Obituary of Sadye Shaw ~ 1997

Transcribed by Joan S Dunn

Source: The Virginian-Pilot Apr 5 1997





There was a time when Newsome Farm was a quiet forgotten neighborhood, 
tucked away in a corner off Newtown Road, where even the most basic 
amenities were missing.   
There were no sidewalks or street lights. After a heavy rain, water would 
stand knee-deep on the dirt roads. 
Trash and mail pickup was a sometime thing.  
What made it particularly galling for resident Sadye Shaw was that 
Virginia Beach was in the midst of an unprecedented building boom that was 
transforming the city into the state's largest, while Newsome Farms was 
virtually ignored.  
If anything, her friends said Friday, Shaw was determined. When the city 
announced 20 years ago it would target 12 low-income neighborhoods for 
improvements, including Newsome Farm, Shaw made sure her community would 
benefit.  
And it was her determination, her drive and her generous spirit that 
friends celebrated on Friday at the First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, 
where Shaw's funeral drew together city officials and friends alike.   
Shaw, 78, died March 30 at Sentara Leigh Memorial Hospital after a brief 
illness.  
"She played a key role in getting improvements to Newsome Farm," said 
Andrew Friedman, the city's director of Housing and Neighborhood 
Preservation. 
"She was precise, determined, energetic and always looking for ways to 
help the process, to help get the job done."  
It was Shaw, Friedman said, who invited then-City Manager Thomas 
Muehlenbeck to Newsome Farm to see firsthand the lack of basic services 
in the mostly black community. That meeting started a process that through 
the years culminated in new streets, lights, better drainage, and improved 
city services overall.  
Today it is a handsome place, with tidy ranch homes - including the one 
that Sadye's husband, Norman, a bricklayer, built in 1963. He lives there 
today. Until her death, Shaw served as the secretary to the advisory 
committee on target neighborhoods.  
Alice Green, who served on the New Light Civic League, another target 
neighborhood, said Shaw was a delightful person.  
"She was the same the first day I met her, the same person all the way 
through," Green said. 
"She was very nice and enthusiastic about uplifting her community and her 
people."  
Shaw came to public attention for her work with the civic league, but her 
first love was education. 
Born in Bayboro, N.C., she was the daughter of Thomas T. and Cora 
McMillian Ringer. 
She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Fayetteville State University 
and later master's degrees from North Carolina A & T State University and 
William and Mary College.  
She worked as a teacher for more than 40 years, having taught in the 
Pender County, N.C., public schools and retired from the Norfolk Public 
Schools in 1982 as program adviser to teachers of emotionally disturbed 
children.  
She and her husband had one daughter, Stephanie Shaw-Wilson, who died in 
1994.  
Luvenia M. Tyson, a neighbor, said Shaw was an active woman who could 
sew, fish, sing, play the piano and who loved to collect ceramics, many 
of which now cover the walls of her home.  
"She just loved people," Tyson said. "She really did."



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