The North Side Witch Hunt: Nabbing Two Sacrificial Lambs

This cover story first appeared in the February 2005 edition of NORTH of the JAMES.

Witch-hunts are curious phenomena, and thoroughly reactionary in nature. They generally begin with an inexplicable event of one kind or other—cows unable to give milk, the outbreak of a disease. When answers are not forthcoming, authority figures, who suck the swill of self-righteousness (consider Cotton Mather or Senator Joe McCarthy), arrive with a solution.

By Charles McGuigan 02.2005

Rosedale: Hidden Gem

As with every other neighborhood in Richmond’s North Side, from Overbrook Road to Upham Brook, the seed of Rosedale was planted by nineteenth-century visionary industrialist Lewis Ginter. It all started with a brick farmhouse and the adjacent 127 acres, which would, many years later, be subdivided into small plats, gridded like the nearby communities of Bellevue and Ginter Park.

By Charles McGuigan 07.2024

Hugging the Shore From Back Bay To Bodie Island And Back

The ocean puts me at ease no matter how restless my mind becomes. Its tireless motion, its union with the moon in the tides, and the timeless lap of water and spit of surf, the spilling up of nearly everything in the world from shells and mermaid’s purses to sea rattles and the ancient ribs of tall ships. (I have found coconuts washed ashore as far north as Delaware; the bumper of a VW down by Hatteras; once, an orange duffelbag filled with lingerie at Sandbridge.)

By Charles McGuigan 08.2006

Virginia Supportive Housing: There But for the Grace of God

This cover story originally ran in June 2018.

If you happen to be reading this story tonight, lounging on your couch, or lying down in your bed, with plenty of light illuminating the words, and the cool, artificial breeze of an air- conditioner keeping the demons of heat and humidity at bay, consider this: Right now there are more than 100 people actually living on the streets in our fair city, though there are far more who are homeless, some 600, which is nothing by comparison to the tens of thousands of homeless folks in cities like New York and Los Angeles. People without four walls and a roof, indoor plumbing, a stove and a refrigerator, the luxury of climate control, music, TV, cable, Wifi. Not even a single bed.

By Charles McGuigan 06.2018

Laura Ann Singh: The Blossoming of a Wildwood Flower

Laura Ann Singh sits on the couch in her sun-washed living room on a day that bursts suddenly with the full promise of spring after many false starts. Coats are long-last shed, and the temperature rises slow and steady as sap. A time of expectation and hope, two weeks before Easter.

By Charles McGuigan 04.2018

Abbie Waters: The Habit of Being 

This cover was first published in April 2012 not long after Abbie’s death. My son attended school with Abbie—they were in the same grade, and I knew Abbie’s parents. Here are links to the two audio stories I produced about Abbie.

I first met Abbie Waters a little over two years ago when I was talking with David Hudson, principal of Holton Elementary School. We found ourselves in the art room and there were only two other people in there with us—Rolanda Scott, the art instructor; and Abbie Waters, a student who was about seven at the time.

By Charles McGuigan 04.2012

Bob Kocher: Once Upon A Time

This cover story about Bob Kocher was originally published in NORTH of JAMES magazine in May of 2005, a little over a year after he opened Once Upon a Vine, the city’s premier wine and beer shop.

By Charles McGuigan 05.2005

John Shinholser: Recovery and Discovery

John Shinholser, who co-founded The McShin Foundation with his spouse, Carol McDaid, back in 2004, recently retired as president and senior peer of the foundation he was instrumental in establishing. This cover story first appeared in NORTH of the JAMES three years before The McShin Foundation was born.

By Charles McGuigan, originally published in 2001

Santa Is Alive and Well and Living in Bellevue

Sometimes, people choose the right heroes or role models and by degrees, through years of emulation, become greater than themselves. Joe Stankus is one such man. From the time he was relatively young he decided to run a business that stressed compassion and fairness toward all employees. It wasn’t a particularly popular notion because profit among many unbridled capitalists has always been the over-riding principle—get as much as you possibly can for as little as you possibly can.

By Charles McGuigan 12.2008

Jonathan Austin: That’s Entertainment!

Jonathan Austin is dressed like a priest, minus the Roman collar—black shirt, black pants, black shoes and black pork pie hat. Slight build, muscular, quick-talking as a street hawker, with an endless supply of one-liners no matter the occasion. Quips spill from his mouth as he begins to perform. He has a feathery touch that lofts bean bag balls into the air. One, two, three, four, and then five, and finally six.

By Charles McGuigan 2015

St. John of Northside

Last December, when temperatures plummeted into the single digits, the City of Richmond utterly failed its citizens who have no permanent shelter. The City had said for many months that it would have four shelters in full operation before winter set in. But, of course, the City failed to meet this deadline, and as a result of this poor planning, numerous people suffered immeasurable pain. This piece with St. John of Northside was first published more than eight years ago. John still works his corner.

By Charles McGuigan 2015

Nina Kilian Peace: In the Name of Justice

Nina K. Peace was a force of nature and a brilliant litigator and judge who was crucified by a gang of petty men in Virginia’s General Assembly. Seven years after this story appeared, Nina died suddenly and Hanover has never been quite the same. 

We walk into  a place on 301 within throwing distance of the courthouse that’s part general store and part antique dealer and part deli.

By Charles McGuigan 1997

In the Heart of the Chickahominy

This cover story first appeared in June 1999, four years after the founding of NORTH of the JAMES magazine. 

It is a river you want to wrestle one on one like a crocodile in an old Tarzan movie, but a small dagger will never subdue the upper Chickahominy. You need to climb inside it, plod through the heart of its secret interior. It is not the sort of river you can paddle down with leisure. Though the water is flat, it is obstructed, and its spongy shores—swamps a mile wide in some places—flutter and slither and creep with an abundance of hidden life that waits in silence to make its move. It is unlike any other river in all of Virginia. 

By Charles McGuigan 06.1999

Steve Moore: The Joke’s On Us 

This story about Steve Moore, a comedian and a writer, was published in February of 2009. For years after returning from California, Steve lived in Richmond, and on May 24, 2014, at the age of 59, he passed away in his native Danville, Virginia. 

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 sometimes the very worst kind, that we learn if we’ve got the right stuff. And that right stuff invariably seems to be the ability to laugh death and disaster in the face, send it on its way to where it rightfully belongs. That’s what Steve Moore owns. 

By Charles McGuigan 2009

Bishop Walter Sullivan: A Man of Peace

I meet with Bishop Walter Sullivan just before Holy Week at his residence, a stone’s throw from St. Paul Catholic Church, and throughout the interview we can hear bells tolling. His three schnauzers are out in the back yard where there is a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi. Bishop Sullivan’s car, parked in the rear of the house, bears plates that read “PAX JUS”, which certainly reflects his stance on war. “Peace and justice,” he says. “The Latin for justice was just too long for the license plates.”

By Charles McGuigan 2006

Melvin Major: Fathers And Children

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. 

By Charles McGuigan 2014

The Pamunkey River: Sweet, Sinuous, Southern

We are creatures of flight. Always have been. Always will be. I think it’s a remnant of the persistent evolution that pulsates through every cell of our being, motivating change whether we will it or not. We run from some thing or to some thing, but are never truly sedentary, unless we choose the life of the walking dead.

By Charles McGuigan 2005

Oliver White Hill, Sr.: Liberator of the Commonwealth

Oliver White Hill, Sr.’s voice wavers as he begins to  recount his life. He was born just 42 years after the Civil War ended, in the capital of the Confederacy, when blacks in the South were still little more than slaves, at best second or third class citizens. As a young man he became a freedom fighter and patriot of the same magnitude as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

By Charles McGuigan 2003

Christmas Magic on MacArthur Avenue

Kaitlyn Overman, age 4, dropped seven gifts into the Sgt. Santa box at Dot’s Back Inn, which made her eligible to win one of two bikes purchased by Bob Kocher, owner of Once Upon A Vine, and one of the organizers of the first annual Christmas on MacArthur. As fate would have it, Kaitlyn won one of the bikes a week later on Christmas Eve at the time of the drawing.

By Charles McGuigan 01.2006

Citizen Kaine

Councilman Tim Kaine is a man of the people. His father ran an iron-working shop in the stockyards of Kansas City, and as a high school student at Rockhurst, a parochial school, Tim traveled to Honduras to the site of a Jesuit mission. That changed his life for good and all. 

By Charles McGuigan 07.1995

Sylvia Phillips Regelson: The Elegance Of Simplicity 

There’s nothing else like it in the Richmond area, and I suspect few establishments similar to it anywhere in America. Entering Ouroboros out at Hanover’s Antique Village is like visiting a museum in your best friend’s home. There’s an air of informality and ordered clutter, but the contents are rare, one-of-a-kind pieces of art, and the proprietor, the curator, Sylvia Regelson, is a woman who has a personal attachment to every single item within her shops.

By Charles G. McGuigan

Four Kites Ascending Over A World Without Mirth

 (Editor’s Note: This is the first in a new series for NORTH of the JAMES. Each month we will feature a story from our archives. This one appeared in our February edition sixteen years ago, just one month after the horrific Harvey family murder.) 

On New Year’s Day the tapestry of Richmond was cut clean through. Woof and warp were rent and no artful needlework will ever make the fabric seamless again. Like a scar in flesh, the seam of time’s repair will always be a reminder of the moment the frail threads of life were severed.

By Charles McGuigan