Well, I was glad to have the recording of "The Legend of the Church Hill Tunnel" over with and sent a copy to Walter Griggs, along with the other 4 songs I recorded while I was in Brooklyn... I'm not too sure that Walter either liked the style of music or the poetic license I took in telling the story but he assured me that his wife liked the entire effort... Walter is kinda professorial... Know what I mean???
So life went on... I had completed that chapter and was perfectly willing to let it all go and didn't give the tunnel much thought until 1999 when, while visiting friends in Richmond, Bo (from "Bobert's Stoner Christmas Story") said "Let's poke around the eastern portal of the tunnel" and I said, "Yeah, that'd be cool"...
So off we went with another friend, made our way thru the briars and underbrush like I had always done and walked into the portion of the tunnel to the concrete wall... Not sure why I looked up but I did and there to my amazement was a hole that someone had hammered out at the very top of the arched wall just big enough for a someone to squueze thru???
Hmmmmmmmmm???
Well, ya'll know what came into my mind, don't ya'... I'm going in there... Well, I knew this was going to take some planning so I returned the following week with rope, camera, light, work clothes, matches, water, etc., a 20 foot extension ladder to get my skinny butt up to the hole and thru that hole I went...
"Wow!!! I'm in the Church Hill Tunnell"...
The tunnel had been filled with all kinds of nasty old building material, rocks, old railroad ties, etc, all of which had settles over the year leaving between 18 inches and 30 inches between the top of the rubble/fill and brick ceiling of the tunnel...
Well, I crawled on my belly as far back into the tunnel as I could where the tunnel had collapsed above and there was no way to get any further... I guess I made it about 700-800 feet and was purdy well exhausted and sore at that point so wasn't unhappy to find the end of the tunnel... It took forever to get back but I was able to get a few photographs and I recall just turning off the light and laying there for the longest time trying to channel any spiritual energy that might be in the tunnel only to just get kinda spooked so...
...flashlight back on and the last 200 or 300 feet to the hole I had come thru... My buddies were more than a little anxious as I had been in there well over 2 hours...
During my 3 hour long drive back to Wes Ginny I just kept thinking how few, maybe a hand full, of Richmonders who had ever heard of the tunnel and thinking that the story needed to be told... Then I got this idea... Why not have a "memorial" on the 75th anniversary of the collapse and the more I thought about it the more I knew that the following morning I would be calling my ol' friend, Walter Griggs...
Walter was excited... No, make that, Walter was VERY excited and over the next few I put together a long check list of things to do... One of the first things I did was put together an informational package and mailed one to each city council person, the mayor and the city manager... I told them that we were going to be organizing a memorial and asking them to become involved...
(I got absolutely no response from any of them leading me to believe that they wanted to keep the story their "dirty little secret"... I never understood as none of them were involved in the decision to not retrieve any of the black laborers some 75 years earlier???)
Walter turned me on to a great reporter, Mark Holmberg, of the Richmond Times Dispatch, who was all over this story from the jump... Mark provided us with all the PR we needed but if ya'll remember my old sketching buddy, Richard, he also surfaced and used his 1800's printing press to pump out "Entombed Train" posters and plastered them around the city...
By the day of the memorial, every Richmonder knew the story and hundreds of people showed up at the site of the Western portal... I had had a nice plaque made up and installed over the portal... Driving into town I turned on WAVA and they were doing a special on the tunnel... There was excitement in the air...
Richard Lewis's (one of the black laborers buried)niece and family were there... The son of the engineer, Ralph Mason, was there... Old people were there telling their stories... All the news media were there along with an independent film company were there.. We had a nice memorial... I spoke, Walter spoke, some other folks spoke, a preacher gave a wonderful prayer and we all sang "Amazing Grace"...
When it was over people stayed and stayed and talked and talked...
There are days that stand out when Doctor Dark runs our lives back in that last minute of life that stand out... The birth of child... A marriage... The loss of a loved one... The sweet victories as well as the defeats... I know this day is on my highlight reel and I take no credit...
Walter and I hugged and parted ways and went back to our respective lives until...
***********************END of CHAPTER THREE*************************
(Note: It is still not permissible to peek... No Googling, kids... Hang in there... I will do the last chapter tonight...)