30 Year Commemorative Stories
This page is dedicated to housing the 30 stories featured in our commemorative issue of NORTH of the JAMES.
Lawrence Douglas Wilder
by Charles McGuigan 02.1995
Governor Lawrence Douglas Wilder, former chief executive of Virginia, embraces obstacles and encumbrances, every challenge he encounters, as opportunities to live life fully.
George Spagna: Contemplating the Universe and God
by Charles McGuigan 08.1996
George F Spagna, Jr., has been turning his eyes toward the heavens, in more ways than one, since he was a boy. As an astrophysicist he daily glimpses the wonders of the universe, made manifest in blackholes and quasars, planets and stars, asteroids and comets.
Page Wilson: Feeding Music to a Hungry Audience
by Charles McGuigan 10.1997
Page Wilson songwriter, announcer, voice talent, performer, entrepreneur - is a force of nature. Almost volcanic in his eruptions about the pure bred American mongrel music he loves, Page spews his lava over the airwaves every Friday night from the studios of WCVE-FM 88.9.
David Baugh: The Man Who Would Be Robin Hood; Woe to the King’s Men
by Charles McGuigan 06.1998
The law offices of David Baugh are located on the ground floor at 223 S. Cherry Street. His is a working desk, and as the phone rings, he takes the call. “I occasionally sue the police for fun and profit,” David says with an explosive burst of laughter. “I know you’ll take this in the Christian way it is intended.” Pause. “Bite me.”
Hiking the RF&P From Acca Yard to the North Anna River
by Charles McGuigan 04.1999
The RF & P Line is almost arrow straight from Acca Yard to the North Anna River, forming the spine of metro Richmond’s North Side through the city and into Henrico and Hanover counties. It was one of the earliest and most important train lines in America, literally linking the North and the South, and during the Civil War each side tried its damnedest to control the track.
Cycling North Side
by Charles McGuigan 09.2000
It is a loose itinerary that will take me from one neighborhood to the next, from the city to Henrico County and out through the rural reaches of Hanover. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s an Odyssey of 75 miles without purpose, except for the sheer pleasure of looking, and moving on self-propelled wheels.
The Boulevard: A Continuous Avenue of Culture and More
by Charles McGuigan 07.2001
The Boulevard is a majestic avenue that runs about six miles from the James River to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. Though its name changes three times on its course - from Boulevard to Hermitage Road and finally Lakeside Avenue - it is essentially beeline straight from south to north, linking the City of Richmond with Henrico County.
Richard Lee Bland: Portrait of a Painter
by Charles McGuigan 08.2002
I have an image of Richard Bland from Bicentennial Summer. Late July, the air textured with humidity. He is wearing shorts, and his legs are brown and spindly. The vest he wears is covered with daubs of oil paint and his hair is like a wild cloud spun of copper that hovers above him.
Oliver White Hill, Sr.: Liberator of The Commonwealth
by Charles McGuigan 02.2003
Of the 726 people I have interviewed since this magazine’s inception eight years ago, Oliver White Hill, Sr. is the only person I have felt compelled to address as Mister. This is by no means to diminish the importance of past subjects, and the respect I have for them, but there is something about Mr. Hill that demands a different sort of respect.
Jay Ipson: The Original Survivor
by Charles McGuigan 12.2004
As everyone knows (or should know), in 1933, a failed artist and non-smoking vegetarian and tea-totaler, who subscribed to a whacky quasi-religion, came to power in Germany. He was a pale-faced man with a weak moustache, a bad comb-over and no sense of humor whatsoever.
Sgt.Santa: It’s A Wonderful Life
by Charles G. McGuigan 12.2005
I don’t know why it is, but certain members of our human race seem intent on destroying faith in virtually all that is good. Not long ago, it came to my attention that a grown man decided it was his mission in life to dispel belief in Santa Claus for a nine-year-old girl. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that Santa Claus prepares us for deeper faith.
Refuse Collectors: Talking Trash
by Charles G. McGuigan 10.2006
It’s always struck me as odd that people who perform the most vital services are often paid the least—firefighters, police, teachers, and refuse collectors. While the sleaziest and least productive members of society, the blood-sucking leaches, lobbyists and their kindred, are carting off cash in barrels.
The Powhatan River: Canoeing From Richmond To Jamestown
by Charles McGuigan 06.2007
In the past fifteen years or so I have come to know, in a manner always shy of friendship, two mega-developers, in all cases, men, who routinely seize great tracts of land and alter them utterly, covering them with obscenely expensive and ill-conceived houses that bear price tags in the millions, netting them massive profits.
Autism: Early Intervention
by Charles G. McGuigan 02.2008
Back in 2003, shortly after my son’s second birthday, I began noticing things about little Charles that didn’t seem quite right. I was reluctant to talk with his mother about these behaviors, but they were there all the same. They were small things, insignificant, yet they seemed symptomatic of something dire.
Steve Moore: The Jokes On Us
by Charles G. McGuigan 04.2009
Charmed lives lack for something. If you’re born in a state of nirvana or somehow privileged as a member of the elect, what’s the point? It’s only through trials, and the very worst kind, that we learn if we’ve got the right stuff.
Rolanda Scott: On The Art of Teaching
by Charles McGuigan 07.2010
Rolanda Scott can take a chunk of solid glass, drop it in a flower pot then super heat it in her kiln, turning it into liquid, which she then pours it into a mold, creating a sculpture unlike anything else in the world.
Mattie River: A Life
The Death of Mattie River
by Charles McGuigan 03.2011
Mattie River looked like a puppy when we first found her. She was small and frightened, could barely stand on her own paws. Her wants seemed so insignificant—food, water, warmth, a little love—yet it was apparent she had had none of these things for a long while.
Virginia’s Barrier Islands: A Nomadic Archipelago
by Charles McGuigan 07.2012
and the waters and salt marshes that surround them represent the most pristine coastal region on the Eastern Seaboard. Unlike the barrier islands that parallel the shore from New York to Florida, those in the Old Dominion are not connected to the mainland by causeways, bridges or ferries.
Slipping Away
by Charles McGuigan 07.2013
Frances Hilary McGuigan is my mother, though I’m tempted to say was my mother because there’s so little of her left now. Alzheimer’s sucks an entire life away, bit by bit at first, almost imperceptibly. There were small things we hardly noticed in the very beginning. She’d forget names of people she’d known for years, or place names.
Melvin Major: Fathers And Children
by Charles McGuigan 12.2014
Aristotle said it best: “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Whenever there is a void in our lives we fill it, consciously or otherwise. Too often, people try to fill that hole with anything that’s available, things that can create a deeper hole, a hungry mouth that demands to be fed but regardless what and how much you feed it, it is never sated, for it is an abyss, a vast yawning gap, without end.
Live Art: Sounds Of The Human Soul
by Charles McGuigan 06.2015
Music is salvation. Raw salvation. The need for it rooted deep in our cerebellum. It penetrates the ears and prickles every nerve ending, radiates from the gut to untangle knotted ganglia, to coax sense out of the senseless, to restore faith in humanity. In short: to redeem the soul.
The Mountain People: Betrayed by Their Nation
by Charles McGuigan 11.2016
You have to feel the mountains to know the mountains. See the mountains to love them. These Blue Ridge, these Alleghenies—the Appalachians. The very earth crumpled like the largest comforter in creation, as if all it would take is one mighty tug to flatten the creases, erase from the land every depression and elevation, iron out each ridge until the scape laid down like a great central plain of patchwork uniformity.