The James River Community Center is no more.
Now, the Abram Frink Jr. Community Center stands in its place, bearing the new name in honor of a man who served various county boards and commissions — including the Board of Supervisors as the Roberts District representative, Planning Commission, and Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission — for almost 20 years from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Frink’s family and friends came together Saturday at the newly named Abram Frink Jr. Community Center to throw him a surprise 86th birthday party and to officially unveil the new sign.
Frink was appointed to the Board of Supervisors in 1969 as the Roberts District’s inaugural representative. Prior to serving on the board, Frink was a member of the Planning Commission from 1967 to 1969.
When Frink came up for re-election to the board, he ran and won in 1971. By the end of his time on the board he had served 14 years, four as chairman.
Frink is believed to have been the first African American chairman of a governing body in Virginia.
“I didn’t know it at the time. There [weren’t] too many black people on the boards at the time,” Frink said. “It was one of those situations when I was in the right place at the right time … they didn’t know quite what to do with me so they made me chairman,” Frink said, also explaining he was the third Democrat to join the board.
Looking back on his time on the board, Frink said the best moment was when Anheuser Busch came to town, paving the way for the brewery, Busch Gardens and Kingsmill. Without those developments, Frink said all of James City County would likely still be the way most of Toano is today: rural.
Current Roberts Supervisor John McGlennon brought forward the request to rename the community center for Frink. He agreed Frink played an important role in transitioning the community from its former rural form.
“He played an important role in the board as we began to navigate our way through the transition from a small rural community to a more active developed area because during his time on the board … that was the time in which Anheuser Busch came to the area and brought the brewery, the amusement park and, of course, Kingsmill. And all of that landed squarely in Mr. Frink’s district,” McGlennon said. “The amount of revenue that came in provided the opportunity to significantly improve the quality of life in the community.”
Additionally, McGlennon said Frink embodies the “kind of collaborative and positive leadership too often missing in contemporary government and politics.
This is something Frink has noticed, too.
Even though Frink has not served the county government in any capacity in the past 25 years, he still watches every board meeting on television. He also meets once a month with a handful of men for lunch to talk about the county and the problems it faces.
“I don’t miss a beat. When you get it in your blood it’s hard to,” Frink said.
In watching the board meetings, Frink has observed hostility among current board members.
“It’s interesting to see how things have changed from when I was on there. We got along, you know, the board members. We didn’t always agree but it was friendly … now they want to cut one another’s throats. I say, ‘What in the world is going on with this group?’” Frink said.
Even though county government, boards and commissions consumed more than 15 years of Frink’s life, it’s clear his true passion in life was teaching.
Frink attended high school in North Carolina, where he learned bricklaying. He went on to attend North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University for bricklaying.
“When I went to college I guess that’s about the only thing I was interested in back then. They were making $3 an hour then. I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” Frink said.
After graduating in 1952, he and his wife Evelyn, whom he met in college, moved to Washington D.C. for a few years. In 1954, Frink was drafted into the U.S. Army; he served two years between the Vietnam and Korean Wars before moving to James City County. Once in James City County, Frink began working as a bricklayer, which he stuck with for the next 10 years.
In the mid-1960s, Frink was asked to teach masonry at James Weldon Johnson School in York County. At the time, schools were segregated and JWJS — now York Middle School — was the school for all African American students living in York County.
The former masonry teacher was white, but he suffered a heart attack and died.
Frink said he attended church with the school’s superintendent who asked Frink to fill for the former masonry teacher. Frink accepted the job with the expectation it would be temporary.
The kids were “pretty rough, big kids. A lot of them were … bigger than I was,” Frink said. “… I really wasn’t interested in teaching.”
Early on, the masonry students learned he was from North Carolina and attempted to intimidate him.
“The kids told me, ‘We done killed one man of a heart attack,’ … ‘We gonna send you back to North Carolina,’” Frink said. “So I was determined I was going to stay there.”
And so he did. He taught in York County for 20 years before leaving in the late 1980s.
After the schools were integrated, Frink moved his classroom from JWJS to York High School. A new superintendent was hired and the masonry program in schools was abolished, but Virginia Peninsula Vocational Technical Education Center, which became New Horizons Regional Education Center, was built. Frink taught masonry at the vo-tech school for another eight years, finally retiring in the mid-1990s.
Frink served on the board while teaching, which is something he said caused a few problems. The board had day and night meetings, sometimes meeting at 2 p.m. — before school let out. With the responsibility of overseeing a masonry class, Frink often had to send the students to the library when he left for board meetings. In his time as chairman, county employees would bring Frink papers to sign while he was teaching.
“It was tough trying to teach and trying to do that job,” Frink said.
Despite the difficulties Frink faced in trying to juggle the two roles, McGlennon found him to be more than worthy of being the namesake for a county building.
McGlennon said he has known Frink since he moved to James City County almost 40 years ago and “involved with him in a number of community and political events that took place.”
A resolution to name the community center for Frink was brought forward at the Oct. 8 board meeting on McGlennon’s request. The resolution caused some discussion among board members about enacting a policy for naming county facilities after people.
During the public comment section of the board meeting, resident Chris Henderson said it’s not good policy for the county to name buildings after still-living individuals. He said people’s life achievements should be honored when people pass, not when they are still living.
Frink, who was watching the board meeting from home when Henderson made his comments, shook off the criticism, saying the comments from Henderson, whom Frink knows through Henderson’s development company, did not surprise him.
Despite concerns over the lack of policy, the board voted unanimously to name the community center in Frink’s honor.
A new sign affixed to the entrance of the community center was unveiled Saturday. Within the next week a new road sign will be placed in front of the community center to reflect its new name.
