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In brief: statue antics, spelling mishaps, PVCC graduation, and more

On their own terms

If you have a dream, and you focus on it, and you work hard, your dream will come true one day,” Bushiri Salumu told a small crowd assembled at Piedmont Virginia Community College on Thursday, November 7. He spoke from experience: Salumu lost family members to the civil war in his home country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and lived in a refugee camp in Zambia for four years before arriving in Charlottesville in 2012. While working at a car wash and as a housekeeper, Salumu managed to learn English, become a U.S. citizen, and complete his GED. Now, he works at UVA hospital and hopes to become a nurse practitioner.

Salumu was the keynote student speaker at a graduation ceremony for adult learners from the PVCC Thomas Jefferson Adult Career Education program, which offers English language classes, career skills instruction, and GED and NEDP high school credential programs. 

“The United States is a country where dreams can come true,” said Salumu. “It doesn’t matter where you come from or how you look.”

Each of the seven graduates took the podium to tell their story and thank their families and teachers for helping them along the way. 

“I will continue to excel in my own time frame with no regrets,” said Crystal Morris, who earned her GED while juggling “two jobs, two leases, and a crying toddler.”

“To my fellow graduates—our lives may once have held bitterness and sadness,” said Sarah Fadhil, who arrived in the United States in 2017 and joined TJACE to learn English. “But now, all we need to do is look forward, with your head held high, and smile. Congratulations to all of us to succeed in our way.”

 


Quote of the week

Two words have never been spoken in the 400-year history of the Virginia House of Burgesses and the House of Delegates: ‘Madam Speaker.’” —Senator Adam P. Ebbin on Delegate Eileen Filler-Corn’s election as the first woman speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates


In brief

Oops

A judge has dismissed a felony explosives possession charge against a Zion Crossroads man who was pulled over for having expired license plates and arrested when Charlottesville police mistook a tire pressure gauge in his car for a pipe bomb. Police searched the car after smelling marijuana and the department’s newly-hired bomb-sniffing dog identified the device, which police detonated. On Twitter, city councilor-elect Michael Payne called the case “an example of why we need a strong, independent Civilian Police Review Board.” 

Spelling counts

Delegate Nick Freitas failed to get his name on the ballot this fall due to incomplete paperwork, leading the Republican incumbent to rely on a large-scale write-in campaign. But that left voters with the challenge of spelling his name. Culpeper administrators, who had to sift through more than 5,000 write-in votes, accepted Nick Feitas, Nick Freitos, Nick F, and the mononym Friets as legitimate votes, but nixed voters’ choices for Friems, Freton, Freit Rick, Nick Fruit, and NICKTKLE.  

To catch a vandal 

Downtown’s controversial statue of Stonewall Jackson has been vandalized more than once, and Jackson defenders may be taking matters into their own hands: A small camouflaged trail camera and a bell attached to a wire were recently found near the monument. Charlottesville police removed the items soon after pictures were circulated online, and said the camera did not belong to the department. 

Pricey pied-a-terre

Some of the most expensive—and longest unoccupied—residential real estate downtown is finally seeing movement. Architect Bill Atwood’s Waterhouse project, which houses WorldStrides, put deluxe condos on the market in 2015. Most were still empty in 2017, when Atwood said he was “land banking” them, before losing them to creditors in 2018. In September, John and Renee Grisham picked up one of the units for $1.079 million.

Bill Atwood in his Waterhouse project.

Wright stuff

Harold Wright, the founder and general manager of NBC29, will call it quits after 46 years heading Charlottesville’s first TV station, according to the Progress. David Hughes, news director for WDBJ Roanoke, will succeed Wright.

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‘Inexhaustible curiosity:’ Lawyer, banker, civic leader Lloyd Smith dies at 85

 

Lloyd Smith, a founding partner of Tremblay and Smith law firm, Virginia Broadcasting Corporation, the parent company of what is now NBC29, and Guaranty Bank, as well as the North Downtown Residents Association and Park Lane Swim Club, died June 25 at age 85.

“He had a good life and died quietly with his family there,” says his son Garrett Smith.

Lloyd Smith served on myriad civic boards, including that of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, where he was instrumental in acquiring the former post office and federal courthouse for what is now the main library.

His purchase of a rundown Park Street manse, the Marshall-Rucker house, and restoration over 50 years resulted in its listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

When Lloyd and Ashlin Smith bought the house in 1960, there was no zoning, no architectural review board or preservation efforts, says Smith. Early members of the North Downtown Residents Association at times would buy an at-risk house to preserve it, he says.

Lloyd Smith served on pretty much every city zoning board—the planning commission, Board of Architectural Review and Board of Zoning Appeals. He also was a director of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society and served as its president in 1982. And he was a member of the Monument Fund, which is suing the city for its decision to remove Confederate monuments from two downtown parks.

His obituary cites his “inexhaustible curiosity” on far-ranging topics. “He was interested in all kinds of things—architecture, undergrounding [utilities], the law or business,” says Garrett Smith.

Smith was a Marine who served in Korea before obtaining degrees from UVA. Submitted photo

He recalls learning attention to detail from his father, who “spent every weekend of my childhood” restoring the 1894 house. “It’s a process and we focused on details,” learning how to burn paint off wood or how to disassemble a window, says Smith. His father was thrifty and learned how to do the work himself. “That was his hobby.”

Harold Wright, general manager of NBC29, had obtained a license with fellow broadcaster Bob Stroh to start Charlottesville’s first television station, “but we didn’t have the business experience to do it,” says Wright. After teaming up with Lloyd Smith and Gerry Tremblay, “within six months they raised the money” and the station went on the air in 1973.

Smith had a deep interest in history—and in sailing. After he retired, he bought a house on the Chesapeake Bay where he sailed and did historic research. “He loved boating,” says Garrett Smith, recalling trips through Europe on canal boats traveling very slowly.

The Park Lane Swim Club was a neighborhood institution. Garrett Smith remembers the vintage pool empty during his childhood. When his thrifty father decided to restore it in 1980, he asked 10 neighbors to put in $1,000 for a 20-year lease for use of the pool. When the lease expired, the pool was incorporated as a nonprofit and now has a waiting list. The gatherings of the Friday Evening Philosophical Society there were “our Fridays after 5,” he says.

Lloyd Smith “was one of the most interesting men in Charlottesville,” says author Mariflo Stephens, who is a neighbor and member of the pool and philosophical society and Smith’s croquet club. “He was also one of the most generous men in Charlottesville. He could have kept the pool private.”

Garrett Smith says his father would most like to be remembered for the institutions that survive him, such as the bank, TV station, pool club and neighborhood association.

“That’s what he’d like as his legacy—these institutions that made the community better.”

A graveside service will be held at 10am Saturday, June 30, at Riverview Cemetery.