Bankers, experimentalists, runners, bike cops, tortilla experts and many other avowed individuals who choose this place above all others to ply their trades, promote their ideas and otherwise stir up the creative brew that we call home and that others lately are calling No. 1. We don’t really need Frommer’s, Outside or anyone else to tell us what we have here—especially when those folks only get as much of the story as a single day’s research allows. But if they were to ask for a more in-depth view of the people and institutions making Charlottesville what it is right now—for better or worse—we’d present them with this, the third annual C-VILLE 20, the cast of characters featured in our town’s present-day tale.
THE MISSIONARY
Pastor Bruce A. Beard
After a week in which his department was battered for a DNA dragnet of black men, Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy J. Longo specifically thanked Pastor Bruce A. Beard for helping foster a dialogue with the local African-American community that had been so deeply offended. Beard’s calming role in the controversy probably doesn’t surprise members of his congregation at the First Baptist Church on W. Main Street—bridging divides is Beard’s specialty.
A Pittsburgh transplant who quit his job as a corporate executive for Pepsi-Cola to become a pastor, Beard has worked hard to make First Baptist a church that appeals to a broad swath of Charlottesville.
When Beard took the helm of First Baptist, a historically black church with a storied past, he says church attendance was “hovering around 50 to 60.” Now, Beard sees 500 or more faces from his Sunday perch in the pulpit.
“It’s become much more diverse,” Beard says of First Baptist. “We have quite a few white members.”
Beard and his wife, Rev. Gardenia Beard, focus on the divide between church and community, which he says has been growing in recent decades. Their ministry, which they call Transformational Ministries, is “a radical rethinking of what is church” that includes an emphasis on getting out into the community.
“Most churches tend to be 30 to 40 years behind the times,” Beard says.
Beard thinks Charlottesville could eventually be a national example for cooperating across ethnic lines. In fact, he thinks Charlottesville has so much potential, “I’m not sure people realize it.”—P.F.
THE PICKER
Fred Boyce
At The Prism Coffeehouse on Rugby Road, you can hear some of the finest acoustic musicians in the world perform in a space no bigger than a living room. So far this year the schedule has included such diverse acts as New Grass revivalist John Cowan, classical guitarist Beppe Gambetta, and Appalachian balladeers Ginny Hawker and Tracy Schwartz performing in the 80-seat venue. It’s one of those places you really can’t find anywhere else but Charlottesville, and Fred Boyce is the guy who makes it happen.
A virtuoso banjo picker from North Carolina, Boyce and his partner Kenyon Hunter have run The Prism since 1990. In that time Boyce has used his connections in the musical world, picking acts that have elevated The Prism into a hallowed haunt for fans and artists alike. For Boyce, The Prism is built for education, not just entertainment.
“The Prism has been built by the people and the musicians who trust in Fred’s vision,” says Mike Seeger, a longtime Prism performer and legendary scholar and interpreter of Appalachian folk music.
Aided by a small, loyal band of volunteers, Boyce and Hunter do almost everything to keep the smoke- and alcohol-free Prism running smoothly—booking shows, hanging flyers, ordering coffee and snacks, orchestrating The Prism’s live broadcasts on WTJU and cleaning up afterwards.
Recently, Boyce has come under fire with some former Prism volunteers who, offended by his notoriously fiery temper, have hung their dirty laundry on the line, going public with an injudiciously uncensored voice mail message that Boyce left one of them. With the talent for improvisation that is characteristic of a bluegrass banjo player, Boyce has rolled with it and has not commented publicly on whether he’ll drop The Prism reins—or rein in his management technique. In any case, if or when others take charge at the 38-year-old venue, they’ll inherit one of the East Coast’s coolest folk venues with Boyce to thank for it.—J.B.
THE MAESTRO
John Conover
Having dominated City government for decades, the Democrats’ resounding sweep in this year’s City Council election hardly qualifies as a Cinderella story. Yet the Dems’ victory party on May 4 had the air of a team celebrating a come-from-behind win, with John Conover as the victorious coach.
For two years, ever since Rob Schilling beat Alexandria Searls to become the first Republican in 12 years to win a Council seat, Democrats have been gnashing their teeth over the loss. This year, the party vowed to play hardball, and they tapped former Councilor Conover to manage the campaign.
Conover’s role seemed to be keeping his candidates—Kendra Hamilton, David Brown and Kevin Lynch—focused on defeating the Republicans instead of each other. It gave him plenty of opportunities to talk a little partisan smack, which the Legal Aid attorney seemed to especially relish. “I think John enjoys the sparring,” says former Mayor David Toscano, who ran the Dems’ fundraising efforts this year.
With Conover at the helm, the party did a lot of things right. First, they raised more than $32,000. Then, they identified their target voters by looking at voter rolls from State elections and cross-referencing those with rolls from local elections. In so doing, the Dems discovered they had lots of party faithfuls who weren’t turning out for City elections, so they made an extra effort to get those voters to the polls.
“John’s philosophy is to put a lot of people in the mix, give them responsibilities and get things done,” says Toscano. “That’s the essence of a good organization.”—J.B.
THE MENTOR
Carol Pedersen
If you’ve been to the theater in the past year, you’ve probably seen Carol Pedersen’s influence. True, she’s only directed one local production and has never acted in front of Charlottesville audiences. But as a leading force behind Live Arts’ drama education program, not to mention her work as a dramaturge and as a teacher at UVA and, starting this fall, at Piedmont Virginia Community College, she’s shaping a whole lot of local talent that makes it before the footlights.
“I love teaching, I really do,” she says. And her students return the affection, citing the calm and trust that she imparts to a classroom setting. She works as well with absolute beginners as she does with more experienced actors, prepping part-time thespians in a way that enables them to expertly make the switch from their daytime vocations to their evening and weekend avocations as community theater performers. And her audition workshops have been known to give the necessary booster shot of confidence to otherwise retiring wannabe actors.
Pedersen may be working with nonprofessional players, but she has a heavy dose of credentials backing her up: graduate degrees in theater and directing from the City University of New York and Columbia University. Indeed, to a great extent she embodies Charlottesville’s unique approach to culture, in which professional tools are made available to amateur performers.
A lunch at the now-defunct Liquid with Live Arts Artistic Director John Gibson led to the start of those audition workshops and eventually, the Saturday morning actor’s lab, which commenced in February, 2003. Since then, all but one Live Arts production have this season featured at least one of her students in the cast. “There are people who had never acted before getting terrific parts. That’s really fun,” she says.—E.R.
THE ACTIVIST
Holly Hatcher
The rest of Virginia looks to Charlottesville —not always fondly—as a stronghold of liberal values in an otherwise conservative Commonwealth. The contrast is especially pronounced when it comes to women’s rights, as an increasingly Christianist House of Delegates moves to limit access to abortion and—in the newest development—federally approved contraceptives.
Charlottesville activist Holly Hatcher won’t let legislators turn back the clock without a fight. Last year, Planned Parenthood hired the 29-year-old Hatcher to direct its organizing efforts in Virginia, at a time when the Commonwealth is one of hottest battlegrounds for reproductive rights.
“She’s a fireplug,” says David Nova, director of Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge. “Holly’s got an innate talent for empowering others to express themselves.”
Hatcher honed her activism at the Public Housing Association of Residents (PHAR), a local nationally recognized nonprofit, where she taught low-income housing residents how to navigate through City Hall. At Planned Parenthood, her job is to help concerned Virginians defend their rights to privacy and health care.
In May, Hatcher filled 12 buses with Richmond pro-choice activists, and helped statewide Planned Parenthood chapters fill a total of 32 buses (including eight from Charlottesville), all bound for the March for Women’s Lives. That event drew close to 1 million people to Washington, D.C., on April 25.
Lately Hatcher’s been commuting to Richmond for her job, but later this summer she’ll start working in her hometown when Planned Parenthood opens a new office and clinic in Charlottesville. That state-of-the-art facility will likely further encourage Charlottesville’s radical reputation, since a growing contingent in the General Assembly supports TRAP, or Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, legislation that could close down other clinics around the State. If that happens and Charlottesville becomes a refuge for women seeking safe, legal abortions, Hatcher will undoubtedly cement her own hard-won reputation as a committed force in the struggle for progressive health care.—J.B.
THE HEALER
Jim Haden
When Jim Haden moved to Charlottesville in 1993 to take the helm of Martha Jefferson Hospital, the community hospital had 140 medical staff. That number has grown to 360 during Haden’s time as president and CEO. The hospital, which recently built a 94,000 square foot Outpatient Care Center at Peter Jefferson Place, now has more than 100 primary care physicians.
“There has been an awful lot of growth,” Haden says of his time at Martha Jefferson. “It’s not just being bigger, it’s being better.”
Haden says the hospital, in addition to expanding its role as the Charlottesville region’s biggest primary care provider, has bulked up its cardiology and cancer treatment capacities as well as women’s health services.
By expanding its specialty care, Martha Jefferson, which this July will celebrate the 100th anniversary of opening its doors at 919 E. High St., has increased the areas of overlap with its research-focused crosstown competitor, the UVA Medical Center, which can only be good news to the thousands of newcomers—including young families and retirees—who relocate here each year.
Haden says there can be “creative tension” when his hospital’s services are in competition with the UVA Medical Center, but that the two hospitals often work together “very cooperatively.”
Before coming to Charlottesville, Haden says he knew nothing about the town. After more than a decade at Martha Jefferson, he says he hopes to stay here if “the community wants me around.”
The big challenge for Haden and Martha Jefferson, much like for the rest of Charlottesville, is how to keep growing without harming the hospital’s core values.
“I don’t want to lose who we are,” Haden says.—P.F.
MR. WAHOO
Rick Jones
Charlottesville may be No. 1, but it isn’t perfect—especially when the topic turns to racial harmony and social justice. If Charlottesville ever becomes a place where more people of different classes and races live side by side, Rick Jones will deserve some of the credit.
Jones runs Management Services Corporation, one of the largest student housing providers in Charlottesville with nearly 800 rental units. While many developers take a standoffish view of municipal bureaucracy, Jones in 2000 joined a committee that helped rewrite Charlottesville’s entire zoning code, a job the City finally finished last year.
“I always thought it was my job to offer a balanced perspective,” says Jones, who’s never shy about offering his ideas. His influence helped ensure that the new zoning would actually work for real developers and not remain just an academic exercise for government planners.
Three years of swimming in public policy is enough for most people. Jones, however, came back for more. He is currently serving on the City’s Housing Task Force, a group studying ways to take the edge off the local housing market for low- and middle-income residents.
But of all his involvement, Jones may make his biggest contribution to the City through his position on the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board. For years the CHRA has focused on managing the City’s eight public housing sites. Jones wants the CHRA to become developers, building sites where subsidized housing sits adjacent to market-rate housing. The idea has worked well in bigger cities like Chicago.
Departing Mayor Maurice Cox says Jones gives the CHRA the business credibility it needs to work with the private sector. “We’re inviting the kind of know-how that allows us to sit at the table as an equal,” says Cox. “That’s a fairly new direction. Rick Jones is going to move the CHRA forward.”—J.B.
THE KING
Rudy Padilla
Rudy Padilla sits at a table in the “club” area of his recently expanded Greenbrier Drive restaurant, El Rey Del Taco, like a royal surveying his kingdom.
In just five years, Padilla has opened four successful restaurants around Charlottesville. More than just places to spill salsa on your shirt, Padilla’s restaurants comprise a community of their own.
Padilla moved to Virginia in 1995 to join his brother’s Richmond eatery, El Paso Mexican Restaurant. Three years later he decided it was time to open one of his own, and started Amigos in the Woodbrook Shopping Center on Route 29N. Two years later Amigos got a friend on Fifth Street Extended, followed by a third Amigos on the Corner in 2001. Those three restaurants feature more mainstream Mexican dishes and cater equally to both the American and Mexican tastes.
In 2003 he opened El Rey, with a focus on more traditional Mexican food. The Spanish-language CDs and movies for sale at the restaurant also demonstrate that he’s trying to better serve Charlottesville’s 3 percent-and-growing Hispanic population.
Last fall he gave them an even bigger space to call their own when he expanded El Rey, more than doubling the restaurant’s space. Hit it on any Saturday night and find its booths, pool tables and spacious dance floor hosting more than 300 people shaking it to tasty Latin rhythms.
Most of Padilla’s dance crowd is Hispanic, but white folks come out too, especially
for Friday night Latin dance lessons. “Americans like that,” Padilla says.—E.R.
MR. FRIDAY NIGHT
Ted Norris
The weekend has kicked off at Zocalo, and Ted Norris is a busy man. The well-dressed, scrubbed-clean crowd of 20-, 30- and 40somethings stands three or four deep around the gleaming counter of the Downtown Mall’s of-the-moment restaurant, and everybody wants Norris’ attention. In between making up mojitos and assorted other potent potables, he hands out the drinks, each with a complimentary smile.
Norris has been bartending for nearly a decade, first in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, and then here, where he moved with his wife in 1999. Locally he’s kept the good times rolling at the former Boudreau’s (now Wolfie’s), Michael’s Bistro and Zocalo, where he’s worked since it opened late
last year.
“I love bartending. I’m a night person. I love meeting people, and if I go to a party I’m always the one behind the bar. I like the action,” he explains of his success. Bar patrons apparently love him back: He took home the title of Best Bartender at this year’s Bartender’s Ball in February.
His secret is simple: “You have to be a friendly person; personality has a lot to do with it…. And you have to be able to move,” he says on a recent, much slower Wednesday night, checking around the bar to make sure everyone’s happy. “Anyone can make drinks. Making drinks isn’t enough.”—E.R.
THE INSIDER
Bob Gibson
Even highly educated people like those of us who live in Charlottesville need a capable interpreter to decipher the political squabbling and legislative gibberish occurring in Richmond’s halls of power. Fortunately for us, we’ve got Bob Gibson to tell us what it all means.
Gibson, who has reported and edited for The Daily Progress since 1976, is a scribe of the old-school variety, asking tough questions and putting in the hours to get the scoop. His political reporting easily trumps formulaic stories by less seasoned reporters, and has enabled the Progress to hold its own against the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Washington Post in covering this year’s 115-day budget standoff in the General Assembly.
Gibson’s savvy was on display during Gov. Mark Warner’s recent huddle with reporters at the Mudhouse. When Warner was unsure about a bill’s fine print or a funding number, he turned to Gibson for the skinny.
So why hasn’t Gibson, like many former local reporters, left town for a bigger media market?
“We just decided this would be a good place to raise our daughters,” Gibson says of the choice he made with his wife of 22 years, Sarah McConnell. Gibson and McConnell, the host of the WMRA radio show, “With Good Reason,” have three daughters.
Of his body of work for the DP, Gibson says he’s most proud of a weeklong investigative series on the “racial variations in sentencing” by local courts. Gibson says the series, which ran in ’92, was influential in the creation of the Charlottesville/Albemarle Public Defenders Office, which represents lower-income people in criminal cases.—P.F.
MR. BULLDOZER
Wendell Wood
Plenty of people love to hate Wendell Wood, but the developer needn’t worry—most of his detractors probably shop at the stores he builds, anyway.
It’s the unique places in Charlottesville and Albemarle that earned the region its recent ranking as America’s best place to live—the Downtown Mall, the UVA campus, Albemarle’s rolling hills—but what good are locally-owned boutiques and a bunch of grass and trees when you want to buy a car battery, light bulbs and tennis shoes all in one stop?
Wood is happy to oblige. He’s one of Albemarle’s largest landowners, and his company, United Land Corporation, built the Wal-Mart, Lowe’s and Sam’s Club stores on Route 29N, where, it should be noted, the titanic parking lots are never empty. But even those giant “big boxes” will seem small compared to Wood’s current project, the 165-acre Hollymead Town Center under construction north of the Rivanna River that will house—hallelujah!—a Target.
Wood’s detractors claim his projects are rapidly turning Albemarle into Anytown, U.S.A. Wood correctly responds that, hey, people want to shop in big stores. And some, like Tim Hulbert, who directs the regional Chamber of Commerce, reckon that the furor will die down once the backhoes get off the site and the Michael Graves teakettles move in. Wood and the other investors in Hollymead Town Center “have responded to specific requests from the community regarding town center and neighborhood model concepts in the County’s growth areas,” Hulbert says. “It’s certainly a natural evolution for the County. It’s tough to look at now, but there will be a time when the omelet will be made and the eggs won’t look so scrambled.”—J.B.
THE OLD GUARD
The McGuffey Artists
Spotlighting BozArt Gallery and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, American Style magazine placed our city on its list of “10 Places to Watch” for up-and-coming art scenes on the national stage. But before Kluge or Ruhe or Boz, there was, and still is, the McGuffey Art Center, undisputed godfather of Charlottesville’s visual arts and cultural life.
Established in 1975 as the result of a citizens’ committee set up by the City to remake the former McGuffey Elementary School, the Art Center stands as the City’s first concerted effort to promote the arts as a civic enterprise. With 23 studios, three galleries and 40-odd artist members specializing in everything from book arts to painting to industrial design to dance to glass blowing, McGuffey rightly declares itself the “largest displaying space in Charlottesville” (until recently it housed Second Street Gallery, too). And on the first Friday of every month, it plays host to hundreds of curiosity-seekers there to eye the new exhibits, drink warm wine from tiny cups and do what all communities do best: dish.
There’s an important educational component, too: McGuffey’ s studios are open to public tours and more informal drop-ins some 17 hours per week, putting the artists front and center in this growing City’s struggle to understand how the artistic life and the public life can intersect. As Rosamond Casey, president of the cooperative McGuffey Art Association puts it, “McGuffey is a lot of different things but I think it is primarily an educational institution…we do a tremendous amount to bring people into the building and to extend ourselves outside of the building and into the community.”
McGuffey found itself caught in the hail of political posturing during the months leading up to passage of the latest municipal budget and the Council campaign that followed. Some criticized the artists for stepping outside the box to make a pointed political statement about their value to Charlottesville at large, but what else would you expect from a group of artists who for decades have been encouraged to balance on the edge between culture and community?—N.B
.THE ENFORCER
Nancy Eismann
Remember the time unruly teenagers knocked over your Caesar salad while you dined on the Mall one spring evening? No? You probably have Officer Nancy Eismann of the Charlottesville Police Department to thank for avoiding that experience.
Eismann, the ubiquitous bike patrol cop who works the Downtown Mall and City Council meetings, is an exceptionally graceful keeper of the peace. If Mall urchins get out of line, Eismann calms them in a manner that makes everyone happy. Never disrespectful or overly authoritarian, Eismann manages problems by doing a great deal of listening.
“I think all officers have to have a touch of psychology in their background,” Eismann says. “I just like to treat people the way I want to be treated.”
August will mark Eismann’s 23rd anniversary with the Charlottesville Police Department. Eismann, a native of Massachusetts, moved to Charlottesville after a visit in which she says she “fell in love with the area.”
Eismann hasn’t always been on the Mall, having driven squad cars and police vans during her years on the force. She was assigned to the Mall patrol in February 2003, and now works afternoons and evenings, Monday through Friday, enjoying, she says, the highly visible beat.
After mingling with Charlottesville’s Mall strollers for so many hours, Eismann knows quite a few locals. Many of them carry one of Eismann’s business cards, the backs of which are adorned with a photo of her posing by a squad car with Homer, a hefty potbelly pig who is one of her many pets.—P.F.
THE BRAND NAME
Patricia Kluge
Here in Charlottesville, we’ve grown accustomed to conspicuously consuming at gas stations that serve latté and Brie instead of coffee and beef jerky sticks. But Patricia Kluge, the master of national publicity and self-promotion, has taken this concept a step further. There is no other way to say it: With Fuel, the enterprising former Mrs. John Kluge (now Mrs. Bob Moses) has made her mark as a gourmet gas station extremist. The futuristic purple fueling station/take-out sandwich joint/upscale bistro at the corner of Market and Ninth streets combines cutting-edge design by Madison Spencer Architects with you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me prices. Somehow the whole thing repels and attracts our curiosity at the same time.
Naturally, Fuel is amply stocked with Kluge Estate wines, her earlier foray into the culinary marketplace from her Albemarle home and vineyards south of Ash Lawn-Highland. And amazingly, considering Virginia’s relatively low ranking among wine-growing regions, Kluge has managed to snag plenty of national press for her product, blessing Charlottesville along the way.
But her dogged pursuit of logo-level recognition is no embarrassment to Kluge, as it might be to others of a certain class. On the contrary, it’s part of her grand scheme to join the pantheon of brand superstars (even if her claim to the Kluge surname is—how to put this?—dated). “When you are building a business and expect to have certain standards and certain style, you have to focus not only on the product but on the brand,” she told C-VILLE. “Quality, style, heritage, place—this is what the Kluge brand represents. The customer will recognize the brand. You think of great brands—Coke, Louis Vuitton—people don’t think of just drinks or luggage.”
Maybe it sounds grandiose, but Kluge has plans to pepper the national landscape with Fuels—which, of course, will convey Kluge Estate products, too. Given her knack for getting her name in society rags like W and gossip columns like The Washington Post’s “Reliable Source,” it might not be so far-fetched to think that one day people will say, “Charlottesville? Isn’t that where Patricia Kluge got her start?”—N.B.
THE HEALTH NUTS
Mark and Cynthia Lorenzoni
In 1982, Mark and Cynthia Lorenzoni decided to open a small fitness store on Elliewood Avenue. Only a few blocks from UVA’s fraternity row (a symbol of ’80s-era decadence if ever one was) the Lorenzonis, barely out of college themselves, must have looked like missionaries of the mile, preachers of pronation, heartily advocating health to an audience of heathens.
On the other hand, the speed with which the Lorenzonis Ragged Mountain Running Shop grew up suggests the interest was there from the start. Would the streets of Charlottesville still be filled with as many runners on a warm spring day if the Lorenzonis had set up shop elsewhere? Maybe so. But would the City’s running community be what it is, and would Charlottesville be USA Today’s “most energetic” American city? Most certainly not.
Like any good business people, the Lorenzonis want to make customers for life. What they’re selling isn’t just shoes, but an appreciation for fitness. Indeed, they host running/walking clinics and are almost permanent fixtures at every one of the dozens of events sponsored by the Charlottesville Track Club. Not only that, their second-floor sneaker shop is like a clubhouse for local athletes—be they super-intense ultramarathoners or 9-miles-a-week joggers. (And that’s not even taking Mark’s regular newspaper and radio spots into account). Fitness is like buying a car, says Mark Lorenzoni—if you know to keep the oil changed and to maintain it properly, it will run for a long time.
“In running,” he says, “we think, with more education…people go longer.” Judging from the fact that a great many
of the 1,643 participants in the recent Charlottesville Ten-Miler were over 40, it’s obviously working.—B.S.
THE DREAMERS
Bushman Dreyfus Architects
There are a lot of bricks in Charlottesville. Let’s just call it the “Jeffersonian tradition” of Charlottesville’s cityscape. But what would Thomas Jefferson, the great experimenter, think if his hometown kept designing the same building over and over, for 200 years?
Bushman Dreyfus Architects are dragging Charlottesville—sometimes kicking and screaming—into the realms of modern architecture. As head architects for the City Center for Contemporary Arts building on Water Street (which just picked up a City award for best new construction) and associate architects for the Paramount Theatre, they’re helping remake the Mall into a vibrant, modern urban center that proves tradition can co-exist with contemporary design—and attract the tourist wallet, to boot.
It has been Bushman Dreyfus’s design for the C3A building, as it’s known, with its inventive use of materials like concrete and steel, that has really gotten local tongues a-wagging. In the words of Jeff Bushman, the building “is forward thinking …and it’s led people to question the standard kit of parts that we build with Downtown.” We concur with his assessment that such inventiveness “can only be a good thing.” After all, who wants to always be glancing backward to find out where we’re located?—N.B.
THE LOCAL HEROES
Dave Matthews Band
If philanthropy were merely a promotional strategy for the Dave Matthews Band, it would be easy for them to simply throw some money at the Yanomami tribes in the South American rain forests, issue a press release and be done with it. But that’s never been the band’s style. DMB has given millions to local charities that are as valuable as they are unglamorous, and much of the band’s generosity happens behind the scenes.
Through its Bama Works Foundation, the band has given 172 grants to organizations in Central Virginia since 1998—and the list is growing. In March, the rockers appeared as honored guests at the opening of the Music Resource Center space in the former Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Ridge Street, one of two organizations for which they staged a September concert fundraiser in New York’s Central Park.
High-profile causes like the MRC are only the tip of DMB’s charity iceberg. According to John Redick, who manages the band’s local charity through the Charlottesville-Albemarle Community Foundation, they’ve donated $2,170,286 since establishing the tie. It’s gone to causes like disadvantaged youth, the environment, the arts and more.
The band might be too huge to liven local stages anymore, but that clearly doesn’t mean they’ve lost their interest in fixing some of Charlottesville’s busted stuff.—B.S.
THE EDGE
John Lancaster and Laurel Hausler
Critics may call it tasteless, kitschy, or just plain bad, but the art world no longer questions the validity of Self-Taught, Outsider and Southern Folk art as belonging to a greater movement. And to John Lancaster and Laurel Hausler, founders of Nature Visionary Art, there’s a perfectly good reason for that.
“John says it’s because it’s the most exciting art there is,” says Hausler.
In the six years Lancaster has been operating Nature, first behind the Jefferson Theater as a shared venture with artists/musicians David Sickmen and Eli Simon, and more recently with Hausler in a new nearby gallery, Charlottesville’s folk art scene has become synonymous with excitement. Nature is built on the premise that art training is less important than soul, an idea that appeals to younger artists as well as fans seeking work outside art’s conventional boundaries.
“Nature is good because it provides a venue for artists that might have been shut out of other galleries,” says Hausler.
The couple, planning to be married in September, may no longer be the misfits they once were. With the launch last year of Nature Visionary Art at 110 Fourth St. NE, they’ve fulfilled their vision. The Downtown gallery’s exhibitions of well known Southern Folk artists Howard Finster, Jimmy Lee Sudduth and Mose Tolliver rival not only established local venues, but also major museums and galleries in Washington, D.C., and beyond.—B.S.
THE THINKER
Philip Zelikow
UVA employs many professors who are world famous in their fields. But these intellectual heavy hitters often remain anonymous to many City residents.
One such UVA luminary is history professor Philip Zelikow. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, the institutions he heads probably do. In addition to directing the Miller Center of Public Affairs, Zelikow is the executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States—the so-called 9/11 Commission.
Ten bipartisan commissioners, including Thomas H. Kean and Bob Kerrey, control the 9/11 Commission. But Zelikow’s team of 80 staff members is doing the heavy lifting of the investigation, and has produced reports cataloging intelligence failures, and, as The New York Times reported, drafted the questions for President Bush and Vice-President Cheney’s closed session interview.
Zelikow’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed, however. His chummy relationship with the Bush Administration—he co-authored a book with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and worked on Bush’s 2000 transition team—has led critics to call for his resignation. But the Commission’s aggressive reports have softened these complaints.
When Zelikow isn’t analyzing terrorism, he and his staff at the Miller Center are busy educating Charlottesville about what’s going on in the world. The Center, which Zelikow has headed for five years, regularly brings a bonanza of notable speakers to town—including recent visits by legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and former WMD hunter David Kay—that would make any Washington think tank jealous.—P.F.
THE MONEY
Mark Giles
The new restaurants, office buildings, hotels and homes that continue to bloom around Charlottesville and Albemarle County often start with loans. And though big national banks are required by law to invest in the community, many entrepreneurs seek out the hands-on service of independent, locally owned banks, and chief among them is Virginia National Bank.
Mark Giles is one of a group of entrepreneurs who launched VNB in 1998. The bank immediately stepped into the role of primary community bank, which had recently been vacated by Jefferson National Bank, which sold to Wachovia that year.
Under Giles’ leadership as president and CEO, VNB has grown into a major player on the local banking scene. The bank’s assets increased by more than 25 percent in 2003, standing at $214 million at the end of the year. Also during 2003, VNB increased its loan volume to small consumers by 79 percent and bankrolled $20 million in local real estate construction.
Before helping to start VNB in 1998, Giles headed two banks in Houston and also worked as a lawyer for a Houston firm. Though he’s a Texas transplant, Giles also has local roots, having graduated from UVA in 1977. He earned a J.D. from the UVA School of Law a few years later.
Though VNB had a strong 12 months, the recent sale of Guaranty Bank to a large banking company leaves VNB as one of only two remaining small fish in the Charlottesville pond. The question for Giles is whether he can keep earnings headed up while competing with Wachovia, SunTrust and other swelling bank behemoths.—P.F.