue said that neighbors would stop by the station to sit around talking and drinking a soda. The Cismont service station was a friendly spot where everyone was welcome, and where you could always count on a friendly wave, local news and help whenever you needed it.
Everyone in the area knows Blue, and everyone has a good memory to share. Mine happens to be about a trip to the Cismont Gulf in 1979, not too long after we moved to the neighborhood, to get help with a 1960’s vintage Chevy truck that had been converted to a make shift horse van with a V-6 engine. A mouse had made a nest under the hood, and since the truck was seldom used, it needed a tune up. My son Gordon (who’s now working in the fuel business) was an infant at the time, and we lived on Black Cat Road. I had Gordon in the car seat next to me in the old truck for the short drive over to Blue’s to have him look under the hood to make sure nothing was damaged. Without a second thought I let Blue take the wheel and drive the truck up the road without me, and out of sight, only later considering that I had sent my infant child off up the road and out of sight in the company of a man I hardly knew. But a few moments later, the truck returned, Blue smiled and made a few reassuring comments, wiped the grease off his hands and said that they just didn’t make engines as easy to work on as that one anymore. Yes- it made some noise, but there was “room enough in there under that hood for even a nest of mice to make a home.”
Like her father, Mary knows no strangers. Open, cheerful and friendly she is happy to meet new friends. She told me about her career as a professional musician, and the road that ultimately led her to Nashville after she left the Cismont neighborhood after finishing school. She returns home often to see her dad and stays at the family home in Cismont when she is in town. She partners with her husband Bob in a group called “Bomar and Ritter”, traveling across country to sing and play ballads in the style of Joni Mitchell and Dan Fogleberg, their mentors. They will be in the area for gigs at local wineries and at Castle Hill Cidery where they are booked in April. She and her husband have a home in Indiana now, and more information about them and their music can be found by visiting https://www.bomarandritter.com/
Post Script: On African American Schools in the Keswick area
There was an all-black elementary school in Cismont as well, although during this interview the topic was not mentioned. Mary later commented that she never heard of it- “we just never thought about where the black children went to school.”
Information on this school was offered to me by U.VA. Architecture Preservation Professor Joseph D. Lahendro as follows: The Preservation Virginia map of Rosenwald Schools gives the address of the Cismont School as 431 Maxfield Farm Road (see attached map). This interactive map has several photos: https://preservationva.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=4bdc01599f964ed68390c99ad2c86564
The photo (Lahendro ) used(in the February 16 presentation recorded at Grace) comes from the Albemarle County Preservation Committee 2006 presentation on county Rosenwald Schools (see attached). Link to Rosenwald Schools photo and information: file:///Users/elizabethhsutton/Downloads/Rosenwald%20Presentation,%20Albemarle%20County%20HIstorical%20Committee,%202006.pdf
3/17/2022
Charlottesville, VA
The following are notes on the conversation-(draft written 3/21/2022 and revised 4/7/2022) by Beth Sutton. Photos taken on the day of this conversation, and archival pictures are shared courtesy of Mrs. Ritter are available on my Smugmug gallery on Cismont, all rights reserved to the Bomar family. Any reprint or usage by permission only.
I contacted the Bomar family through Ron Cottrell, director of Hospice of the Piedmont after I saw a story about Blue in the HOPVA newsletter. He introduced me to the family through Blue’s daughter Mary Bomar Ritter who was here from Indiana, visiting her father while he was in the Albemarle Health and Rehab center recovering from a fall. Blue is 93 years young, vigorous and recovering well.
E. H. Bomar, Jr. aka “Blue” and his wife Joan and three daughters moved to Cismont from Altavista, Virginia in the fall of 1953. A month earlier his wife’s family had moved to Cismont. In 1954 Joan’s father, H.E. Phelps purchased the property that included the Post Office and two gas pumps (located at the crossroad intersection of the Gordonsville Road, Stony Point Pass and Cismont lane) as well as the adjoining property with a house, garage, and some additional acreage. Mr. Phelps served as postmaster of the Cismont Post Office, and briefly ran a small grocery store in the back. Mary said she was an infant when the family came to Cismont. They moved into the upstairs of the grandparents’ house. In third grade the Bomars moved and rented the house across the road that was the original blacksmith shop owned by Mr. Ladd. Her grandfather was fond of music, and loved to listen to his radio programs, especially “Paul Harvey”, but he was a strict man. In the mid 1950s Phelps enlarged the building to include a complete service station branded Gulf Oil with a wash bay and service garage. He asked Blue if he wanted to take over the gas station after two previous managers had left.
Mary says that her father was the only person who was ever able to stay on as manager at the gas station because he insisted on having no interference. Blue commented, “I told Mr. Phelps I would have to be the only one in charge, and that was all there was to it. And I didn’t have any more trouble after that.” In 1982 Blue and Joan assumed family ownership of the entire property. On the southwest side of the property there had been a drive-in movie theater, “The Seven Pines Drive-in” that opened in 1948 and remained active until 1952, with a parking area large enough to hold 100 cars, and a large screen with benches in front and a projection house just off the edge of the lot. Only the screen support posts were left in 1953.The remnants of the concrete block walls and foundation of this projection house are still there, now home to a returning mother black buzzard who is currently watching over her clutch of 2 large speckled eggs. The theater lot is where Blue has his vegetable garden and continued to garden and mow long after his retirement until his recent fall.
During the 48 years that Blue worked on cars, and later on lawn and farm equipment at the station, the brands of fuel changed but his service remained steady and dependable. The building’s use changed over the years, and currently serves as a floral design studio.
The following are comments about life in Cismont, and more about race in the 1950s-1960s.
On school segregation:
Mary attended the all-white Cismont elementary school, located within walking distance of their property “just off the corner of Louisa Road and 600”. The Cismont elementary school building was a two- or three-story frame structure with no plumbing. “Outdoor potty and a wood stove” were the sources of comfort and convenience. According to Blue, “They used old motor oil to rub the wood floors”. Author Mary Carter Bishop, who attended the school through 8th grade, recalled her clothes getting grimy from these floorboards. She said there was a boys and girls out house, and recalled that on one occasion some naughty boys harassed the girls in their portion of the outbuilding. Mary had friends she thought might have memories and history of the schools: Sue Spicer Craddock, Jane Spicer, “Petie” Craddock as well as those who attended the Overton School. Current Cismont long time neighbors include Betty Rhodes Svetz and her mother Emily.
On Race:
“My parents were aware of segregation and the tensions of integration,” said Mary. “My mama always taught us to be kind to everybody-didn’t matter who they were.”
Blue agreed, “I worked on everybody’s cars-didn’t matter what color they were.” Blue serviced tractors, farm equipment, lawn mowers, and “anything that ran, I worked on it. And that was just about everybody in the neighborhood, from the really rich on down, both sides of the road!” The “road” meaning the Gordonsville Road. The western side of the road was where the predominant number of larger farms and estates were found, the east being a poorer type of clay soil and land that “doesn’t perk really well” according to Mary. (This area included the black community of “Scuffletown” on Maxfield Farm Road.) Regarding the class separations in both races in Keswick-Rich, poor, black, white-yes there was a definite class system in Keswick. But Mary commented, and Blue agreed, “that’s true, it has been and will always be that way. Everybody’s got to have someone they think is better than them or someone they can look down on.” I said, “Its human nature I guess”, and Blue nodded. “That’s it. That’s just human nature and it isn’t going to change.”
On change after de-segregation:
Blue said that during the years of social unrest in the larger community, his work remained unchanged. His workdays were long, often 16 hours a day except Sunday. The Bomar family attended South Plains Presbyterian Church in Keswick, and years later attended Gordonsville Presbyterian church where Joan Bomar served as the church organist. “I didn’t see much outside of every day working on what needed doing, and didn’t have time for much else. The blacks and whites around here got along, they all worked together on the horse farms and such but they didn’t mix. They lived in their own neighborhoods. Black Cat Road back then was all black, and same up in Cobham and around here over across the road,” he said referring to the Louisa and Maxfield Road areas. Mary and Blue recalled familiar families who lived and worked in the area and were well respected: especially folks like Bernice Bates and her family, Gene and Cleo Carr and the Carr family, the Chapman family, white families they knew well were Violet Stancil and her son David, who worked for Blue his whole career. Tom Hunter’s family (Tom Hunter was Dean of the UVA medical school and his children rode the bus with the Bomars), Donald Stevens family (Stevens owned the Gaslight restaurant in Charlottesville), the Chesters at Music Hall farm, the Spicers in Cismont.
Conflict was rare in the rural environment where whites and blacks lived in close proximity, working together on farms, but not mixing socially. One uncomfortable incident she recalled was a Halloween trick- or- treating encounter at their home that led to an act of vandalism. “Every year, Mom fixed candy for the neighbors’ kids, and there were not many children at that time so the basket of treats she had prepared was already taken when a large group of black children showed up on the porch, she had nothing left, and was a little surprised by the large group, and she was worried. This was not the typical Halloween group she expected, the kids were not familiar to her and she had no choice but to turn them away! She was a little scared too. She told them she was really sorry but she had already given out what she had!” Later that night, a rock was thrown through the window of the garage behind the Phelps residence. (The rock made a dent in Mr. Phelps’s Cadillac parked inside.)
Blue had an amusing story to tell about another chance encounter at the gas station. “It was late in the day, and a real bad storm was blowing in. Terrible wind, rain and all. A couple came by in a really nice sportscar convertible- and they needed help getting the top up. We had a time getting it on, and they got in and drove off. Later on, they asked if they could store the car there in the garage for a while, but I said no, too much liability. It was a real expensive car. Come to find out later the couple was Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson; they were making the movie “Giant” up the road in Keswick!”
On attending Stone Robinson school after Cismont school closed:
Mary was very young when she started at Stone Robinson which opened and began the school term after Christmas vacation in her second-grade year. She recalled being excited and apprehensive in a new, bigger school, and because she had never experienced playing or being close to black children, and though her parents had never said anything bad about them, it was just a feeling that something was different-and felt uncomfortable. She recounted an instance in 7th grade when the teacher organized a music activity where children danced together. A black boy, Walter White, was her partner, and she said that the experience made her feel somewhat anxious. She told her mother about it and afterwards the teacher stopped dancing as an activity in the class. Mary said, “...That saddens me now, but at that time it was just how things were!” Walter White graduated from Albemarle High School and the University of Maryland, was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers and later played for the Kansas City Chiefs. He died in 2019.
Mary said that after a few years, tensions lessened and she has fond memories of black classmates with whom she became friends, and she has warm memories of Walter, her dancing partner, as well as Darlene Quarles. She recalls riding the bus with Raymond Bates. Blue fondly remembered Gene and Cleo Carr, as well as George Bates, and Bernice Bates who worked for Ginny and Pruitt Semmes. The Semmes lived on the Gordonsville Road near the gas station, not far from Grace Episcopal Church. The Carr and Bates families lived in Scuffletown. Mary recalled a story about attending a funeral at Zion Hill Baptist Church, for their friend Bernice Bates. “My family and I went, and so did the Semmes- we were the only white people there. When we got there, the church was packed, and we had to wait in the back until everyone was seated, then one of the ushers came and got Ginny and Pruitt and seated them. Then the usher came and said he had one seat left. Mom pushed me forward and to my surprise- it was up in front with the choir. Being a singer, I was absolutely thrilled to be up there with the choir!”
The post office at Cismont was active until early seventies and up until then everyone went in and out to get their mail. Postmaster Phelps stood behind a tall counter and handed out the mail through a large opening in a wooden wall he built that housed little cubby holes with names tacked on, one for each resident. Lots of conversation passed through that opening. Preacher Robinson also was one of the people who came in and got his mail there,” said Mary. “My granddaddy Phelps had a Steinway upright piano in the back and he loved music.” Blue said that neighbors would stop by the station to sit around talking and drinking a soda. The Cismont service station was a friendly spot where everyone was welcome, and where you could always count on a friendly wave, local news and help whenever you needed it.
Everyone in the area knows Blue, and everyone has a good memory to share. Mine happens to be about a trip to the Cismont Gulf in 1979, not too long after we moved to the neighborhood, to get help with a 1960’s vintage Chevy truck that had been converted to a make shift horse van with a V-6 engine. A mouse had made a nest under the hood, and since the truck was seldom used, it needed a tune up. My son Gordon (who’s now working in the fuel business) was an infant at the time, and we lived on Black Cat Road. I had Gordon in the car seat next to me in the old truck for the short drive over to Blue’s to have him look under the hood to make sure nothing was damaged. Without a second thought I let Blue take the wheel and drive the truck up the road without me, and out of sight, only later considering that I had sent my infant child off up the road and out of sight in the company of a man I hardly knew. But a few moments later, the truck returned, Blue smiled and made a few reassuring comments, wiped the grease off his hands and said that they just didn’t make engines as easy to work on as that one anymore. Yes- it made some noise, but there was “room enough in there under that hood for even a nest of mice to make a home.”
Like her father, Mary knows no strangers. Open, cheerful and friendly she is happy to meet new friends. She told me about her career as a professional musician, and the road that ultimately led her to Nashville after she left the Cismont neighborhood after finishing school. She returns home often to see her dad and stays at the family home in Cismont when she is in town. She partners with her husband Bob in a group called “Bomar and Ritter”, traveling across country to sing and play ballads in the style of Joni Mitchell and Dan Fogleberg, their mentors. They will be in the area for gigs at local wineries and at Castle Hill Cidery where they are booked in April. She and her husband have a home in Indiana now, and more information about them and their music can be found by visiting https://www.bomarandritter.com/
Post Script: On African American Schools in the Keswick area
There was an all-black elementary school in Cismont as well, although during this interview the topic was not mentioned. Mary later commented that she never heard of it- “we just never thought about where the black children went to school.”
Information on this school was offered to me by U.VA. Architecture Preservation Professor Joseph D. Lahendro as follows: The Preservation Virginia map of Rosenwald Schools gives the address of the Cismont School as 431 Maxfield Farm Road (see attached map). This interactive map has several photos: https://preservationva.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=4bdc01599f964ed68390c99ad2c86564
The photo (Lahendro ) used(in the February 16 presentation recorded at Grace) comes from the Albemarle County Preservation Committee 2006 presentation on county Rosenwald Schools (see attached). Link to Rosenwald Schools photo and information: file:///Users/elizabethhsutton/Downloads/Rosenwald%20Presentation,%20Albemarle%20County%20HIstorical%20Committee,%202006.pdf
