Jan. 6--John Gasser drives to work at Sysco in Suffolk in darkness. Not much can be done about that; it's before day break, after all. But does it have to be so dark?

At Harbour View Boulevard and College Drive in Suffolk, near Sysco, streetlights were installed more than a year ago but never turned on.

Gasser said upward of 50 delivery trucks are headed to Sysco between 4 a.m. and daybreak, in addition to workers headed there, to Tidewater Community College and elsewhere.

"A lot of cars are coming through here, and you cannot see," he said.

Debbie George, a spokeswoman for Suffolk, said the problem was that Dominion Virginia Power could not identify the owner of some private, unmarked utility lines. Without identify ing the owner, Dominion was uncertain where the lines were located.

After Gasser's inquiry on Dec. 17, however, the utility owner was found, and George said the utilities will be identified.

Today, she said, Dominion is to provide the city with a timetable for "plugging in" the lights.

George thanked Gasser for his letter. Without him, er, shining a light on the issue, she said, it might not have been addressed so quickly.

Which is not the kind of thing public officials acknowledge very often, and a darn nice punctuation mark to this, the final Warrior column to publish in this space. Read on...

Pilot Warrior turns the page

The Warrior column started almost 30 years ago, as an anonymous column in the Virginia Beach Beacon community tabloid.

There were several anonymous Warriors through the years -- among them Mike Bass, Bill Reed and Lori Denney. I took over the column almost 10 years ago, at the same time it was moved from the Beacon to the "mainsheet," The Virginian-Pilot.

Several years later, the name was changed from Road Warrior to Pilot Warrior, the Warrior finally unmasked and the scope expanded from roads to the entire landscape of community problems -- dilapidated houses, flooding in the streets and yes, still, road issues.

This is the final column you'll read in the mainsheet, The Virginian-Pilot. From here on, you'll find The Warrior in the community tabloids, the Beacon, Norfolk Compass, Portsmouth Current, Chesapeake Clipper and Suffolk Sun. The issues will be more oriented toward those specific communities. To read columns not published in your community's tabloid, go to The Warrior's Web site, accessible through PilotOnline.com.

Thanks to readers and "sources" alike; you're the transmission that makes this thing go. I will need your letters and your feedback more than ever, so keep them coming.

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