He's the last man standing on Witchduck Road

VIRGINIA BEACH

Very soon, Ron Hamilton will be the last man standing on Witchduck Road. That's a problem.

The city wants Hamilton's home. It's one of two occupied houses on a stretch of Witchduck Road the city is about to widen.

But Hamilton is in no hurry to move.

Already, 26 houses have been purchased and razed on that stretch of Witchduck. Five more are standing, awaiting the wrecker. Besides Hamilton's, only one is occupied, and that family is about to move out.

That leaves Hamilton's place.

It sits all alone. Next door is an empty dirt lot. Across the street are more vacant lots where homes were leveled. Nearly the entire street is a ghost town.

Hamilton's house is a modest place, built in 1960, worth about $209,000, according to city assessments.

Hamilton doesn't own it; he's just a longtime renter. Been there 27 years. Hamilton is 85 years old, a retired electrical engineer from Pennsylvania. His wife died in 2000.

The city gave Hamilton a deadline: Be out by the end of March.

He's in no rush.

"I'd like to die here," he said. "It's just that everything is where you want it. I just don't think I'll be able to cram everything I have in another place."

The city plans to start moving underground utilities on Witchduck in the fall. Road construction is scheduled to start in July 2010 and finish in summer 2012. That will include moving and rebuilding the intersection of Witchduck and Princess Anne Road.

Hamilton is not actively resisting the city. He is resigned to his fate. He knows he'll leave - eventually. He said he knows he can't fight City Hall.

It's picking a new place that's got him stuck.

He has looked around. The city has offered him other homes - apartments, single-family houses, mobile homes.

"We've shown him at least 100 houses, and he won't pick any of them," said James Lawson, the city's real estate agent. Hamilton said he simply hasn't seen anything he likes yet.

At one point, he said, the city offered him an inexpensive house near Oceana Naval Air Station. It was, Hamilton acknowledged, a bargain.

But it was noisy, and that was unacceptable. Music is Hamilton's passion. He has a stereo system in his living room, with two big speakers sitting in front of the fireplace. He loves all kinds of music - Bach, disco, bluegrass, carousel music, Indian chants, anything, really.

The big speakers, he said, are crucial to hear the thump-thump-thump of disco music. But in the shadow of Oceana, he said, jet noise would drown out even the biggest speakers and loudest disco.

Hamilton's other passion is Egyptology. His home is filled with framed museum posters, pyramid photos, an old map of the Nile and six shelves of books on ancient Egypt. A half-scale, three-dimensional replica of the Rosetta Stone is mounted on one wall. All of it will have to be moved or thrown away.

"I'm just looking at my options," he said. "I want to stay in this general area."

He's not bitter, although he doesn't see why the city needed both sides of the street. The city plans to build an extra lane in each direction, plus a median, plus a little green walking-biking path. Hamilton believes the city could have done that by taking the houses on just one side of Witchduck.

He is not disturbed by the demolitions all around him. He is serene and resigned. He pointed out his front window. A back hoe was parked in an empty lot across the street.

"See that wrecking machine over there?" he asked. "I tell people they put it there to intimidate me." He laughed. "I'm a realist. I know what the end is going to be."

When the wrecking machine comes, Hamilton said, he won't be taking pictures from the sidewalk, like some people did after moving away from Witchduck. He couldn't stand it.

The end is near, Hamilton acknowledged, but he won't embrace it, and he won't hasten its arrival.

Marc Davis, (757) 222-5131, marc.davis@pilotonline.com