By Harry Minium
Belinda Woody was just five years old when her grandmother, Mildred Woody, taught her how to paint baseboards. She bent down with a brush and showed Belinda how to use a newspaper to keep the paint from bleeding onto the wall or the floor.
And she insisted that the paint lines be clean and neat. Meticulously so.
"My grandmother, she raised me," Belinda Woody said. "She taught me how to care about other people as well as myself. I was brought up learning you had to work to survive.
"She taught me to take pride in my work. She taught me that you should take pride in your work no matter what you do."
That pride is a major reason why Chartway Arena looks almost as good as it did when it opened 18 years ago. The arena sparkles in large part because of Belinda Woody, known by most people as 'Ms. Be."
As housekeeping manager for Spectra Venue Management, the Philadelphia-based organization that manages Chartway Arena for Old Dominion University, she is expected to make sure her employees keep the building clean. But she goes so far beyond that.
She insists everything be meticulously neat and clean, as did her grandmother, and puts in a ton of hours to make sure that gets done.
She is at work 14 hours a day during big events and an 8-hour day has been a rarity, even during much of the pandemic, which essentially shut down the arena for the last nine months.
"I remember a couple of times when I was sick and in bed and there was a big event and I got a call from someone, and I don't remember who it was, who said, 'Ms. Be, when are you coming back? We need you.' " she said.
"I said 'if I'm feeling better tomorrow, then I'll come in.'
"I wasn't feeling better, but I came in and got the job done."
During games, concerts, graduations and other events she walks all around the building, from the first floor to the third, checking hallways, restrooms and suites to make sure they're clean. It's not unusual to see her summon staff for a quick mop up when something has spilled.
During graduation, she mans an elevator to help parents and guests find where they should be sitting.
"People coming in here for the first time don't know the building, so I try to help them get where they need to be."
"I don't really watch the games," she added. "That's not my job.
"I might get a few glances in, but you'll never see me stop in the arena and just watch."
Yes, she works hard, but it's her warm smile and her genuine care for anyone she meets that makes her so special to everyone in the ODU athletic department.
"She impacts everyone she's around on a daily basis through her warmth and grace and welcoming demeanor," Athletic Director Camden Wood Selig said.
"When you see her, she lights up and that makes you up light up, too," Dr. Selig added. "Every time we bring recruits through the building, she's a great ambassador. She lets them know what a great place this is and that she expects to see them the following year."
Jeff Jones, whose ODU basketball team hosts William & Mary Saturday in the first major event the arena has hosted since March, calls her "the Mom of Chartway Arena."
"She's always got a kind word for everybody and greets everyone with a smile. She is always there and it's like Chartway Arena is her home," Jones said.
"When we walk into the door, she's the one who greets us. It's like she lives here and she's saying, 'welcome to my house.' "
"When I was hired at Old Dominion, that was the first time I saw this building. They told me it was 13 years old and I could not believe it. When you look at the place, there's no way someone would think it's 18 years old.
"A lot of people get credit for that, but Miss B is the one. She takes pride in keeping it nice and clean."
Mike Fryling, the Chartway Arena general manager, hired the first employees for the building in 2002, four months before the arena opened. His experience working for Disney in Orlando made him realize that the housekeeping manager was a critical hire.
"We needed someone who took ownership of the building, someone who treated people with the upmost respect, someone who would treat the facility like it was her own," he said.
"After meeting Ms. Be, it took me 30 seconds to realize we had a great employee who would do all of that and more.
"She's been a rock star ever since. She has been the heart and soul of the building."
Ms. Be, now 71, grew up in Northfolk, W.Va., a town of about 400 people just west of Bluefield. Although she was an African American growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, she said she never experienced discrimination in the Mountain State.
Her grandmother was a business owner, so she was never hungry nor ill-clothed.
But it's not like she didn't grow up without hardship.
She rarely saw her father and her mother, Callie Woody Gatewood, was busy working and taking care of three kids, so Miss B often stayed with her grandmother.
When her mother got sick, Miss B took her to the hospital on Christmas Day and she died the day after. When her grandmother got sick, Miss B was with her every day at the hospital, including the day she died.
"My grandmother was my heart," she said. "I could go and sit with her and talk to her about anything and everything.
"When she went to the hospital, I would bathe her, comb her hair, take care of her. When she died, it was really hard on me."
It was hard on her as well when she learned her aunt, Henrietta W. Coles, had cancer. Coles was married and living in California, but her husband was too old to take care of her.
"I wasn't going to let her move into any nursing home," said Miss B, who went to California to take care of her.
Her Aunt passed in 1998 and her brother a year later. Her mother and father had already died.
She got divorced more than two decades ago and her ex-husband recently passed way. They parted amicably and remained friends.
"It hasn't been an easy road," she said. It's her faith, she said, "that's kept me strong, kept me going.
"Even when things got hard, I've always prayed. There were times when money was short, but God always found a way for me to pay my bills."
That's in part why she goes out of her way to try to help her employees, some of whom face those same struggles.
"Sometimes I get too involved with trying to help people," she said.
"I'm pretty easy to get along with. But the most important thing to me is to make sure this building is taken care of."
Ms. Be moved to Hampton Roads about two decades ago to be close to family – she has two daughters, a brother and three grandchildren in Norfolk. Her brother and youngest daughter live with her, not that they see her very often.
"I hear them say that I live in the arena and visit home," Miss B said.
She came to Norfolk with a pretty good resume. She owned a barber shop in Northfolk and has a degree in cosmetology and worked as a dental assistant.
She's cleaned houses, but she's also managed stores and warehouses.
"I'm here because I choose to be here," she said.
She's chosen to stay, she says, because of the people at Spectra and ODU.
"They make me feel like family," she said.
She says whenever ODU assistant coach Bryant Stith is in the arena with recruits and families, she brings them to see her.
"I remember one time when he was in the arena showing some parents the arena and Bryant said, 'Hey, Ms. Be, come on over here. We just love her.'
"That makes me feel wanted. It makes me feel like I'm somebody, and that makes me feel good."
Fryling said that he and Ms. Be work so many hours together that "she isn't an employee. She's a family member.
"I see her more than I see my own family. She's family to me and means an awful lot to me personally and professionally.
"The University did an awesome job when they designed the building, and it was designed to have a long life span. But once they turned the keys over to us, Ms. Be has taken care of this place.
"People who come in here for the first time are blown away by now nice the facility looks."
Ms. Be is looking forward to Saturday's opener.
"I've missed seeing people," she said. "It will be good to have people back in the arena."
But because of the pandemic, she'll be wearing a mask, as will everyone inside Chartway Arena, and won't get to hug people as she likes to do.
"I will miss hugging people," she said. "I like to hug people because sometimes, everyone needs a hug.
"A lot of times you have one of those days. A hug can put a smile on your face, it can change things."
Every year, Fryling said, Ms. Be comes to him and says she thinks she might need to retire.
"I jokingly tell her that she can't retire until I give her permission, and she's never going to get permission from me," Fryling said.
Ms. Be smiled when I asked her if she planned to retire.
"I'm not a person to go home and just sit around," she said. "I have to have things to do. And I love to be around people."
"When I stay at home, my family says I get on their nerves," she added, laughing.
"A lot of people tell me once I retire, they're going to miss me. I say, yeah, but they will find someone else to replace me."
Yes, they will, but likely not with Ms. Be's the work ethic, warmth and kind heart.
Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu
Minium: The Secret as To Why Chartway Arena Looks So Good? Belinda Woody, Better Known as 'Ms. Be'
