Outgoing mayor grew with changes

Meyera Oberndorf remembers the Greekfest riots at the Virginia Beach oceanfront in the summer of 1989 as both the worst and best moments of her 20 years running Virginia's largest city.

She was stunned by the violence, which caused millions of dollars in damage and brought out the National Guard. She was disheartened by accusations the city did not welcome the young black college students who flocked there on Labor Day weekends.

"It was a nightmare," Oberndorf said in a recent interview.

But what she remembers best about Greekfest, she said, is the way local leaders, particularly black ministers and educators at Norfolk State University, reached out and calmed tensions.

"I have always believed in this community," she said.

Oberndorf will leave the mayor's office tomorrow after losing her reelection bid last month to William D. Sessoms Jr., a bank president and former vice mayor. Her defeat ends an extraordinary run by an energetic, 4-foot-11 grandmother who worked her way up through the library board to become the public face of Virginia Beach.

This month, Oberndorf sat in her office -- jammed with two decades' worth of mementos from citizens and visitors to Virginia Beach -- and offered reflections along with cautionary words about the city.

Oberndorf moved to Virginia Beach with her husband, Roger, in 1964, when the city was starting to boom, with suburbs spreading across former farm fields. "All the neighborhoods were pretty much brand-new," she recalled, and many of the people were newcomers, too.

The absence of a deep-rooted political power structure offered opportunities even to "someone Jewish, very short and a woman," Oberndorf recalled. She volunteered for worthy causes. She pressed the city to build public restrooms at the oceanfront. She was appointed to the city library board, then elected to the City Council in 1976.

She gained attention by suing a former councilman for intemperate remarks about the election, settling for an apology. She once refused to attend a council gathering on the grounds it violated the Freedom of Information Act.

She was elected mayor in 1988 and seemed secure in the job, fighting off repeated challenges before Sessoms finally beat her by a narrow margin Nov. 4 after vastly outspending her.

As mayor, Oberndorf has been known for her tireless attendance at small-scale public gatherings, from ribbon-cuttings to children's sports events. A popular joke was that whenever three people gathered in Virginia Beach, Oberndorf would ask the other two what they wanted to discuss.

"People can't always come to the office of the mayor, so I tried to take the office of the mayor to them," Oberndorf said.

Sessoms and other critics argued that she was more of a cheerleader than the strategic planner needed to run a city the size of Virginia Beach. Oberndorf bristled at that idea. She said she has guided the city toward better use and protection of its natural resources, establishing parks and setting aside farmland and open space for preservation.

Virginia Beach has a "weak mayor" form of government, and the post is largely ceremonial -- similar to what Richmond used to have before it adopted the "strong mayor" form of government.

Oberndorf said city residents should watch after her departure to make sure Virginia Beach government does its business in public and remains committed to protecting the environment. "The business community has gotten stronger and better organized," she said.

Aside from Greekfest and its aftermath, Oberndorf said she will remember winning the regulatory battle to build the 76-mile Lake Gaston pipeline, which solved a critical shortage of drinking water in Virginia Beach by pumping in water from the huge impoundment lake on the Virginia-North Carolina border. Legal challenges by North Carolina and environmental groups held up the pipeline for years before its completion in 1997.

She survived breast cancer and helped start a national program to help mayors across the U.S. bring better breast-cancer screenings and treatment to their cities.

More recently, in 2005, Oberndorf led Virginia Beach's successful efforts to prevent the military base-closing commission from moving 150 Navy jets and 14,000 jobs out of Oceana Naval Air Station. The commission blamed the city government for carelessly allowing the suburbs to encroach on the air base, creating crash hazards and interfering with pilot training. Virginia Beach ended up retaining the jets and jobs without having to condemn and demolish any of the homes around Oceana, as Oberndorf had promised.

She said her defeat at the polls did not leave her feeling jilted by city voters. Virginia Beach's switch this year to hold local elections in November rather than in May altered the political landscape and probably cost her the election, she said, but she supported the switch because she wanted to increase voter turnout.

Oberndorf would not say whether she will run again. For now, she said, there are plenty of worthy causes in Virginia Beach that need volunteers just as critically as they did more than 40 years ago, when she first arrived in the young city.
Contact Bill Geroux at (757) 498-2820 or .