Wilbert “Wil” Dean had a dream.

That all the people of Buckingham would one day find a place together at Ellis Acres Memorial Park, born from the Buckingham Training School, which served as the first secondary school in the county for African Americans and was their only high school from 1924 to 1954, when the Supreme Court's Brown decision decreed an end to segregated public schools in the United States of America.

Mr. Dean's dream has found a home in the hearts of the people of Buckingham County who have celebrated the opening of Ellis Acres Memorial Park in the Town of Dillwyn. He proved that where there was a Wil there truly was a way.

The multi-use park is named for the Reverend Stephen J. Ellis, who believed-in the 1920s-that African Americans could and should receive a high school education in Buckingham.

So a dream begot a dream.

That is the way of dreams-they are passed from one human being to another and most dramatically when one human being sees the dream waiting to be given birth in another human being and awakens the world to that truth.

When that happens, we are all free at last.

-JKW-