Whatever happened to ... the high-tech flagpole at Ocean Lakes High School?

VIRGINIA BEACH

It was a marvel, at least at first.

When Ocean Lakes High School opened in 1994, the building was topped by a magnificent automated flagpole that cost $42,151.

The assistant superintendent who signed off on the controversial add-on was fired for improper spending, and the superintendent publicly denounced the expense, all before the school welcomed its first students.

"It was a great idea in somebody's mind at the time, and when it was working, it worked beautifully," said Jerry Deviney, who was the high school's first principal. (He remembered the cost as including some indoor columns, too.)

When the sun came up, a sensor would send a flag up the pole. When the sun went down, it automatically scooted back inside.

But it didn't work well for long. Soon after the one-year warranty expired, problems began. By 1997, school employees were raising the flag manually to try to prolong the motor's life, but it burned out anyway.

And that wasn't the biggest problem. The whipping wind atop the school, located just west of the Navy's Dam Neck Annex, shredded the flags quickly. When the shredded flag retracted, it would get jammed in the mechanism.

"Then we would get a call that the flag wasn't flying over the school," said Fran Foster, director of school plant for Virginia Beach.

It was a maintenance worker's nightmare.

"We believe in a flag pole sitting on the ground where you can reach it," Foster said. Ironically, the school already had a regular flagpole that wasn't being used.

The automatic pole couldn't be fixed from the roof because it was mounted in the center of a pyramid-shaped skylight. Every time the mechanism chewed up Old Glory, the school division had to spend $3,000 on a crane to lift a person in a bucket to make the repair.

This would happen every few months.

"It was not working more than it was working," Foster said. In 2004, Foster put his foot down.

"We'd wasted too much taxpayer money. I'm a taxpayer like everyone else. I looked at it and said, 'This is stupid.' "

The original architect sent along a design for a spire to replace the pole, which was recycled. The spire was installed on Oct. 22, 2004, for $3,900. "There's not been a single cost since," Foster said.

Lauren Roth, (757) 222-5133, lauren.roth@pilotonline.com