Ron Campbell, the artist who produced “The Beatles” cartoon series and contributed to Yellow Submarine, is visiting Charlottesville for an exhibition of his work at Graves International Art starting on September 30. Courtesy of the artist
Ron Campbell is best-known by legions of Beatles fans for his work directing the cartoon series “The Beatles” and animating parts of Yellow Submarine, but his résumé is deeper than that. After working on various Beatles projects, he went on to animate, produce and storyboard “Scooby-Doo,” “The Flintstones” and “Rugrats.” Campbell’s creative fingerprints are all over decades of cartoon history. He also spent 10 years working on “The Smurfs.”
“Actually, I love ‘The Smurfs,’” Campbell says. “For a long while it was rather like the European comics. …Gradually [the network] would bring in new elements. Networks are always doing this kind of thing when ratings drop a bit and it always seems to ruin them. Like Scooby-Doo had Scrappy-Doo. And it didn’t work with ‘The Smurfs.’ …They brought in Baby Smurf. Lovely. But they also had a ruling from the network that everyone could carry Baby Smurf except for Smurfette. Because of women’s lib sort of stuff. In point of fact, all of the girls watching the show identified with Smurfette and would have loved to hold Baby Smurf. We were shooting ourselves in the foot.”
Beginning on Friday, September 30, Graves International Art will exhibit Campbell’s original watercolor paintings of characters from the many shows he has worked on. Campbell will be at the gallery on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, doing live painting, signing (and sometimes even doodling on) memorabilia for fans.
“He’s very personable, vital, energetic,” says John Graves Sr., owner of Graves International Art. “He loves working with the public. When you buy a signed print, he’ll usually do a little sketch for you at the same time.”
Psychedelic pop artist and former Charlottesville resident Peter Max has often claimed to have been responsible for the art and animation of Yellow Submarine, but Campbell says that isn’t true.
“Al Brodax [the producer] confronted him once and said, ‘Why do you always let people think you worked on Yellow Submarine?’” Campbell says. “And Brodax says he said that ‘It’s so complicated to tell people that I didn’t.’ Peter Max had nothing to do with it. I’ve even heard Peter Max made up a whole story about how The Beatles called him up and asked him to do it. But The Beatles were happy to give us the songs and go away. Peter felt like he owned the psychedelic look and, in a way, he did.”
“For me especially, given my generation, given the connection to The Beatles, my favorite [art by Ron Campbell] would be the Yellow Submarine work,” says Graves. “I love the head Blue Meanie. He’s a fantastic, surreal character.”
Shows such as “The Beatles” and “The Flintstones” were originally aimed at an adult audience as much as they were toward children. Over the course of Campbell’s career, cartoons became more typically designed for children, with tie-ins to toys and breakfast cereals. But when working on “Rugrats,” he and the other writers found ways of winking at any parents who were also watching. Were the frequent mentions of Dr. Lipschitz, fictional child psychologist, an attempt at getting away with something? “Damn straight!” says Campbell.
Graves believes his gallery is a natural location for this particular show. An original Andy Warhol print of a can of Campbell’s soup greets visitors as they step through the front door. And prints by pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Jim Dine are displayed too.
Campbell’s work also has a slight connection to Art Spiegelman, the great cartoonist and author of the Pulitzer-winning graphic novel, Maus. Early in his career, Spiegelman made ends meet by creating the classic Garbage Pail Kids cards for Topps. Campbell was hired to help turn the cards into a TV show. It didn’t go well.
“I’m proud of everything except for the ‘Garbage Pail Kids,’” Campbell says. “I worked on a few episodes for CBS and I’m not sure that the show ever aired. Whatever the merits of the cards were, the show was just vulgar.”
Livery Stable's beer-based Moscow mule unites a German radler with Bombay Sapphire and lemon juice. Photo: Ryan Wheeler
High-proof liquor is usually the main ingredient in a mixed drink, but the lesser-known category of beer cocktails bends the traditional definition. It’s a little-known fact that many of Charlottesville’s bartenders regularly mix up beer cocktails. These are often made for themselves or friends who are in the know, but rarely appear on a formal menu. We decided to ruin the secret by asking bartenders at three different bars in Charlottesville to share their favorite off-the-menu beer cocktails.
Chris Kyle, manager and bartender at C’ville-ian Brewing Company, blends in orange juice to make a surprisingly refreshing “beermosa,” which is an off-duty favorite among the staff.
“A beermosa is similar to a mimosa but instead of using a sparkling champagne we use a hefeweizen,” Kyle says. “When I tried it with our hefeweizen, which has a lot of pineapple notes in it, this was like combining peanut butter and jelly.”
LW’s Livery Stable, just off the Downtown Mall, is well-known for its signature Moscow mules served up in traditional copper cups. But by special request, patrons can order a beer-based version. “We call it the working man’s mule,” says bartender Ian Dugger. “We use a can of German radler [beer] blended with Bombay Sapphire gin and lemon juice.”
Perhaps the most complex beer cocktail in town is the Banana Boat, made by Christian Johnston at Tavola in Belmont. “The cocktail uses the banana esters of a nice saison,” says Johnston. “I use a white rum that’s been infused with cocoa shells and Chinese five-spice. I mix in a little passion fruit, Dolin Blanc, which is a vermouth, with a little lime, topped off with some Pale Fire saison.” The result is a rich, complex and aromatic drink that isn’t on the menu.—Jackson Landers
Part of manager Chris Kyle’s plan to improve C’Ville-ian Brewing Company includes not only new beer and new staff, but also live music and events. Photo by Ryan Jones
“Out of 56 places in Charlottesville to get beer, we’re rated number 56,” says Chris Kyle, the new manager of C’Ville-ian Brewing Company. “Dead last in all categories.”
That’s a strange thing for a business to admit, but the folks at C’Ville-ian have started a process of redemption akin to a 12-step recovery process. They have admitted that they have a problem, taken inventory, apologized to those they’ve hurt and started to make amends by brewing much better beer.
C’Ville-ian was opened in 2014 by Steve Gibbs, a veteran of the Iraq War. Gibbs had a vision of a brewery that would attract other military veterans and give them a place to feel comfortable. “He’s passionate about that as a cause,” says Kyle. “He thought that opening a veteran-owner brewery in Charlottesville would be a good idea. There’s a big learning curve in there, trying to do all of that by yourself.”
Things didn’t go well. One early reviewer noted, “The owner is still a little overbearing, but at least in a nice way. Brushing your teeth with guests around is a little weird. …The beer ranged from sophomoric to infected and terrible.”
In a town full of world-class breweries, the standard for beer is high. C’Ville-ian became a notorious flop. The bar was dirty, the atmosphere uncomfortable and the beer tasted like a bad homebrewing experiment. An investor filed a lawsuit against the business, which is ongoing.
Finally, Gibbs faced reality: While his vision for a veteran-oriented brewery on West Main Street might work, he needed to step away and put someone else in charge. Gibbs accepted a military contracting job in Afghanistan (he could not be reached for comment), asked his mother to make any major business decisions in his absence and hired Kyle to step into a situation reminiscent of an episode of “Kitchen Nightmares.”
Kyle cleaned house—literally and figuratively.
“When I came in the staff was a little demoralized,” says Kyle, who decided to part ways with all of them. “It had become common in their minds that this was the way it had always been and this was how it should be. The place was rundown, it was dirty, it was missing some type of character. …If you don’t have the best beer on the block and your place looks like crap, that’s a recipe for disaster. So that was an immediate thing.”
On a recent Thursday afternoon, the bar was visibly cleaner and remodeling had started. A wooden “firing line” had been built to safely accommodate a dart board for patrons’ use. American flags are still boldly displayed. Kyle poured a flight of beers that was nothing like the C’Ville-ian of old. Standouts included a pineapple wheat beer, perfect for hot weather, and a rye-based IPA.
Kyle brought in a contractor, brewer J. W. Groseclose, to design recipes for the new brews, and Alex Bragg handles the day-to-day brewing operations. Their challenge is making beer with equipment that can only brew beer in 25 gallon batches. Refrigerated space is limited, making the lagering process impossible. They can only make ales using yeasts that tolerate fluctuating temperatures.
“We’ve got about 12 to 14 days from grain to glass,” says Bragg. “That gives us just a little bit of time. We’ve just got to keep everything moving. It’s tight in here. We’re doing what we can with what we’ve got. …We had to come up with our own carbonation system.”
As they’ve turned the brewery around, business has picked up. Suddenly, C’Ville-ian has a problem that it’s never faced before—the prospect of running out of beer to sell. “We are at the limits of our environment in terms of what we can make,” says Kyle. At some point, they will have to figure out how to cram a larger, closed brewing system into a brewing space the size of a walk-in closet in Farmington.
Two new breweries are about to open nearby: Random Row Brewery on Preston Avenue and Hardywood, only three blocks from C’Ville-ian on West Main.
“Even though we’re on the same brewery map next to those places, we’re the only nano-brewery in Charlottesville,” says Kyle. “We don’t distribute and won’t distribute. Everything we make, we’re going to sell in this location.”
UVA Baseball's Justin Novak brings his A-game to the Charlottesville Tom Sox. Photo: Amy Jackson
Justin Novak’s fingers were bleeding. A Band-Aid flapped uselessly from one of the cuts that had been pummeled for nine innings by balls thrown and hit hard to third base. The white knickerbocker-style pants of his UVA uniform were streaked with dirt. The stadium was almost empty and the lights were shutting off. He walked into the pressroom and sat down. He never mentioned his battered hands.
The Charlottesville Tom Sox are a new baseball team. In only their second year, they are still building a local following and an identity. This year they will start the season with an extra incentive for fans to come out and watch games. The Tom Sox will have Novak, a member of the 2015 College World Series-winning UVA baseball team. Wrapping up his second year at UVA, Novak excels as a hitter and a base-runner, and serves as a utility player who can play almost any position on the field. He was forged as a player in Tokyo, in the world’s most disciplined and challenging system of youth baseball.
“Practices from elementary school were from eight in the morning to six at night every weekend, so you’d have to pack a lunch,” Novak says. “Every weekend and Japanese holiday was filled with practice and repetition in baseball, unless there was a game.”
None of the American players whom Novak faces grew up on 10-hour baseball practices. It has produced a rare focus and discipline.
“My dad’s actually an American,” says Novak, in perfect English. “He’s from a small town in Illinois. But he was in the Air Force. So we were stationed in this place called Yokota Air Base until I was in eighth grade. Then he retired from the Air Force and he got a job with the [U.S.] State Department [in Japan].”
In an April 15 UVA home game against North Carolina, Novak played third base. That position is often called the hot corner, because so many balls from right-handed hitters head in that direction. He grabbed ball after ball from the air or off the ground and made perfect throws to get runners out. Each time, the same thing without hesitation. “Playing baseball in Japan, there’s a lot of emphasis on repetition,” says Novak. “Doing something right until you can’t do it wrong.”
Novak came up to the plate in the bottom of the third inning and swung at the second pitch. A line-drive went out to center field. He ran to first base. As the pitcher faced the next batter, Novak began creeping toward second base, preparing to steal. Four times the pitcher threw the ball to the first baseman, attempting to pick Novak off. Four times Novak dove for the base and beat the tag. He advanced to second base on a single and then ran for home plate on a double, barely beating the tag by the catcher, and scoring a run.
UVA baseball dates back to 1889. Its first game was against Richmond College (UVA won 13-4). Baseball gloves were in their infancy and most players still caught balls bare-handed, resulting in badly battered hands. In those days, there was no rotation of starting pitchers or a staff of relief pitchers to step in when a player was worn out. A team had one pitcher who threw every pitch of every game. Injuries were frequent, and most pitchers had short careers as they burned their arms out.
Justin Novak, a member of UVA’s NCAA Baseball College World Series championship team, will likely rotate between second and third base this season for the Charlottesville Tom Sox. Photo: Jim Daves, UVA Media Relations
Japan’s baseball history goes back almost as far as the United States’. An American ex-pat introduced the game in the 1870s. The rules are the same as American baseball, but the culture is different. American baseball has a reputation for being a somewhat relaxed sport. We call it our national pastime, whereas Japanese baseball is seen as almost a martial art and is connected to the ancient samurai concept of bushido, the way of the warrior.
“Japanese baseball is all built on pride,” says Novak. “It’s all internal. Even if you are a small player, you’ve got to be tough. Know the fundamentals.”
“A player like Justin with a story like his, there’s nobody else like him in the league,” says Mike Paduano, director of operations for the Tom Sox. Players from the Japanese system rarely enter the American college baseball system.
The Koshien high school baseball tournaments in Japan are considered every bit as serious as major league baseball is in the United States. “High school baseball in Japan is really, really popular,” says Novak. “It’s televised, just like March Madness over here. They will have the TV on in the clubhouse and all the professional teams are watching their old high school compete in Koshien.” Novak’s Koshien experience has uniquely prepared him for the pressures of playing for America’s top-ranked college baseball team.
“It’s so serious that the coaches blow out the kids’ arms and stuff like that,” Novak says.
High school players may be asked to throw more than 100 pitches in a single day and then brought back to the field to do it again the next day. The intense demands on players at all levels of Japanese baseball lead to a high rate of injuries and shortened careers. Novak may be fortunate for being skilled at playing every position on the field except for pitcher. He arrived at UVA with two healthy arms.
“That’s what we absolutely love about Justin,” says Paduano. “This year, I’ve seen him play second base, third base, shortstop and catch. He’s a heck of an infielder because of his soft hands and his quick feet. I think he’s got a good range. I think between second base and third base is where we’ll utilize him a lot this year. We love his versatility.”
In the game against North Carolina, Novak came up to bat in the bottom of the eighth inning. The bases were loaded with two outs. The stadium erupted in cheers. The pitcher stared at Novak for a long time before a timeout was called. North Carolina’s players and coach held a meeting at the pitcher’s mound. A relief pitcher was brought in to stop Novak and end the inning. Two strikes and three balls were thrown. Then Novak hit a ball foul to stay alive.
On the next pitch, he slammed a ball by third base and a runner scored.
“I felt calm today,” Novak said after the game. “I was seeing the ball pretty well today, which was pretty awesome. When I get into two strikes I actually tell myself in Japanese, ‘You gotta win it. Katsu-sol, katsu-sol, katsu-sol.’ Which is, katsu means win. …Like, ‘I’m gonna win this, I’m gonna win this pitch, I’m gonna win this pitch.’ Growing up through a Japanese baseball system, I picked up a lot of slang. I think in Japanese a lot of the time.”
Novak struggled as a hitter in 2015 with a .100 batting average but is now batting .297. Anything better than .250 is considered good in the major leagues. (Batting .300 means that a player hits the ball on average three out of every 10 times he comes up to bat.)
“I started on opening day last year and I struggled a lot. I only had like six, seven hits, and I hit below .100,” he says. “Going through that struggle I learned a lot about myself. …It’s just really humbling knowing that sometimes you make mistakes and you just have to learn from it. Things don’t go your way all the time. I’ve definitely gotten mentally tougher.”
“I’ve watched Justin in 40 or 45 games this year and last year,” says Paduano. “And what he does best is just go 100 miles an hour all the time and give 110 percent every single time. He has this intensity. You can’t stop him.”
Novak, a rising third-year at UVA, honed his skills in the rigorous Japanese Little League system. Photo: Jim Daves, UVA Media Relations
The Tom Sox represent the return of summer baseball to Charlottesville after decades without either a minor league or summer college team. Long ago, Charlottesville was a big baseball town at certain times of the year. Before highways and planes made Florida accessible, the Boston Red Sox conducted spring training in Charlottesville, starting in 1901. The predecessors of today’s Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins also used Charlottesville for spring training in the early 20th century. UVA’s Lambeth Field hosted all of them, as well as other major and minor league teams that passed through to play exhibition games.
Novak didn’t think he had much of a chance of getting into UVA through the baseball program. “I visited, and honestly I didn’t think I was going to go here because they were ranked No. 1 at the time,” he says. “Surprisingly, they rolled the dice on me. I’m really thankful for the coaching staff for seeing whatever they saw in me. I’m trying to go out there every day and prove them right and just do whatever I can to help the team.”
UVA’s final exercises were last weekend, and the first Tom Sox game starts at 7pm on June 1. Playing at their home field at Charlottesville High School, the C-VILLE Weekly ballpark, the Tom Sox players will have been together for less than two weeks when they begin competing. But, unlike spring training for major league baseball, all the players will arrive fully tuned-up after months of playing college ball.
Three players from the 2015 Tom Sox team will return. A trio of pitchers, Brian Fortier, Josh Sharik and Zach Cook, was part of the inaugural 2015 team that came within one game of making it to the playoffs. And three Charlottesville residents will be coming home from college to play for their local team: Harvard’s catcher, Jake Allen, pitcher Michael Dailey of VCU and Liberty University outfielder Jack Morris.
Fan turnout for the Tom Sox’s inaugural season was solid. “We had usually at least 400 people at most games and sometimes we had a few thousand,” says Paduano. The bleachers were almost always near-full, and picnickers dotted the outfield. Elementary school-aged Little League players ran in packs with gloves, running to catch foul balls and crowding the exit from the dugout to ask for autographs. To a third-grader, these guys are heroes. Real baseball players whom they might see in major league uniforms before long.
When the Tom Sox take the field on opening day, for most fans it is just a baseball game. But for the players, the stakes are higher. The Tom Sox play in the Valley League, an organization dating back to 1897 that fields college players who are driven to hone and demonstrate their skills during the summer. Top-level college players hope to get drafted by major league teams. Otherwise, their playing careers will typically end after graduation. Major league scouts will likely be attending Tom Sox games incognito and looking for young players to sign.
With a batting average above the norm and a set of skills that can put him anywhere on the field, Novak might have a better chance than most at getting the attention of a major league ball club. But he says he tries not to look in the stands during games—his focus is on the game: Katsu-sol.
“That’s the dream, obviously,” says Novak. “That’s the reason why everyone’s playing right now. But I can’t get caught up in all the scouts and stuff like that. You just gotta try to live in the moment.”
Getting into character
One of the Tom Sox mascot interns dressed as Cosmo the Sheepdog and entertained participants at Relay for Life last Friday at Charlottesville High School. The baseball club’s prairie dog mascot will make its debut at the team’s home opener on Wednesday, June 1. Photo: Ryan Jones
On a recent Thursday evening, Joby Giacalone’s enthusiasm wasn’t dampened by the threat of rain at Charlottesville High School’s baseball field. “This is a very exciting time for us,” he told his summer interns, who were sitting in the bleachers with their parents. “We are on the ground floor of something that hasn’t been done before.”
That something is the creation of a mascot for the Charlottesville Tom Sox, the Valley League baseball team that will kick off its second season on June 1 against the New Market Rebels. With a couple weeks to go before the team’s prairie dog mascot makes its home opener debut, Giacalone has his work cut out for him: He will train two high school students in the art of mascotting—something the 54-year-old knows a thing or two about.
In the early 1990s, Giacalone earned his living as Dinger the Dinosaur, MLB’s Colorado Rockies mascot. He also worked briefly as the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets mascot, and was employed for five years as Homer the Dragon by the AAA Charlotte Knights baseball club. After retiring from professional mascotting in 1995, Giacalone moved to Charlottesville, where, in addition to taking an IT job at the University of Virginia, he served as the Cavman coach for several years. He also created Cosmo the Sheepdog, who appears at a variety of local events every year.
Cosmo performed at eight Tom Sox games last season, but “what we’re doing now is developing a character with the goal to teach,” Giacalone says. “I want to show our organization and the fans what having a true mascot—not one who stands around and shakes hands—can do for an evening of fun.”
After each game, he wants every person in the stands to say, “I can’t wait to come back.” According to Giacalone, the Tom Sox led the Valley League in attendance last season, with an average of 675 fans a night.
In addition to introducing the community to the team’s new mascot, Giacalone intends to “create an internship program that will be here 30 years from now; a place where people will come to learn and hone the craft that is sports mascotting. I hope [some of our interns] really aspire to continue to do this—it is not easy, and it’s not just putting on a costume and acting like an idiot.”
A few weeks earlier, Giacalone had set up a mascot recruiting table at CHS, hoping to interest curious students on their way to lunch.
“It smells like a sweaty sock in here,” said one after pulling on the massive dragon head Giacalone brought along. “Now gimme the paws!”
Giacalone complied, and then helped her attach a large dog tail, explaining that “a tail is fun because you can hit people with it.” Once suited up, the potential intern waded unsteadily into the noontime crowd, joyfully whacking anyone who got close with her newly acquired body parts.
“One of the reasons mascots never stop moving is because they’re like a cartoon,” an amused Giacalone explained.“If a cartoon stopped moving, it would just be a drawing.”
And then he opened his computer and shared an image of the Tom Sox prairie dog costume, which is still being fine-tuned. “This is version three,” Giacalone said. “The first one looked way too much like Yogi Bear. A prairie dog is a very unique character, and I knew going in that it would be a challenge in the looks department.” He said he wanted a character that is cute and “cartoony,” but doesn’t restrict the performer in any way: “A costume you can run around in.”
The prairie dog, who is being named via an online contest, will wear a blue Tom Sox No. 3 jersey (think third U.S. president). Giacalone told a small group of CHS students that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, while on their Thomas Jefferson-commissioned expedition, encountered the creature for the first time in Nebraska, and sent a live one home to the then-president of the United States.
Two of those students are now in the stands at the baseball field, listening as Giacalone explains that they will trade off working the 21 Tom Sox home games this season. The duo, who will remain anonymous until the final game when their identities are revealed, will entertain the crowd pre-game, participate in mascot-fan races around the bases and perform between a couple of innings at every game. When not in costume, they will assist the intern who’s working as the mascot that night, as well as learn about other Tom Sox-related jobs, such as ticketing, music and announcing. The prairie dog will also appear at functions and events throughout the year, to “keep baseball in the community’s mind,” Giacalone says.
“I love baseball,” he adds. “Every boy wants to be a major league player when he grows up. And I did wear a major league uniform during major league baseball games. But mine had a tail.”
The Charlottesville neighborhood of Fry’s Spring has an unofficial mascot: a pale white deer that pops up in residents’ backyards, surprising and delighting them.
“I saw it out the window,” says Virginia Rieley. “I went outside to see if I could get a closer look. I was surprised when I went out it didn’t run away. It seemed really used to people. I just kinda hung out and inched closer and closer. It stared back at me for a long time.”
The white doe has been seen regularly in Fry’s Spring for at least two years. In 2015 she successfully reared a pair of fawns, both of which had normal coloration.
The animal is not part of a separate species of white deer—it is a whitetail deer like all other local deer, and its white coloration can be caused by any one of several abnormal genes. Some are albinos, which lack all pigment, typically develop serious problems with their eyes due to sun damage and are extremely rare. But the Fry’s Spring deer is probably not an albino. “The hooves are dark and everything,” says Rieley. “It didn’t have that kind of pink look.”
Deer can also be all or partially white if they are piebald, which results from a different genetic anomaly than the albino gene. Piebald deer may have a few splotches of white hair or be entirely white, but will always have dark eyes and hooves. According to Virginia’s Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the genetic mutation that results in piebald deer is frequently associated with other harmful physical conditions, including skeletal deformities, such as bowing of the nose, short or deformed legs and a curved spine, and internal organ deformities.
The Fry’s Spring deer outwardly appears to be healthy. To protect the genetic health of the overall population, scientists do not recommend special protections for white deer.
“I’ve seen her a total of three times,” says Andrew Sneathern, a local attorney. “Always in our backyard and always with other deer.” White deer are typically not ostracized by other deer and are able to socialize and mate normally. Depending on whether their mates also carry the white gene, their offspring can be either white or typical.
Other white deer are spotted sometimes around Albemarle County. A white fawn was frequently sighted in the vicinity of Blenheim Vineyards in 2015. Less than five miles from the Fry’s Spring doe, the Blenheim fawn may be a close relative. Several white deer have been taken in the last decade by hunters near Stony Point.
The white Fry’s Spring deer is probably safe from all risks except cars and malnutrition. While coyotes are local predators of deer, they only occasionally hunt within city limits, and humans are not allowed to do so within the city.
Drug Treatment Court coordinator Susan Morrow works often with Albemarle Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Baird. She says the program is a lot like boot camp. Photo by Martyn Kyle
“I’m tired of being addicted to crack cocaine,” announced a heavy-set man in his early 60s from the front of the courtroom. “I’m free. I can pay my bills on time. I can truly be with my wife.”
The Charlottesville/Albemarle Drug Treatment Court celebrated the graduation of two participants on March 31 from the program that started in 1997.
When Robert Tracci was elected Albemarle County’s commonwealth’s attorney in November, new referrals to the drug court from his office appeared to dry up for a time, and some people feared drug court would no longer be viable without new participants from the county.
“For the last five or six months, prior to the changeover, we were getting more [referrals] from the county,” says Susan Morrow, drug court coordinator, when asked about the rate of referrals. “When Mr. Tracci first started there was definitely a lull. And I think it might have been having a whole bunch of other stuff thrown at him.” Immediately upon taking office, Tracci assumed responsibility for the Jesse Mathew Jr. murder cases.
Tracci says he was doing his due diligence on the referrals. “I can tell you, there were a couple of cases where the former commonwealth’s attorney agreed to permit people to enter drug court who were not otherwise eligible,” he says. “I had to do my due diligence. That doesn’t reflect a lack of interest in drug court but a commitment to the criteria.”
Defendants plead guilty to the charge and agree to begin a process of constant supervision and treatment for drug use in exchange for eventually having their charges dropped. Getting through drug court takes a minimum of 12 months and about 35 percent of graduates will reoffend within three years, compared with more than 80 percent of similar defendants who are sent to prison instead.
“While people are here they are in an extremely rigorous program,” says Morrow. Participants are drug-screened five days a week, in treatment four days a week and in court in front of a judge once a week. If they have a positive drug test they could be incarcerated. Doing time is a lot easier, says Morrow. “Trying to fix an addiction is really hard. The two folks you saw graduate today, for 12 months it was like boot camp.”
Throughout the morning after graduation at drug court, participants took turns standing before Judge Richard Moore, who looked over paperwork for each and asked them how their week had gone. Sometimes he praised someone for his honesty or for finding work. In other cases, he chastised laziness or poor excuses.
Moore seemed to be part judge and part therapist. “Being sober scares me,” confessed one man. “There are so many things I’m running away from.”
“I know,” replied Moore in a sympathetic tone. “Drug court is about drugs not having control of your life.”
Most people in the program have more problems with which to deal than just drug addiction. “Many of them have mental health problems that have not been diagnosed,” says Morrow. Some have problems with their living situation, and the program refers them to other agencies, including Region Ten.
Opiate and heroin addiction cases are more prevalent than what the drug court was seeing three years ago, says Morrow.
Tracci agrees. “There isn’t as much of it here as there is in other counties [in Virginia] but it has been on the rise,” he says.
“I’m a supporter of the drug court,” says Tracci. “I’m committed to drug court in appropriate circumstances. This provides an alternative to incarceration and reduces recidivism. There is constant monitoring. Overall, no system is perfect, but this one shows great promise.”
Since drug court’s first docket, about 350 people have graduated while 50 percent flunked out and were required to face the conventional justice system, often serving time behind bars.
Back at drug court graduation, the wife of the man who was tired of being addicted to crack stood up to speak. “I can go to sleep before he gets home,” she says, “and I don’t have to worry if he’s out getting high.”
Betsy Gilbertson loved dancing, and a friend describes her as “magical.” Gilbertson died of a heroin overdose March 14.
Photo Brian Wimer
“She was found with a belt around her arm and a syringe in her hand,” says Anne Elise Hudson of her daughter, Elizabeth “Betsy” Gilbertson. “It was pretty instantaneous. She shot up, her heart stopped. Someone found her within minutes, maybe seconds.” CPR could not save her, and on March 14, the Charlottesville resident died of a heroin overdose. She was 25 years old.
“She was an absolutely magical person,” says her close friend, Yasmine Vielle. “She drew people to her in such a way that was remarkable.” Gilbertson brought people out of their shells and got them to look at what was holding them back, says Vielle. “She’s done that to me and I think to everyone. …It’s remarkable that a person can have that type of magic within them.”
Vielle saw her Friday night, March 11, about 14 hours before she heard Gilbertson had overdosed. “And she looked very happy and [was] just dancing,” says Vielle. “She hugged me and kissed me on the face.”
Gilbertson was a lover of music, travel and dance. She sometimes performed as a fire-dancer, spinning a flaming hoop. She sketched pictures incessantly, says her mother. “At one point in 2010 I asked her, ‘What do you want to do?’” Hudson says. “She was 20. And she said, ‘What I want to do is run away and join the circus!’ She was clean for six months. She had goals and aspirations.”
Says Hudson, “What is interesting about heroin addiction is that overdoses are most common in people who have been away from it for a long time and then come back.”
In 2015, Gilbertson was arrested for possession of heroin and sentenced to three months in jail. “She went through withdrawal in jail,” says Hudson. “It was vomiting and shaking and all they could give her was Tylenol. And then she was clean.
“Heroin addiction is terrible. It’s a horrible physical, painful thing.” Despite the difficulty of Gilbertson’s withdrawal, jail was the safest place for her, says Hudson. “She wanted to quit but not badly enough to go into rehab and cut off connections with the people in her life.”
Heroin addiction is enough of a problem that Charlottesville has a methadone clinic. According to Kyle Austin, executive director of the clinic, Addiction Recovery Systems, Virginia’s heroin problem is an epidemic.
“Among our patient population we see various forms of opiate use,” he says. “Everything from heroin addiction to prescription pain medication.” A lot of people who get involved in opiate use do so after one bad medical accident and becoming addicted to prescription painkillers, he says. “Once that happens, if the patient gets hooked, then it becomes much easier for them to get involved in heroin use,” says Austin. “It could happen to anyone.”
Police are unable to provide specifics about heroin use locally, other than that 44 grams of heroin were seized in 2015. Lieutenant Steve Upman with Charlottesville Police says, “Compared to a few years ago, use of heroin and prescription opioids has been on the rise both nationally and in Virginia.”
Friends and family believe the fatal dose was Gilbertson’s first and only relapse into heroin use after months of recovery. She was transported to the University of Virginia hospital and maintained on life support, says her mother. Her body was cooled down and gradually warmed up in an effort to preserve brain function. Her pulse became irregular as her temperature was raised. An MRI indicated that her brain had stopped functioning because of oxygen deprivation. On March 14 she was taken off life support.
“I was going to put an obituary in the Daily Progress,” says Hudson. “I’m her mother. I put in the obituary and they verified that she is truly dead. And I wrote that she died of a heroin overdose and they said that they would not print the cause of death because it is too sensitive.”
Gilbertson’s friend, Corey Croson, doesn’t think she would be ashamed for the world to know about her struggle. “Betsy never treated her addiction like it was some shameful secret and I don’t think she would want anyone else to either,” Croson says. “She owned everything about herself. She recognized it for the problem it was but she didn’t shy away from the reality that it was and [from] its gravity.”
Croson recalls, “She loved art, she loved making art. She loved consuming art. She loved music, she loved travel. She loved making other people smile and bringing them on adventures with her. She was everything that she had wanted to be.”
Gilbertson also loved fashion. “She reinvented her look a ton of different times and she had fun with it every time,” says Croson. “She started off with long blonde hair and pea coats and just New England to the bone and I think I have seen more hairstyles and custom-made clothing and patchwork leather pants than anyone else.”
Adam Steffler, a friend and recovering addict who has been clean for seven years, sympathizes with Gilbertson’s struggle. “The only way to get out of this pain that you’re in is to use again,” Steffler says. “But then you feel so guilty about doing it and it’s this continuous cycle.”
“Everyone seemed to know Betsy,” Steffler says. “Everybody could say, ‘We don’t know anybody else in common but we knew Betsy in common,’ and I think she introduced a lot of people and brought a lot of people together.”
Her distinct looks and outgoing personality won her friends instantly. Gilbertson would often meet new people at a festival or party and find herself leaving on a cross-country road trip with her new friends the next day, according to her local friends. Somehow, she always landed on her feet and made her way home. Smiling and full of new stories.
When her addiction reached its worst point in 2015, her best friend, Catherine Muse, says, “Her skin was bad, she was underweight. It was also her personality. She was just kind of, she was muted. It wasn’t like her old sparkly self. She was being very selfish. And it was really hard to be friends with her at that time.”
But after Gilbertson kicked heroin and was released from jail, Muse reunited with her at a concert. “I saw Betsy in the front row, dancing,” Muse says. “And from the back of the room I saw her dreads and I made a beeline up to her. And she gave me the biggest hug and she had gained about thirty pounds since she’d been in. She looked clean and happy and healthy. She had the biggest smile… It was like we were re-meeting each other. She was old Betsy. She was the way that she used to be.”
Croson says Gilbertson “was glad that she was able to get clean in [jail]. She had all sorts of plans for when she got out and she would work her way through her situation by exercising and giving herself something to do physically. She would create art, even in jail and she’d mail it to me. She agreed that [being in jail] helped and in some cases she needed it.”
Gilbertson got out of jail January 8. “She did want to be clean, but one slip and it killed her,” says Hudson.
Steffler talks about the two times people die. “You know, when your physical body leaves the Earth, and the last time someone says your name or tells a story about you,” says Steffler. “Betsy is going to live for a long, long time. She’s not going to be forgotten by anybody who really knew her.”
Virginia’s coywolves, a hybrid between western coyotes and eastern timber wolves, are often black in color. Also called eastern coyotes, they are 66 percent coyote, 24 percent wolf and 10 percent dog. Photo: Jon Way
A lone, gray pickup truck with its headlights off rolls along the gravel road in the pale light of a full moon. The truck stops along a tree line in front of a long, broad field and two camouflaged men get out. They close the doors slowly so as to not make any noise. The men sling their rifles over their shoulders and whisper about where to begin. Down past the woods? Over at the neighboring farm?
A long, chilling howl erupts from the woods across the freshly cut hay field in front of them, followed by a chorus of yips and more howling. Mike Hummell watches and listens. He zips up his jacket against the cold. “You want to hunt that?” he asks his hunting partner, Marshall Koontz.
Hummell and Koontz are specialist hunters who respond to calls from concerned residents about predators preying on their flocks of sheep, herds of cows, etc. Working pro bono last week, they had received a call from a farmer concerned about a top-level predator that has recently arrived in Virginia—the coywolf. Also called the eastern coyote, the coywolf is a hybrid of western coyotes and eastern timber wolves, and it may represent an entirely new species.
For most of human history, wolves have been feared and hated. They ate livestock and occasionally attacked humans. Virginia’s first government bounty on wolves was enacted at Jamestown in 1632. As settlers moved west, the slaughter accompanied them across the continent and bounties continued to be paid in some states into the early 20th century. The removal of wolves enabled the expansion of the coyote.
For thousands of years, coyotes were restricted to the American West in part because of competition with wolves. The larger predators attack coyotes to protect their territories from another canid, which competes somewhat for prey. With the wolves gone, coyotes began to expand their range. As young, lone coyotes went in search of new territories they sometimes encountered remnant populations of eastern timber wolves. In small dating pools, love blossomed between two species that would normally fight.
The hybrids are larger than western coyotes and smaller than eastern timber wolves. A pure-blooded male western coyote tops out at under 30 pounds. A male timber wolf averages around 67 pounds. Male coywolves typically weigh in at around 35 pounds, especially if they manage to live for more than two years. None of these animals is large enough to threaten a healthy adult human.
Janis Jaquith, a long-time resident of Free Union, had her first encounter with what she believes was a coywolf in summer 2004. She watched her flock of eight guinea fowl walking toward her house at dusk with a coyote following them.
“That animal didn’t care that I was there at all,” she says. “It was just kind of sauntering maybe six feet behind the last guinea fowl. So I went over to it and I clapped my hands together and said, ‘Get out of here you bastard, get out of here!’ This thing didn’t care at all. A dog would have been spooked and gone away. …It looked over at me out of the corner of its eye like a teenager and then kind of raised its chin and slowly sauntered off to the side into the woods.”
Within a year, nocturnal predators had wiped out most of the flock.
Scientific research into Virginia’s coywolf population began in 2011. Dr. Marcella Kelly, professor of wildlife studies at Virginia Tech, has been contracted by Virginia’s Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to study the diets of coywolves. Complaints from deer hunters of dwindling prey in Bath and Rockingham counties prompted the agency to look into whether coywolves are responsible.
“We have the breakdown of their diet,” Dr. Kelly says. “It’s 45 percent deer. Deer is the primary thing in their diet; voles is the second-largest component. Believe it or not, the next two are mast (edible parts of woody plants, such as acorns and rose hips) and insects. Vegetation, blueberries, stuff like that. We’ve got squirrels, rabbits, and the last one is birds. …I think you do have to worry about pets. They’re a predator like any other predator. They’ll take a pet if it’s there and they are hungry. With sheep, there is an issue. There are problem animals. It’s not that the population as a whole does this, but some individuals specialize in it.”
The coyote hunters have their own opinions about the eating habits of coyotes, owing to years of observation of their behavior and picking apart their scat.
Specialist hunter Marshall Koontz responds to calls fron concerned residents about predators, such as coywolves, preying on their livestock. He said he’s seen an uptick in the local coyote population in the last 10 years. Photo: Amy Jackson
“Oddly enough, they eat more cow pies than cows,” says Hummell as he sets up a shoulder-high tripod during his moonlight hunt. “Everybody thinks that coyotes eat nothing but meat. They actually are more of a fruit-eater than anything. One of their favorite foods is persimmons, oddly enough…granted you are gonna see them eat rabbits, they eat small game, they love fox. It’s one of their favorite food groups, the red fox. They don’t mess with gray fox too much because they can’t catch them. Gray fox can climb a tree.”
To the top of the tripod Hummell fastens his rifle, a suppressed AR-15 with a night vision scope. Koontz sets up a bolt action Remington Model 700 on his own tripod and flips on a thermal imaging system. Blowing a tubular caller dangling from a string around his neck, Hummell begins producing a series of long howls. Koontz follows with a series of yips from his own caller. The pair adds up to a convincing facsimile of a rival pack of coyotes. Within seconds, the real coyotes begin to respond. Closer, this time. They are on the move.
“Typically, people get a misconception,” Koontz says. “They say, ‘I heard 10!’ But when they’re out moving back and forth, two can sound like a dozen. …Their core area is usually gonna be in a thick, dense spot, abundant in small game to where they don’t have to fight for food. That’s why when you hear them barking at each other, two different packs, it’s this pack here is trying to intimidate that pack.”
Hummell and Koontz continue to challenge the pack that is audibly moving toward the tripods and rifles. A light switches on in a house about 300 yards away. Shouting is heard from inside.
People worry about coyotes: farmers with livestock, families with pets and children. But Kelly says attacks on humans are rare.
“As for humans, there have been very few attacks, but they’ve happened,” she says. “I don’t know that anyone has ever been killed by a coyote. In those attack situations, there’s usually extenuating circumstances. (There is) very little risk in terms of human attacks.”
The distinct sound of a screen door slaps shut from the nearby house. A yelping chorus of beagles erupts. Hummell and Koontz watch and wait to see if the dogs will deter the coywolves from coming within range. Even as he peers through his night vision scope with his finger hovering on the outside of the trigger guard, Hummel advises a certain amount of tolerance for coywolves.
“If you come into an area where it’s really quiet and you know there’s coyote activity that usually means that you have a very big one there, the alpha,” he says. “The alpha is something that keeps other coyotes in check. …Let’s say you have goats over here and one goat is being eaten every month, month and a half. (If you) shoot that alpha, he’s what’s keeping these coyotes in check because they’re not gonna mess with him. You shoot him and these other packs no longer have a sense of intimidation. They’re gonna come in; they’re gonna clear your goats out. They’re gonna eat every one. It’s one of these things where you need to pick and choose your battles. …This pack over here isn’t allowed to come in here. That’s why you still have goats.”
Science is bearing out some of what Hummel has observed in the field. Kelly’s research shows that poorly planned hunting can make a coyote problem worse.
“When you take out coyotes, it leaves this big space and more coyotes come in,” Kelly says. “Then they have a really big litter the next year. It does not make a big difference when you take out a lot of animals. You can try, and people are trying with bounties. The coyotes in Bath County have about a 50 percent chance of living for six months [due to hunting by humans], but their reproduction is really fast. When Chicago did a big cull a few years ago, they had litter sizes of 14 pups the next year.” The average litter size is six.
Most eastern coyotes are genetically about 66 percent coyote, 24 percent wolf and about 10 percent of DNA originating from domestic dogs. The genetic contribution from dogs is relatively low because dogs may go into heat and become pregnant at any time, while wolves and coyotes have a reproductive cycle closely timed to the annual calendar. (Pups born in the late summer or fall will probably not survive in the wild through winter.) A 2009 study showed that all black wolves and coyotes in North America owe that gene to hybridization with European dogs. Virginia’s coywolves are often black, demonstrating their ancestry.
The coywolf diet mainly consists of deer (45 percent), along with voles, vegetation, squirrels, rabbits and birds. The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries commissioned a study in Rockingham and Bath counties to determine if coywolves there were responsible for a declining deer population. Photo: Jon Way
In the course of her research, Kelly noticed a slight advantage to being a black coywolf. “We had one black coyote who lasted for years [without being killed by hunters], we think because he looked like a dog and had a [tracking]collar on.”
Hummell and Koontz listen as their unseen prey changes direction. Previously on a trajectory headed for their guns, the coyotes turn away as the pack of beagles does its job. As the hunters know all too well, coywolves are not shy about approaching human settlements.
“I hear coyotes every night, their yips quickly escalating into an unnerving crescendo and then falling silent,” writes Albemarle County resident Lilia Fuquen in an e-mail. “Sometimes I think they must be less than a quarter mile away; they sound like they’re closing in on the house.” She lives nine miles outside of Charlottesville’s city limits.
“During the summer of 2014, our flock of hens began to dwindle, quickly,” writes Fuquen. “They were free-range hens that had survived several years, but over the course of a week, half the flock was taken. Foxes and coyotes had discovered them. One afternoon, I was gardening out front when I heard one of the surviving hens squawking at the back of the house. I tore around the house at a full sprint and saw a tall, lanky, mangy-looking coyote lurking on the back porch, less than four feet from the back door of the house. It stopped, looked at me and just stood there. After a split-second, I began screaming wildly and flailing my arms about, running toward it. It turned slowly, glanced back at me over its shoulder, and in no hurry, sauntered down off the porch and away into the fields beyond the house.”
“I know farmers and friends and they’ve complained about them a little bit,” whispers Koontz as his quarry disappears into the night. “Most of them around here you don’t hear about them attacking the cows because they put more bulls in every lot, which seems to keep the attacks down. …Typically coyotes don’t fool with the cows a lot unless they’re sick or getting ready to calve.”
With their diets incorporating so much whitetail deer, it may seem like the coywolves may be filling the ecological niche left when wolves were exterminated from Virginia in the 1800s. But Kelly doesn’t think it’s that simple. Unlike wolves, “coyotes are sort of nature’s garbage collectors,” she says. “They will eat a lot of different things. We’ve lost so many predators. They’re not necessarily filling the wolf niche. Wolves hunted in a fundamentally different way from coyotes and can take much larger prey.”
While coyotes are omnivores that dabble in a lot of small game, wolves specialize in hunting animals of more than 100 pounds. In Virginia, they likely ate a lot of elk and bison. The last Virginia bison was killed in 1801 by Daniel Boone’s youngest son, Nathan, and elk have only just been reintroduced to deep southwest Virginia. The ecological context for pure-blooded wolves, a natural predator of the coyote, to exist in the Commonwealth of Virginia has disappeared.
And it isn’t clear that coywolves are killing all of the deer that they are eating. Kelly’s method for studying their diet involves picking apart scat to see what types of hair and bone fragments are in it. Virginia’s steady supply of road kill could be providing some amount of that deer hair and bone found in the samples being studied. One of the most surprising results of Kelly’s study has been finding that Virginia bobcat populations had been significantly underestimated. Many samples of scat that had been visually identified as coming from coyotes or foxes turned out to be from bobcats. Some of the hypothesized new predation on deer may have come from bobcats or other predators.
“Bears have increased dramatically in the last 10 years,” Kelly says. “The predator community here is pretty amazing. We took scat samples and analyzed them and 50 percent were bobcats. The number of bobcats is pretty large. It’s a pretty interesting system with this increase of bears, introduction of coyotes and we have a lot more bobcats than anyone realized. “
There is no official estimate of the total population of coyotes in Albemarle County. The mixture of habitats and available food is different from the steep wooded mountains in the region Kelly is studying. But the consensus among local coyote hunters is that roughly there is a pack of coywolves ranging from a lone alpha male to up to a dozen individual coyotes for every five square miles in Albemarle County (726 square miles). If that is true, that would be about 145 groups of coyotes in the county, with a total population somewhere between 500 and 1,000. Albemarle’s mixture of woods and cultivated fields offers an ideal mix of habitat for coywolves.
The pair of coyote hunters quietly pack up their tripods, night vision gear and rifles—time to move on. They combat sub- freezing temperatures in two more locations known to harbor problem coyotes before giving up for the night. Repeatedly, packs of domestic hunting dogs ran off the coywolves as the hunters were calling them in.
“Probably about 10 years ago we started seeing [coyotes] a lot and it’s just exploded,” says Koontz. “I have seen, deer hunting, when I’ve retrieved a deer I’ve seen the coyotes on it instantly. They go after the weak. They don’t go after the strong, per se—unless they’re really hungry. Each coyote is different. Some are aggressive, some aren’t.”
Other stuck trucks: Bad luck manifests in (left to right) July 2012, July 2010, and January 2007. Photos by Lisa Provence and Hawes Spencer.
The crash of a garbage truck into the railroad trestle on the UVA Corner was a jarring sight on August 5, but it was hardly an unfamiliar one. Large vehicles cram themselves into the gap between bridge and road with a regularity about equal to the appearance of streakers on the Lawn.
The height sensor and alarm, installed in the early ’90s, rarely seem to make much of a difference. Corner regulars know that the sound of the clanging bell is more likely to precede a crash than it is the sound of brakes, and we run and crane our necks to see what sort of ridiculous situation a Class B driver has gotten himself into this time.
Usually it’s just a box truck looking embarrassed. Over the years, odder things have occasionally resulted. In 1995, a bus from West Point slammed into the 113-year-old bridge, peeling back the roof like the top of a tin of sardines. A horde of confused cadets in tidy uniforms poured out and attempted to take control of a situation which was clearly beyond them.
Local lore has it that a cargo of live chickens took advantage of a crash to exit the vehicle in the 1950s, and Paul Jones, a former Corner business owner and current Libertarian candidate for Congress, recalled a series of collisions in the 1970s.
“This delivery truck just peeled the top off and grapefruit was knee deep all across the road,” Jones said. “The driver was standing there trapped and couldn’t go through and was telling people to just take the grapefruit.”
“I used to see a lot of them hit,” he said. “After a few years of being up there you could just tell that a truck was going to hit…you got to know whether a truck was going to make it or not. I used to just stop and put my hands over my ears because I knew it was going to be a terrible noise when they hit.”
Don’t feel badly about our instinct to laugh at these truck-jamming incidents. The crashes generally happen at low speed and the bridge is high enough that people are rarely, if ever, hurt.
Extraction methods vary. Sometimes all they have to do is back up. In other situations, the twisted metal of the wreck has locked with the structure of the bridge like a pair of whitetail bucks with their antlers terminally entwined. Letting some air out of the tires is usually good for a few inches.
Zane Craig, operations manager for the Buckingham Branch Railroad, which leases the tracks from CSX and Norfolk Southern, said the crashes come regularly every few months. According to city police, there have been five since last January. After every collision, Craig said, the bridge is immediately shut down for inspection. Even after all the assaults, major repairs have never been required.
“Pretty much that thing is built like a tank,” he said. Good thing, too, since in all likelihood, the crashes will keep happening. So will the rubbernecking. And it will continue to be hilarious to everybody but the drivers—until someone attempts to deliver a load of giraffes to West Main Street.
