Haisten: This is an interview with Mr. Hugh L. Stovall, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Norfolk, Virginia. This interview is being conducted on December 12, 1978 at Mr. Stovall’s home on Holly Briar Point. The interviewer is Cecile Clark Haisten representing Old Dominion University. First of all, Mr. Stovall, we’d like to learn a little about you. Let’s talk about your background and your family. How about your parents? Where are they from or- -

Stovall: Well, Cecie, my people were from Danville, Virginia. Of course the family, as far as the genealogy is concerned, came over here in 1659. And they came over here and they first started in what is now Albemarle County. And they migrated across the state into Henry County and Patrick County – that’s just up between Roanoke and Martinsville, Virginia. But you see they, as the state and the population grew, the General Assembly divided the state up into more counties and more counties. You’ll see in the General Assembly forms where one county was formed from two other counties or one other county. I’ll give you an instance. The lower Norfolk County back in the 1600’s, or the early- -I mean the early 1700’s they formed nine different counties out of- -out of Tide- -out of Norfolk County. Which two of them are the Eastern Shore and Nansemond County and Elizabeth City County, King William County. All of these different counties were just formed out of one by the Acts of the General Assembly. So at one time there were a hundred counties in the state of Virginia, but they’ve been reduced some now since Princess Anne County merged with Virginia Beach and formed the City of Virginia Beach. Norfolk County merged with South Norfolk and formed the City of Chesapeake, so that eliminated a county. Elizabeth County back in the late 1930’s, they merged with the City of Hampton and Phoebus and made one City of Hampton, so that did away with Elizabeth County. And just most recently was Nansemond merging with Suffolk and formed the City of Suffolk. So we’ve taken four counties away, and if I’m not mistaken I think we’ve got ninety-six counties in Virginia. But getting back to the family: they’re a right prolific family and … and following the genealogy on up they were in the militia in the Revolution. Just before the Revolution I had one of my great-great-grandfathers was a colonel in the militia, Virginia Militia, and then ‘course he went on into- -when the war broke out, the Revolution, he was in the Continental Army. One of my great-grandparents in 1757-58, somewhere like that, was Clerk of the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg and I’m not following any trait but I happen to be the Clerk of the Court here now. My mother was born in Asheville, North Carolina. My father, ‘course his father was a Doctor Stovall who graduated from the University medical school, and it’s in the archives up there in 18 … 1836 I think it was that he graduated from medical school University of Virginia. And it was six of us in our family: three boys and three girls, and I’m next to the oldest. My father was connected with Swift and Company for nearly sixty years. Meat packers. He was- -started off as a sales person in the meat end of it and was then made Manager in Danville and then District Manager of the biggest part of three states, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. And he retired almost sixty years of service. … I went to Whitmell High School in Whitmell, Virginia right outside of Danville. The principal of my school was Mrs. Beverly who was the sister of Carl Schlossen [Claude Swanson?] who was Secretary of the Navy and we used to get a big kick out of her reading certain parts of letters she received from her brother. And got a big kick out of that, but she taught me a lot. ‘Course the school that I went to was a small high school. Sometimes the county was so poor that they didn’t have the coal … to furnace, and the school would close down during some of the coldest weather. I went to school with men, they were not boys, simple reason they never graduated. Their parents would take ‘em out of school right at the time of saving the crop right at the time of taking the final exam, so they never- -some of ‘em that was going to school that was 26 years old were seniors. Not that they were stupid but they just would repeat themselves, they never graduated. It’s not like today that if you don’t promote or graduate somebody they’ll end up with an inferiority complex. Back in those days if you didn’t make it you didn’t make it. They didn’t care who you were or what was the cause, that was it. Same way with demotin’ ya’ in school, if you didn’t make it, it was just too bad. Sometime they would promote you on condition but if you didn’t show an improvement within a few months they’d put you back to the fourth, fifth, sixth grade wherever you were the previous year. I …joined the Marine Corps after high school, in the early ‘30’s. The Depression was on and I didn’t feel like that my family could afford to send me to college for further schooling, and I enlisted in the service. Back in those days you got 21 dollars a month. And I made allotment out to my mother and she received ten of that. And when President Roosevelt was elected President the first time, I was in the service, they immediately cut all service personnel fifteen percent. So fifteen percent taken away from twenty-one dollars, I ended up with seventeen dollars and eighty-five cents a month. And my mother still got ten dollars a month, so I had seven dollars and eighty-five cents a month. ‘Course the service was good to you – they fed you three times a day, they furnished you your clothing. At the Post Exchange you could go see a movie for five cents. Back in those days I was a young buck and started smoking after I left home. We could purchase a carton of cigarettes for thirty-five cents. Today I think they cost almost four dollars, I’m not sure, I don’t smoke anymore. But after coming out of the service, things were still tight, and I came- -left home and- -my home in Danville and came to Norfolk. And got a job, of all things, motorman on a streetcar. And it was a living, an honest living because in those days college graduates were soda jerks in drug stores for ten dollars a week. There just wasn’t any place in the market for ‘em for any kind of occupation. So I thought I was fortunate and, instead of making ten dollars a week I was making about sixty-seven dollars every fifteen days. ‘Course you worked about twelve hours a day to make it. And that was forty-seven cents a hour they were paying us and then later on we got a raise to a penny a minute, sixty cents an hour. That was making good money. I worked that up until the war and … was married had three children at the time and we lived pretty good. And I studied at the same time, taking the correspondence courses and all, trying to better my position in life. And when the war broke out I reenlisted, volunteered my service back in the United States Marine Corps. And, as I said before, married and had three children. So I left a good wife and the kids and ended up in Parris Island, South Carolina where we had our training and then later on we were at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina where we left from there to the West Coast, Camp Pendleton. And sailed to the beautiful island of Hawaii, temporarily, and I spent thirty-six months in the South Pacific during the war. And finally ended up in Japan, after dropping the bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And I landed with my, the Fifth Marine Division, in Sasebo, Japan after the armistice was signed. After the surrender. Then you came back and start a life back again. So that brings us up to ‘bout 1946. So now, what do you want to know now?

Haisten: OK, well, you said you were from Danville- -

Stovall: Yeah.

Haisten: And you got to Norfolk before World War II started and you were talking about being on the streetcars. Do you have any other special memories of Norfolk?

Stovall: Well, ‘course the city has changed tremendously. Has changed so much that it’s almost a different city. ‘Course with the streetcars running and the mode of transportation – it wasn’t too many cars, there were a number of cars but not like it is today and … the people- -there wasn’t any shopping centers to attract people away from downtown. And the economy as far as the shopping and the congregation of people in the movie houses were all on Granby Street, Boush Street, and Monticello Avenue. In fact we had the city markets down there with all the fresh vegetables and meats and so forth. The Mennonites had all of the fresh meats and sausages and eggs and what have you. And everybody congregated downtown. And you c- -I remember every night people would line up on Granby Street waiting to go into Lowe’s or Norva Theatre or the Granby Theatre to get into the shows. And it was a great thing for people just to walk up and down Granby Street just to window shop. You can enjoy your Sunday afternoons, and ‘course on Halloween everybody was on Granby Street and everybody used to pull the trolleys off the streetcars and the motorman had to get out and get up on top of the streetcar and put the trolley back up. Until they worked out a system we got wise to that where we would take the rope off the trolley so that we couldn’t pull it. And ‘course then the war came on, there was a lot of servicemen, a lot of war workers, Navy Yard, Naval Base or what have you for the war purpose. And right at that point a lot of it started to deteriorate. I’m talking about the Main Street section and so forth, had become a red light district or tavern row, one beer tavern right after the other. And ‘course this attracted the service personnel. And it also attracted the ladies of the evening, and that’s where all the contacts was made. And when you’d say as many as ten thousand sailors and servicemen of all descriptions on the street at E. Main Street at one time, that’s not exaggerating. It was just- -in the summertime it’d be solid white. It was a lot of mischief going on, vandalism, servicemen getting drunk, breaking out storefront windows and what have you. And people were doing all of the business they could simply do, I mean- -and this is where I think that the- -the mannerism of people begin to break up. The Yes, Sirs and the No, M’ams of the sales people in department stores or any store for matter of fact. They didn’t have any salesmanship thing to ‘em, I mean, help was hard to get and you walked in there and if you had you’d sell it and if you didn’t, you didn’t suggest anything else did they want to buy. But ‘course there was enough stuff- -and items were hard to get, a lot of stuff was frozen. But right on this part is where the mannerism in our society broke down. Also it was the beginning of both man and wife both working, leaving the home and the children unattended. And I think also at this particular time that their conduct as small children, something to instill in their lives, some purpose was lost. And this is where a lot of delinquents started. And that delinquent was less attentive to his family when he got married. And then you had a second generation of delinquent. And this is what we are confronted with today, or in the sixties that we were confronted with. I think that the pendulum is coming back more to conservative and moderate way of living rather than this liberal thing. But I think after every war that the whole society changes. It changed after World War I from the quiet type of life that the people used to do, promenade and … on Sunday afternoons and walk and enjoy the family, go walking and they had more time with ‘em. Today you never see anybody sittin’ on the porch enjoyin’ a Sunday afternoon. They quit buildin’ porches on houses now, I mean, ‘course people have patios. But some of these things are, that’s all gone by the board, that was yesteryears. But as you know, the Western world, all the wars that we’ve had in the Western world, the Western people – that’s Europe and our people – it’s more or less a civil war than a war for some purpose. It was for territory and among people. The white race – I don’t think that you and I can remember anywhere where the whites invaded Africa to kill out the black people. Now there’s been a few uprisings to take territories. We did the same thing we annihilated the Indians here practically by moving West expansion. The Western people in a sense it’s instilled in ‘em, it’s part of ‘em, they are nomads just like they was in the day of Abraham and all when they lived in deserts and tents. The Western people travel and they move constantly all the time. Traveling. Now you take in the European countries, the Huns and the Franks. They raided and raided until the population got so big, they were for territory and they were fightin’ each other, just white people. William the Conqueror left out of, in the tenth century, out of France and went over to … England for the expansion, the nomad, the thing of moving to experience, to explore. And then you had the Norsemen and people discovered all this part of the world way before Columbus did. And Columbus bumped into this part of the continent accidentally. But it’s been the trait of the white person to explore and to expand and to push on, and I reckon that’s why that the societies change with the time, that we live in this part of the world. And I suppose that we will keep expanding. We can never add any more to the earth, that’s for sure. You can’t add any more to the earth than is already here, but the thing of it is you can explore. Now they’ve reached every corner of the earth, so to speak, and they’ve gone down to the depths through the ground, internal. Now they’re going up into space. So we don’t know where, I mean the next generation it would be a different type of society, a faster-moving society. We can see it in our religious traits, that the different cults that are formed. I know in my own church that I’ve been a member of for years and years … when we went to Sunday School we had Bible readings and the teacher taught a certain part of the scripture for that day in the New Testament. But now after grown and married and with children, the Sunday Schools had to do their thing. Who would ever thought that they’d bring into church guitars and high fi’s for these kids doing their thing? But they gave up for the change of time in the society. And _________ instance now like the kids in Sunday School they didn’t want chairs and tables to sit in in Sunday School. They wanted to sit on the floor. So all of the moneys that were spent for chairs and desks and all in the Sunday School room was stacked away so that they could sit on the floor in circles and so on. Now the thing is, and weather prevailing, to leave the church and sit out on the lawn, on the grass, they got to get out under trees. So I don’t know what they’ll be doing next. Up on the roof probably. But these are the things that has changed all along, and Norfolk has changed with it as well as the other part. And ‘course in later years, Norfolk changed in the sense of reform redevelopment and housing. The slum area like I said started deteriorating some parts of it before the war, but and then some went down. The landlords, the landowners are the great cause of this. They would just bleed the property dry in the minority areas and never repair it. It’s hard to think that it was in the 20th century that they had outhouses right here in the city limits when the city ordinance said everybody can have sewer. But some of those places over there, they actually had outhouses. And one spigot or one faucet for a four duplex apartment. Just for cooking, bathing, anything in the world you want, I mean it was one spigot that serviced four apartments. And they didn’t repair the stuff so it was finally torn down and now we’re seeing in the Norfolk area where they’ve built fairly decent housing for the minority and ’course they went into East Ghent, where my wife was born and raised, and tore all of that down and we’re seeing the fruits of that now with beautiful townhouses and high-rise apartments. And the complexes is changing. They have a beautiful hospital, Norfolk General Hospital. And I’m speaking of the Ghent area now, ‘course we have other beautiful hospitals also. Modernistic hospitals. But just in that area has come up so much in the last twenty-five years it’s unbelievable, which is certainly a better tax base. Economical for the city more than it was – the return is much greater. More money is being invested. So these are some of the changes I’ve seen since we’ve been here.

Haisten: O.K. Well you’ve brought us up to the present. What is your occupation, and what responsibilities are involved with it?

Stovall: Well, going back I said I continued to work trying to better my education in taking the corresponding courses and I ended up in accounting. And over the years … but I left the traction company - ____ back in those days it was that Virginia Electric and Power Company owned the transit company - and went with the police department and I worked nine years in the police department. I went in the police department after I got out of the Marine Corps in WWII. And it was very exciting, it was something new, there was a lot of action. ‘Course the laws have changed today that a police officer’s hands are tied, and I think more or less it’s much better than it was because there wasn’t that brutality or that slammin’ a prisoner around like was done in the older days. They’ve got the better protection. But after that Mr. Prieur who was Clerk of the Courts and a very powerful political figure in the Tidewater area and in fact the state of Virginia. He was known as the First Lieutenant of the big Byrd machine - Mr. Harry Byrd, Sr. who was governor at one time and then United States Senator from Virginia - controlled the politics in the Tidewater area. And he asked me to come to work for him. And that … which I did. And it started a whole new life being in the court system and the law – I had the experience of the- -as a police officer in the law – but this is the court end of it. I knew that- -of the arresting and so forth and the due process of law thing. But this was the disposition of what happens when you arrest somebody through the courts. And … which caused me to go back to school. I went back to night school. It entailed at that time the position that he offered me that I accepted typing and I was a hunt-and-peck typer until I went back to night school. And I want to say all through these years my good wife had the patience of Job along with me and she was the woman behind the man and helping me to achieve what little I have achieved in my lifetime. And as the years went on I got involved in politics and ‘course through Mr. Prieur, and I had the same philosophy of – let me say I had his philosophy because I worked for him and I was loyal to him. He was very conservative and back in those days they called it the Byrd Machine so you could classify me that I was in the Byrd Machine, because I worked for the Number Two man. He taught me a lot, and I learned a lot from him. And in later years he began to send me as liaison for him in political meetings in Richmond and Lynchburg or Fairfax, Arlington or any place that the meetings were taking place. Even to Senator Byrd’s office in Washington. Mr. Prieur was getting along in years but he wanted to maintain this and I was kind of his leg man, I reckon you would say, and I learned a lot from all of the people that I met all over the state. And I’m so fortunate to have met these people and I have maintained friendship and correspondence with a lot of them over the years, which has helped me right to the present date. And so in later years Mr. Prieur died and everybody thought that Stovall was going to be anointed as the Clerk in his position, but unfortunately I was not. So I worked under another Clerk and I was saying to myself – see, in those days there were four courts in Norfolk, courts of record. There was a corporation court, corporation court part two, the law in chancery court, and the circuit court. Now Mr. Prieur was Clerk of three of those courts which was the corporation court, corporation court part two, and law in chancery court. He was Clerk of those three courts. Another gentleman was Clerk of the Circuit Court. So the office for the Clerk of the Circuit Court came up for reelection in the primaries of 1969 to take office January 1970. And I decided that I was going to file for that office, which I did. And I won the election. By a narrow margin, but I won it. But I think the reason I won it was of my political ties with Mr. Prieur and making friends over the years. Not only in the Clerk’s office but going back to the laboring man when I was a motorman on a street car, and also in my contact with people in the police department. So I knew a lot of people in the City of Norfolk, which helped me tremendously. Also during Mr. Prieur’s term of office, before he died, I was also Democratic precinct committeeman of the precinct that I lived in for another fifteen years which gave me entrée to a lot of knowledge of the political system and its working and also meeting a lot of the right people that could help you in an election. So … that’s how I got into the being Clerk of the Circuit Court. Now our Supreme Court judge, Judge I’anson, which is the chief judge of the Supreme Court of Virginia, was on a study committee, chaired a study committee in the unification and the merging and consolidating obsolete court system. Which ended up and was came effective of July 1, 1973. Merging all of the different courts of the states into one court, namely the Circuit Court. In other words over the state they had so many different courts of record. There was the law in chancery, there were corporation courts, there was hustings court, there were equity courts, there was chancery and equity. So it eliminated all of these and merged ‘em into each county and each city they had one court. So as it ended up Norfolk, I had the largest court in the state of Virginia. I have nine judges of record and forty-four deputy clerks, which makes it the largest Clerk’s office in the state of Virginia. ‘Course we have the largest business, the largest floor of cases, criminal and civil cases. And … so this puts me in another category that I had to continue my study to zero in on my new job so I wouldn’t be caught napping and not knowing what to do. ‘Course I had years of experience under Mr. Prieur. But it’s a different ball game as being a deputy clerk and working at certain jobs in the office and then become head of the office and also responsibility of all of the administrative end of it, plus the court end of it. And you get into different aspects and this is where my accounting came in good, in the budgetary end of it. Then you … you are in the high echelon where you have to prepare budgets- -the budget and the salaries, and you have to view people by their knowledge and by how aggressive they are and so forth and to look at ‘em in that respect in givin’ ‘em raises at the time of the year when you’re making your budget and you ask for raise- -raises for your employees. So it’s a very high position, it’s a political position, elected. So, then to maintain this standard of a high office you are continuously studying to how to … to how to update it and to make it a more efficient office than it already is. And as you know in the last ten or fifteen years we’ve come so far in computers and electronics and so forth that I decided that this was the time to get in on the ground floor and update our office. When I first went to work in the Clerk’s office there were two qualifications: first you had to have your own fountain pen and it had to be black ink and you had to have a damn good handwriting. So that’s how antiquated it was. It hadn’t come too far in updating the office than it did a hundred years ago so to speak, except we did have- -well we had manual typewriters, it wasn’t any electric typewriters. They had just come out in the last few years or so, but when I first went into the Clerk’s office they had manual typewriters. But years ago they hired scribes to do all of the writing. They would come down at nighttime – all of the paperwork of stuff that was taken in or notes made – they would come down at nighttime and work all night long and do the writings in the big ledger books, the deed books, the will books, the guardians, the committees, the order books, the chancery order books, the adoptions. They would do all of this with beautiful handwritten … very legible, and it was written in the locker style. And it- -it- -it’s so beautifully done, ‘course the paper that they use and all. We have the original handwriting and the paper of the … when the Borough of Norfolk was first formed. It was fifty acres bought from a Mr. Wise and the General Assembly created a borough of Norfolk. See Norfolk is not a city, it’s not a part of any county, it’s a borough. And that was done in … it became a borough in 1686 and we have the original writing sent down from the General Assembly at that time, forming a borough and paying- -they bought fifty acres and paid 500 pounds in tobacco for it, to a Mr. Wise who owned the property which was fifty acres right around what is now about Commercial Place where the Virginia National Bank is in that locality. So you branch off into other aspects of the community when you get in a position like this. You are called upon to appear before students, make talks, to discuss certain aspects of things. Say if they are studying wills and probates to make talks along that line. Title searching on deeds, conveyance. Make talks, or just take political science classes. Make talks in political science classes about politics and what have you. Local politics, state politics and national politics. So I’ve been very fortunate, we have a tremendous amount of working material to work with for this type of talks before students by having all of the law books available and having all of the acts and the reports on cases handed down over the years since the beginning of time. And it’s a continuous study. People said, “Well, you’ve got it made now, all you gotta do is sit back,” but you can not, I mean every day you learn something new and you’ve got to create something to keep going. It’s like the man in the advertising business who when he quits producing that’s when they get rid of him. And I think when you quit producing as being Clerk of the Court that’s when the voters gonna get rid of you. I mean you are looking out after their records, and they want the best. The best for the less, that’s the motto, but … we have updated our office. We’ve gone into the computer age, we’ve gone into access retrieval system, we’ve gone into the strip system in typing up things. The strip system is just a short term in using after you type it there is a strip that you pull off and you mail that to this computer outfit who puts it on magnetic tape. And if any fire, destruction of anything ever happens in the Clerk’s office, all this- -all of my records are on magnetic tape and you can get a printout by tomorrow of parts of it or you can get the whole office back in a certain time, but it’s nothing that gets lost. So many times over the years not only in Virginia but in other states the Courthouse burns down with all the records. We’ve got a certain period of years there was a fire in a courthouse that had burned just one section of it happened to be your marriage records. From 1893 to 1912, all of those records were destroyed by fire. Now of course they didn’t have that system but it won’t happen to us now, I’ve got it all on computer and I have it also on film. So if anything happens we can get a printout on film or get a printout on computer tape, so we are very fortunate to do this. And you do this through political procedures where there is money floating around to put in and apply for a program and have these things done. Now I went through the- -you’ve read in the paper the city received so much from the government under the name of revenue sharing. Rather than the LEAA I’d rather have it under the revenue sharing there’s less reports to make. Anything you do from the government you gonna have to make 22 copies of everything you do. I don’t know what they do with ‘em all but we make ’em and we send ‘em out where they keep ‘em I don’t know. But we’ve been able to get lots of money, around seven hundred thousand dollars over the period of the last few years just in updating the records. We’re in a process right now which they will be returned in the next several months, of forty- three books … they were the first order books and they date in 1743 up through 1860. Criminal order books. They were in bad state of repair and need rebinding, the covers were rotted off and just made me sick to see ‘em there. And then I got this money through revenue sharing and we put out bids on it and these people are rebinding them and these forty-three books itself cost a little over ten thousand dollars just to do it. But they’re updated and rebound and they’ll last another two hundred years now. So it’s money well spent … to maintain these records. So that’s about it.

Haisten: O.K. well you spoke about the court getting modernization with the computers whatever, and you’ve talked about the courts merging, do you see any changes in the court as to its structure in the future or do you think it- -

Stovall: Oh, yes, a lot of things are going on. There are study committees, and the unification of courts in the sense of the structure. Let’s get down to the- -just the material that you use in the court. There are millions of dollars in the state of Virginia could be saved and I have been one of the advocates of this for a number of years. Why can’t we all use the same kind of legal pad, why can’t we all use the same kind of pencils, why can’t we all use the same kind of books, order books, and every conceivable thing that we use in the Clerk’s office. Same type of typewriter or typewriter ribbon. You got a hundred and twenty-two clerk’s offices in the state and a hundred and twenty-two of ‘em buy from a hundred and twenty-two different people and they buy a hundred and twenty-two different kinds of books, materials and whatnot. Now it could be a central house somewhere that all of this material could be purchased from one person that would save millions of dollars. That’s one type of uniformity. The other type is the right of appeal from the Circuit Court to the Supreme Court. Now there are so many petty cases … I think that the Supreme Court, that it’s against the dignity of the Supreme Court to handle some of these petty cases that are appealed. ‘Course everybody has the right to appeal if they don’t like the decision of the Circuit Court to the state Supreme Court, but I think in the very near future that we are gonna have what we call the intermediate court. The intermediate courts would be a court in between the Circuit Court and the Supreme Court. We have so many petty appeal cases to the state Supreme Court that it clutters the docket so, that we just can not give it- -the important cases the treatment and the time that should be spent on ‘em on account of your docket being so cluttered with petty matters. And this immediate court, the courts would screen these matters and I think it would be they’re anticipatin’ on trying to have four of these courts over the state which Tidewater would consist of one of the courts for the Tidewater area. And this is a great thing that’s followed. Then we are talkin’ about and they are showin’ now video in the court rooms and this would eliminate court reporting because everybody’s voice is recorded, also it’s on film. The expense of court reporting is out of this world, it’s just phenomenal the amount of money that is spent for court reporting. And then they have to type it up, transcribe the notes that were taken. Lots- -certain parts of ‘em they have recording machines that it’s hard to transcribe. Two or three people get up talkin’at the same time you don’t know who’s who or whose voice belongs to what argument. So you can see the inroads in having- -havin’ it on tape and on film also. So if anybody wants to appeal the case that was tried here, everything the voice and the tape and the film, you just make a negative copy of it and send it to the State Supreme Court and they in turn would view it and hear the voice too, and could make the ruling from that rather than all the reading that has to be done. And the printin’ of the transcripts and so forth. You know when you appeal a case to the Supreme Court, out of the transcripts the things that you think is pertinent to the case, you have to make at least nineteen copies for everybody in the court to have it and their law clerks, all of these people’s got to have copies of it and it’s an expensive proposition. Whereby that you have it on film that eliminates all this, and then they can make as many copies as they want to. They can produce as many negatives as they need. There are just some of the things that we’re doing. ‘Course a thing that we object to which I think whether we object to or not is going to come sooner or later is the administrator of each court. It kind of rubs against the Clerk’s grain but he will be under the Clerk of the Court because the Clerk is an elected official. And he would work under the Clerk. He would have the judicial duties pertaining to the court functions. He would administer that in between the courts and the Clerk’s office. The docket, settin’ the docket, workin’ with the Commonwealth’s Attorney, workin’ with the defense attorneys. In criminal matters and civil cases he would work with the plaintiff and the defend attorneys, and the judges involved in it and the time that it would take to try each case, whether one day or two days, three days whatever the matter he would have all of this information. Where the Clerk does all of this himself now. Just for a matter of statistics, the code spells out seven hundred and thirty-seven duties of the Clerk of the Court. Over one third of the state code pertains to the Clerk of the Court and his duties. It’s strawn all through the whole nine volumes of the code. But it’s a lot of duties, a lot of responsibility. So that brings you up to date as far as some of the things that is in the near future and not too distant future also of how we’re going to update the court system.

Haisten: O.K., well, in your position you must have encountered in one way or another many interesting people within the city or maybe state and national levels. Can you tell us about some of them, or- -

Stovall: Well, I, ‘course I’ve met … it’s ironic that you ask that. This year I’m president of the State Clerks Association myself. And I had the opportunity to travel over the state of Virginia, I’ve traveled some but not up into the areas around Grundy and Washington County, Montgomery County all up in the coal mining district, but I’m lookin’ forward to that in the spring of the year, to … I know all of the Clerks in the state but I’ve never had the opportunity to visit their office. Some are small, some are medium-size, but as I said before we are the largest Clerk’s office in the state here. And we have new facilities. Richmond has just built a new facilities ___ the court system up there. Of course I’ve had the opportunity to … to know … governors on a personal basis, lieutenant governors and attorney-generals – we worked with attorney-generals. I’ve campaigned for a lot of ‘em and know their families … and … we have- -I’ve known President Johnson back when Kennedy was running we nominated the- -the delegation from Virginia nominated President Johnson to be President at that time and- -when they were in San Francisco. We met with him in the old Monticello Hotel and talked and he was down here to get our support and we gave him our support. But as the tide changed so in San Francisco we got a call from our delegate- -Norfolk delegates that there was a compromise coming up and we thought- -they thought it was best that we would go ahead and let them be committed to Johnson as Kennedy’s Vice President. Which we did and as you know they both won and then ‘course when Kennedy was assassinated Johnson was … became President of the United States. I’ve met a lot of Senators. And ‘course our own dear Bill Whitehurst here in the City of Norfolk and Virginia Beach a very personal friend. ‘Course I knew Bill when he taught at ODU, which before that time was a branch of William and Mary. Been acquainted over the years. ‘Course Porter Hardy who is retired I’ve know personally over the years, a congressman. And Downing from used to be the First District - well he’s still in the First District - he retired several years ago, I’ve known him. I have met a lot of great people, I think. I always wanted to meet President Truman. I think Mr. Truman is going down in history as being one of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had. I think it’s too early for history to say so but I think that they will find in history that he was one of the greatest Presidents we’ve ever had.

Haisten: OK … I can tell how you got this title – I hear you’ve been called the Politician-in-Residence of your American Legion Post and I guess it’s because of this activity, and are there any other- -

Stovall: Yes, I- -well, I think the- -some of the boys are being facetious in a way, but … ‘course my life and my business is politics. ‘Course my office is a political office. I tend to it … but also you- -you automatically are in politics. The office itself spells politics. And I think that the gentlemen and members of the American Legion which I’m proud to be a member of … tagged me with that … and I kinda’ enjoy.

Haisten: Well, Mr. Stovall, you’ve been an observer of the Norfolk scene for a while now - you’ve been here I guess since World War II. What you do you think about life in Norfolk?

Stovall: Well, let’s go back further than that. I’ve been here since about 1933. I think Norfolk has grown and it was on a downtrend for a while. The exodus from the city, leaving the unemployed and the minority people here a ghetto, but I think that it’s coming back – you can see ‘em building in Ghent, you can see downtown Norfolk on the waterfront it’s coming alive. I think the Chessie or the railroad company that is gonna build all the new buildings down by the old Anheuser Busch buildings and all around through the Freemason Street area, all of this is coming to life and they’ve made the Granby Mall and the financial district with the new modernistic buildings and the Omni Hotel – it can’t go any way but up now. And … I see a great future for Norfolk and some things that I believe in that a lot of my friends do not believe in but I think that in the long run that- -that it will all merge and work out for the best.

Haisten: O.K. so you do see a bright future for this city, I guess you- -

Stovall: Oh, yes.

Haisten: Would you recommend it, I guess, to family and friends to come here- -

Stovall: Well, I recommend it, you can see it now. I see people each day, come to find out that they have bought back over in the Ghent section and they’ve gone back to renovating one of the old homes or buying some of the new townhouses. And you ask the question, “Why? We thought you were so happy out in the suburbs or with a ranch home and … with plenty of ground around you.” And you come to find out – and these are people in their early thirties, or mid-thirties – that it’s so hectic to fight traffic coming in to work every morning, bumper-to-bumper, the same thing going out in the afternoon. The wife has to have a second car to take the child up to the corner to go to school, and then she has to come back home and go back up and meet the maid – she gets off of the bus – and take her back. And it’s a continuous running. And if you forget something at the store you gotta drive back five or six miles to get a loaf of bread. And it’s expensive, and it’s time-consuming. And you actually don’t have but one day, maybe Saturday, but if you have to go back to your office and work you don’t have any time with your family. You’re traveling all the time. And they’re coming back right where- -they’re down where everything’s right around ‘em and if they want to they can walk to work. So they don’t need us, they’ve got all the facilities right here built in, so these people are comin’ in. It’s less expensive. Less expensive. So you see that the people, they’ve got to go out- -the pasture looks greener on the other side of the fence. And they’ve got to go over there and, and try it. And they find out that it’s not as good as what they had right here in the city and they’re coming back. It’s amazing that the revenue that the city loses when you see people, thousands of people, in and out coming to work. They make their living here, they bring their own lunch, they get paid out of the city, of some business in the city or the City Hall itself, and they take all of that money and they take it back and do all their shopping at Virginia Beach or Chesapeake or Portsmouth, in Norfolk and they use the streets and all the facilities and pay nothing for it. I think eventually that you’re going to see a head tax or a payroll tax, to help supplement this tremendous amount of revenue that the city should be taking in that they do not receive at the time. Now, there have been people advocating that why not have a metropolitan area like New York City, with Norfolk the hub and Virginia Beach and Chesapeake and Portsmouth, Hampton, Newport News as boroughs to the hub, like Manhattan is to the rest of around New York. I could see in the distant future, they may utilize their utilities together. We are utilizing our water system with Virginia Beach and part of Chesapeake right now. I can see probably utilizing the police departments, fire departments and maybe the sanitation department all working together. But I can not see that the political fathers and the city fathers giving up their domain or their little dynasty, for a better word, and sharing it with somebody else. I don’t think in our lifetime that we will see the Tidewater area as a metropolitan city. A lot of people want it, but I think a lot more people do not want it, and I don’t think it’ll come in the near future.

Haisten: O.K. Are there any further comments you would like to make about Norfolk or about your position, as Clerk?

Stovall: Well, I’ll go back and thank my wife again, Katherine, for being the gal behind the man. She has pushed me along. And all of my good friends that have helped me over the years and continue to help me. I hope that I can be a part of the future of Norfolk. It’s in its growing pains right now and I think it will continue to grow. I think the population – we fell about twenty-five thousand, about twenty-five thousand people somewhere in that neighborhood left Norfolk from between 1970 and the present date. We had about 308,000 to start off with and now she’s down around 280 something now. This is going to cause … a setback in our representation from the City of Norfolk to the House of Delegates. I mighty afraid in the 1980 census that the United States Census is gonna’ cause us with a loss of population, cause us to lose one member of the House and probably one senator from the City of Norfolk. You know we have seven members of the House of Delegates and three senators. And with this loss of population I think that we will probably lose one member of the House and one senator. But in the meantime I think that with the development again of East Ghent and the Chessie Corporation and the downtown Norfolk and the redevelopment housing of updating and rebuilding Church Street, all of this stuff is in the mill and in the mill working, that it’s going to bring the population back up again. Although Norfolk will never be able to annex any further out – they’ve been cut off. The only way Norfolk can go now is straight up, by high-rise. The annexation was stopped the last time, that’s why [Break in Tape] I don’t know exactly where I left off but I’ll say this is where, why the City of Virginia Beach and Princess Anne merged to cut Norfolk off from annexing any more of their territory. It’s also the reason that South Norfolk and Norfolk County merged to form the City of Chesapeake, to stop Norfolk from annexing any more of their territory. So that only leaves us one way to go and that’s up. But I think that people will come back into Norfolk, and I think that you’ll see the population get up some where in the neighborhood of 350,000 people.

Haisten: O.K., well, thank you very much, Mr. Stovall.

Stovall: Right.