Glad You Asked: Hampton Roads by any other name is still in southeast Virginia

Hampton Roads. Tidewater. Southeast Virginia. Norportapeake Beach.

That last one might not have caught on. But in 1983, it was on the table when the seven cities of southeast Virginia faced a crisis — what should the region be called?

Eventually, as we know, they decided on “Hampton Roads.” But how? And why?

A reader recently posed the question to the Daily Press’s new Glad You Asked initiative. The answer: It started with the U.S. Postal Service.

In January 1983, the service opened a new $13.1 million mail facility at 600 Church St. in Norfolk that would process mail from all seven cities: Newport News, Hampton, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Suffolk.

Previously, mail went through processing facilities in each of the cities, meaning mail from Newport News would be postmarked “Newport News, Va.” and from Hampton would be postmarked “Hampton, Va.” Now, all of the area’s mail would go through one center.

That meant that the region needed a postmark. The postal service decided on “Tidewater Va.”

In a letter obtained by The Virginian-Pilot in 1983, then-postmaster general William Bolger said that the name had been selected in the mid-1970s after meetings with local elected officials. Hampton mayor James Eason told the newspaper in December 1982 that he didn’t see the change as “any earth-shattering situation.”

But by the time it came to start using the new stamp, local officials were less complacent.

Rep. G. William Whitehurst, who represented Norfolk and Virginia Beach at the time, sent a letter asking Bolger to reconsider. Sen. Paul Trible Jr., now president of Christopher Newport University, also lobbied Bolger at the request of local officials.

The main reason cited by those opposed to the change, according to Pilot archives, was confusion.

Multiple reporters for the paper wrote that locals used “Tidewater” to refer only to Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and maybe Suffolk. Newport News and Hampton were part of the Peninsula.

Also, there already was a Tidewater, Virginia, that went beyond the southeast. The Code of Virginia defines Tidewater as a region that includes Richmond and Alexandria, anywhere past the fall line where river levels are affected by tides.

“Tidewater is a designation that could be applied to the coastline throughout Virginia and beyond Virginia, whereas Hampton Roads was a specific geographical name around which our community and metropolitan region was organized,” Trible said in a recent interview.

Hampton Roads, what the mouth of the James River had been called for centuries, had better global name recognition in the eyes of local officials in addition to being more specific. It was a well-traveled waterway and the name of a major Civil War naval battle.

“In our dealings with states and nations, it was important that we define as one community, as one metropolitan reason, and that this geographical name, Hampton Roads, more clearly and powerfully communicated that fact,” Trible said.

On Jan. 22, 1983, two days before the “Tidewater Va.” postmark went into effect, the mayors and city managers of all seven cities voted unanimously in a meeting in Chesapeake to recommend “Hampton Roads Va.” as a replacement.

In March, Bolger sent a letter to Whitehurst and Trible honoring his promise to change the postmark if all the cities could agree on a name. On March 29, 1983, the first letters were postmarked as Hampton Roads.

And Norportapeake Beach — a combination of Norfolk-Portsmouth-Chesapeake-Virginia Beach half-jokingly proposed in a Pilot column — never got off the ground.