INSIDE Political forum to be held tonight featuring candidates for 7th District > page 4
Volume 59, Number 40 • October 23, 2014
Central High was ‘a magical place’ saw all the different rooms and the library … We’d had only had hand-me-down books to that point. Suddenly, we were exposed to so
By Roslyn Ryan Editor
Though it’s been over five decades since she attended Goochland’s Central High School, Earline Pace can still picture the building and its classrooms with near-perfect clarity. After attending a humble, two-room primary school with no indoor plumbing, Pace remembers viewing Central, which served as the county’s black high school during the segregation era, as a magical kind of place. “Oh, boy, that was a highlight,” Pace said of her first day at the school. “We walked into this brick building with its long halls and we Photo courtesy of Earline Pace
This is Earline Pace’s senior photo. Pace, then known as Earline Thornton, served as class president, co-captain of the school’s girls basketball team and class valedictorian.
“We walked into this brick building with its long halls and we saw all the different rooms and the library ... We’d had only hand-medown books to that point. Suddenly, we were exposed to so many things.” Earline Pace Central High School graduate many things.” Central High School, located on Dogtown Road, is no longer the place it was when Pace was a student there. The last class graduated in 1969 and then the building served as a middle school for a time. Now, it has fallen into disre-
Photo by Roslyn Ryan
Earline Pace said she has many fond memories of her time at Goochland’s Central High School in the 1950s, but said the relationships with her classmates are what she most treasures.
pair and there has been talk at the county level of either selling or demolishing the structure. Given the school’s important place in the personal history many of Goochland residents, Pace and a number of others would like to see the building preserved. They made their position clear during a
recent public meeting held on the subject, urging county leaders to find a new use for at least part of the 60,000-square-foot complex. Pace, who would graduate as the valedictorian of her class in 1959, describes the education she and her classmates received at Central as the see Central > 3
County focusing on emergency response time By Roslyn Ryan Editor
It is a scenario no one wants to experience first-hand: An emergency occurs and rescue personnel are called. The minutes tick by as a family waits, terrified that by the time help arrives it will be too late. While Goochland County Fire and EMS Chief Bill MacKay
said he knows that crews can’t ever arrive too quickly when a resident is in need of help, he and the Goochland County Board of Supervisors are working to make sure that emergency response times in the county remain as low as possible. During the board’s monthly meeting on Oct. 7, MacKay discussed his department’s current approach to emer-
gency response, and what they are doing to improve those numbers. Under state Health Department guidelines issued in 2012, all Virginia localities are required to establish a standard for response times and to meet that standard at least 90 percent of the time. The response time is defined as the span between the time a
call is placed for emergency services and the time a medical transport vehicle — such as an ambulance — arrives at the scene. After studying available data on call volume and other factors, MacKay and the board set the standard for Goochland at 15 minutes or less for areas east of Route 522 and 20 minutes or less for areas to the
west. The difference in the standards is due to the fact that both topography and road networks in the western end of the county make reaching some areas more difficult, MacKay explained. The good news for Goochland residents is that emergency response times county-wide are already under 15 minutes 77
percent of the time. As call volumes continue to trend up, MacKay said the department is also increasing staffing at its fire stations. Two of the county’s six stations — those located in Hadensville and Crozier — already have round-the-clock staffing. see Response > 2