Dream Fields Turns 50

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Natives to the Northern Neck fondly recall the ’60s as an idyllic era of close-knit communities and simple lifestyles very different from the highly connected world in which we live today.

But for a sports-loving kid, it wasn’t the best of times. While towns such as Kilmarnock, Lively, and White Stone had their own baseball teams, there was no Little League. 

H. R. “Peck” Humphreys Jr. and Bill Lee weren’t okay with that and decided the solution was a field where programs for children could be developed. In the fall of 1964 the Youth Club of Lancaster County (YCLC) was formed with the intent to build fields for boys to play ball on. It wasn’t until the ’70s and Title IX that a field was built for girls.

The original two fields were constructed in the mid ’60s on land the club paid one dollar a year in rent for as part of a ninety-nine-year lease. The area didn’t have an official name and was known by locals simply as the ball fields, but at last, kids had a place to play ball. 

Reminiscing about playing in the mid-1960s, Joe Shehigh, a college professor and former player, remembers that “because we weren’t sanctioned by Little League back then, we used to play all summer. Now the kids have to finish by June for the All-Star team games, the state tournament, and the regional championships.” 

Pointing to a framed photograph of his 1965 team sponsored by Ben Franklin, he recalls that he was only nine years old while some boys on the team were twelve and thirteen, making for very little playing time for the youngster on the bench. “We were in a rural area so we didn’t have enough kids for a full team of the same ages. You had to work your way up. I was nine, so every now and then I got to play when they needed someone.” 

In an era less focused on political correctness, Shehigh recalls how the Bank of Lancaster sponsored a team in 1966/67, recruiting all the boys who hadn’t been chosen for other teams. “They played for three or four years before winning a game, but the bank gave them a team to play on. That was a big deal. Reedville had great teams and they were hard to beat. It was all very competitive. Everyone went to school together with each other and wanted bragging rights.”

Travis Pittman, who played for the Upper Lancaster Ruritans in the early ’80s recalls that “the fields filled a vital role in the community. Those fields were where Chesapeake Academy and public school kids came together. It was a key part of the community for parents to come together too.”

“My dad spent a lot of time working at the ballpark when I was growing up. All my friends and their parents were involved. Both my sisters played. I just grew up seeing it around me,” says Welby Saunders, now coach of Lancaster High School’s varsity baseball team.  He played in the late ’80s and early ’90s. “I saw all the kids participating. It was a hub for youth in this county, maybe one of the only hubs. Maybe that’s why there’s so much community support behind it because it does so much good for the county.”

But by the early ’90s the county had outgrown the ball fields. Then the out-of-town owner of the adjacent property, David Goodman, generously donated the twenty acres next to the existing YCLC Park in the name of his mother, Gloria Goodman.

Around the same time, Art Lang, a come-here, had decided to get involved after an unpleasant experience. While crowds enjoyed a game, the adjacent fields were sprayed with chemicals. Lang was appalled. “It was blowing right on the spectators.” 

Like Humphreys and Lee thirty years earlier, he knew something had to be done. It was time to start building additional fields and that was going to take money.

Lang had retired to the Northern Neck after a successful career in pipeline rehabilitation, purchasing an old pine farm on which he constructed a grand, southern-plantation-style house. In 1990 he volunteered to coach summer ball at the high school and was shocked to learn that the county had no junior varsity program to develop talent for the varsity team. 

“Give me this job,” he recalls telling the school. A focused former businessman who knew how to succeed, he’d considered where he could have the most impact now that he was retired and decided that it was with children. 

While investing his own money in uniforms and equipment, he slowly built up a strong team. “I got the kids to believe in themselves. I was voted coach of the year my first season and our record was five and fifteen! By the next year, we were fifteen and five. By the third year, we won the district championship. That’s when the ball fields came up.” At the time, there were 500 children enrolled in the baseball programs. 

Using his business acumen, Lang set out to create a media blitz to raise awareness of the ball park’s unfortunate state—light poles were still the original wooden ones—and initiate fundraising efforts. “I was retired, so I could do all this. It was subliminal work; if we don’t build this, these kids will be in your backyard.”

As any good marketer knows, branding is essential. Lang began by having a lawyer check on using the name Field of Dreams, only to learn that it could be used for anything but baseball fields. What if we switched the word order, he wondered. Bingo! Dream Fields was born and local artist Marguerite Ajootian was commissioned to paint a watercolor of the complex as it would eventually look to use for mailings and events. 

Lang created an awareness campaign, posting young ball players in front of local businesses to pass out stickers that read, “Help us play as we grow. Support Dream Fields.” No money was accepted for the stickers. At that point, he was seeking the financial support of businesses, not residents. Sponsorship flags were sold to local businesses to be hung on light poles. An ongoing campaign ran in the Rappahannock Record. Posters were hung in local shops. Eventually, mailings went out to parents of children who played ball. 

By his calculations, they needed to raise over a million and a half dollars, a process he began by requesting $200,000 from the county for start-up capital. Kids began mailing in whatever they could contribute. One little boy sent 13 cents in the mail. 

Lang got together with Pastor John Farmer who, with the agreed-upon construction of a community center and programming for it, helped facilitate annual funding from the Jessie Ball duPont Religious, Charitable and Educational Fund. But he knew they weren’t there yet. “Now we’ve got the county and duPont backing us up. It’s starting to add up, but we still need $700,000 to $800,000 more.” 

Fundraising kicked into high gear. “We did anything to make a buck,” Lang recalls with a laugh. They held bike and auto shows, sold raffle tickets for a handmade quilt, hosted spaghetti dinners, sold pumpkins, and tagged radio commercials with “Proud supporter of Dream Fields.” 

Still short, the solution was clear. They’d have to make up the difference using in-kind donations. Unsurprisingly, this is where the local community stepped up in spades. Electricians donated their services and masons built dugouts for free. Lamberth Building Materials supplied everything they needed at cost. Eagle Scouts built picnic tables for a small park area. Work was done nights and weekends.

“It could never have been done without Hayden Construction Company and Bill Hayden. They did $400,000 worth of dirt work on the fields for a song. He knew what the kids needed,” Lang says of having to raise the far left and center fields nine feet to make them level and suitable for the high-school team to play on. A brass plaque honoring Hayden hangs in the community center to acknowledge his contributions. Lang hired a pro to put up all the fencing around the fields and then helped. “He and I put up every inch of fence you see there.”

One by one, the fields were completed, thanks to a magnificent community effort. Groups of women would come in and clean up behind the workmen’s projects. Fundraising had begun in the late fall of 1996 because it was going take a year and a half to properly build it. That meant switching out the teams’ spring and summer schedules because of the unavailability of construction on the fields.

Few ballparks in Virginia are located on county land or county financed. Dream Fields is the exception, a 100 percent volunteer-run facility. Umpiring, upkeep, and upgrades are done by volunteers. “We have one of the nicest facilities in the state because of the blood, sweat, and tears that go into it. People here do it from the heart,” Saunders says.

With the opening in 1997, what had been known for over thirty years as “the ball fields” officially became Dream Fields. “It filled a vital role in the community,” says Dream Fields board member Travis Pittman, who still recalls Reedville’s Huff and Puff team—a girls’ team sponsored by a cat food company—as especially competitive. What Art did for our young kids in the county cannot be underestimated. He set the bar high for those coming in behind him.”

“The ballpark is multigenerational,” says board member Kathy Pittman, who played on the Huff and Puff team from 1974 through 1976. When her own children began playing ball, she got involved again in various roles. “I played here. My kids played here. My grandchildren will probably play here. I’ll be here until they kick me out. I think it’s such a great asset for the community.”  

Lang likes to say he can squeeze a dollar bill until the eagle’s eyes bulge out and few would argue that the Dream Fields project isn’t proof of that. “It was a lot of fun, but I’d never do it again. Now it’s all done, I can go into my twilight a happy man. The only time I did more begging than I did for Dream Fields was to get my wife to marry me. I did it because I wanted to do something for the kids.”

For a county of only 11,000 people, Lancaster has a ballpark complex that elicits envy in visiting teams and is a source of pride for many in the community, with seven fields, bleachers, a concession stand, and community center. Over the years, celebrities such as Sonny Jurgensen and Ralph Sampson have thrown out the first pitch on opening day.

A year’s worth of events is being planned throughout 2015 around the ballpark’s fiftieth anniversary as a way to create public recognition of the importance of Dream Fields in Lancaster’s history, present, and future. Too many people have been involved with the ballpark over the years to mention them all, but the celebration aims to acknowledge as many as possible.

After Richmond County contacted Lang seeking his advice on how to raise money to create their own version of Dream Fields, he gave a seminar, summing up the years of hard work that had gone into moving Lancaster County’s ball fields from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. Sure enough, Richmond County followed suit.

That’s hardly surprising to former players such as Shehigh. “We take our baseball seriously down here. It shaped us, teaching us teamwork, delayed gratification, fellowship, and working toward a team goal. We’ve sustained this ball field through tradition.”

Support Dream Fields: Donations can be mailed to Dream Fields, P.O. Box 1491, Kilmarnock, Virginia 22482 or to River Counties Community Foundation, FBO Dream Fields, P.O. Box 222, Kilmarnock, Virginia 2248.

Join the Celebration: 2015 marks Dream Fields’ fiftieth anniversary. If you or family members have photographs, they’re looking for ballpark and Little League images as well as memorabilia from the last fifty years. Everything’s fair game: team photos, individual or action shots, souvenirs, and schedules. Call 724-9279 to share your memories. Go to dream-fields.org for more information.

This article appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of The Local Scoop Magazine, pgs. 23-31.