This is the third in a six-part, yearlong series called Disappearing Virginia in Distinction magazine. This story originally appeared in the June issue as “The Sons and Daughters of Slabtown.” The letter was bureaucratically frank. “I have been advised that you have refused … Continue reading →
When Melcenia Fields failed to retrieve her groceries, railroad workers knew something was wrong. Fields, inexplicably to all but herself, lived in the ruins of Beury, WV, one of dozens of company towns in the New River Gorge that residents … Continue reading →
The white clapboard house hides in plain sight on a short city street lined with recycle bins and compact sedans. Nothing on the exterior betrays what happened within those walls long ago, that officers engaged in the nation’s greatest crisis … Continue reading →
Three feet down, the men struck something: a pine box. Waterlogged and rotting, yes, but a pine box nonetheless–exactly what they’d come looking for. They pried off the lid. A man’s spine was stuck to it. They closed the coffin, … Continue reading →
The story is familiar. An African American woman boards a bus in the segregated South and sits in the back, as required by law. The bus fills and the driver demands that she give up her seat to white riders. … Continue reading →
In the dense woods east of Richmond, Virginia is a notorious ghost town–an empty grid of grown-over streets lined by sidewalks that sprout trees and sewers choked with decades of leaf litter. An idle and rust-crowned water tower looms high … Continue reading →
It’s easy to appreciate sacrifice at Yorktown Battlefield, where Americans secured their independence. Visitors there find historic fortifications, artillery and cemeteries containing the remains of hundreds of soldiers who fought and died for a cause. But sometimes folks render service … Continue reading →
The shorelines are indistinguishable from ones adjacent. They’re stretches of sand lapped by the Chesapeake Bay’s waves, full of life and memory, ceding ground as the sea level rises. These beaches are small slivers of the Bay’s 11,684 miles of … Continue reading →
Turn seaside at Eastville on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and you’ll be traveling on Indiantown Road. Most days this rural byway is lightly traveled. Traffic picks up just a hair when there’s some community activity–softball or basketball, for instance–at the Northampton … Continue reading →
