Stafford Airport showcases predecessor to Wright Brothers
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Dual Celebrations
World War II veteran honored as he turns 98
BY TRACY BELL
AWorld War II veteran living in Stafford County’s Falls Run neighborhood was honored on Veterans Day for his service – as well as for being the oldest-living WWII veteran in his 55-plus community.
Two days later, Richard “Dick” Haas turned 98 years old – and both celebrations served as a tribute to a life well lived.
Some might wonder what the secret is to a long life. “Good Scotch,” Haas joked, with a knowing chuckle.
Haas, a U.S. Navy veteran originally from New York, took the honor in stride – both proud and humble, not knowing quite how to feel about the accolades.
He is one of nearly 160 veterans in Falls Run, which has annually paid tribute to its heroes with a wall of honor and ceremony for 23 years.
Supported by family, friends and more than 150 people, Haas attended the ceremony at Falls Run’s community center, off U.S. 17 in Falmouth. It was complete with songs and stories about beloved veterans, including Haas, who received a Quilts of Valor quilt from the Stafford Piecemakers Quilt Guild as a thank you for his service and sacrifice.
Haas served in the Navy for four years, working as a photographer’s mate, stationed in Norfolk in the Atlantic Fleet aboard the USS Albemarle – a seaplane tender. He joined the Navy following in the footsteps of his father, who served in World War I.
When Haas was discharged from the Navy, he was a petty officer third class.
Haas said he never saw combat but traveled all over. He couldn’t cite a favorite
spot because “all of it was new.”
He recalled some lighter, enjoyable times in the military, like when the Albemarle would “ferry groups back and forth from England.”
But as it is with war and military service, there were bad times, too.
One memory etched firmly with Haas for good, was in 1947 when he was on an island in Puerto Rico, assigned to a photo gunneryrange exercise, and went out to get lunch.
Upon returning, Haas was met with a large blast that killed nine men in his observation post. As it turned out, a bomb had been mistakenly dropped on the post during wargame exercises. Newspapers were on strike at the time, Haas said, so word of the tragedy didn’t even see a New York newspaper.
After his time in the military, Haas studied and earned a degree in education, then taught for a year.
He did not particularly enjoy the New York City school system, so he went into physical therapy, where he remained for 43 years. Haas attended Columbia University and took classes at Presbyterian Hospital. He was also a water safety instructor for the American Red Cross for 30 years – and his training came in handy one day in 1963.
Dick Haas served on the USS Albemarle, part of the Atlantic Fleet, for four years during and after World War II.
Haas was on a hospital bus on New York’s Welfare Island – again on his way to lunch – when the bus driver had a heart attack, Haas said, and the bus plunged into the East River.
Seven people died, but Haas saved himself and rescued two women – making them three of the four survivors – by prying open the bus door, swimming and pulling the ladies to shore.
It was “mainly because of knowing lifesaving skills,” Haas said matter-of-factly.
Haas went on to get married and have his own family after meeting his now-wife on a blind date. Rita Haas celebrated her 90th birthday in October.
The couple lived in Rockville Centre, on New York’s Long Island, before moving to Stafford County in 2002. They have been married for 66 years.
Over the years, they welcomed two sons –Michael, a Stafford resident and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, and Alan, who lives on Long Island – and eventually six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
“We feel so blessed to still have them with us,” said Mike Haas, speaking for his family about his parents.
In Falls Run, Dick Haas enjoys pastimes
like golfing and fishing.
“One thing about Falls Run,” Dick Haas joked, “is that there’s not enough time to do nothing.”
He’s also involved in another pastime – scouting, which has been special to him for the past 88 years. Haas became a scout as a child in New York City, highlighted by meeting the founder of scouting, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, and shaking his hand at the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens.
As an adult, Haas served as a scoutmaster for four troops over the years. After moving to Stafford, he joined Troop 26 in the Aquia District.
It’s been very much a family affair, with four generations of his family involved in the same district, including his son Mike, Mike’s son and daughter-in-law and their sons.
Dick Haas also nicknamed himself “The Ancient One,” or the acronym “Tao” for short, so that scouts could differentiate him from the other “Mr. Haas” – his son – in scouts.
Scouting has been too much fun to not keep going, according to the elder Haas. “I have enjoyed it very much.”
Tracy Bell is a freelancer who lives in Stafford County.
A Better Tomorrow
Owner of new comic book store wants to pay it forward
ARTICLE AND PHOTOS BY ERIC ALTHOFF
struggled as a young man. Comic books gave him an avenue to learn to love reading, even while his teachers struggled to help him overcome his disability.
“They didn’t know what was wrong with us, so it was very hard growing up,” McKee recalls, adding that he eventually found his own reading workarounds. “We were put into broom closets that you could tell were janitor closets that were turned into classrooms. We were put with the autistic kids, [and] we would protect them.
“I was one of the lucky ones. There’s people who are not as fortunate and [didn’t have] as many opportunities. So I want to give that back to [others].”
It’s little wonder that Kent McKee owns a comic book store.
After all, he was named after Superman’s human alter ego. He was adopted, just like the Kryptonian alien Kal-El, who was renamed Clark Kent by his human parents. And his father was born in 1938, the same year the Man of Steel first showed up in Action Comics. And, like the fictional Kents, McKee’s father was also from Kansas.
“Everybody else in my family has been named Robert. So it’s kind of funny that, being adopted, I got named after Superman,” McKee said recently at Time and Space Comics, which he opened in a shopping center on Garrisonville Road in late summer. The shop is essentially nerd-vana –not only for comic books but also for a broad range of pop cultural treasures, from vintage Star Wars action figures to a mockup of the Holy Grail from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and a model of the Technodrome from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe.
In addition to comics dedicated to Superman’s many exploits, the shop allows visitors the chance to leaf through the printed adventures of the Phantom and the Shadow –the latter a favorite of McKee and his dad. You could spend hours here, which is the entire point.
“The Stafford community needed something for the kids,” said McKee, adding that he often sees a rush of the afterschool biking crowd. “I picked [Garrisonville Road] because this is where the schools are, this is where the kids are. I’m trying to bring back the old-school feeling of stores like…Blockbuster that were around. It’s a place you want to come back to.”
ORIGIN STORIES
McKee, a lifelong dyslexic, says he
Superman, right?’”
McKee’s collection started when his mother took him to a convention with “maybe five dollars” to spend. A benevolent vendor handed the young man a stack of Batman comics, which he described not only as a seminal moment of his childhood but a good deed he now aims to pass on.
McKee’s father died in 2017, followed by his mother in 2022. Encouraged by his wife, Courtney, McKee put his inheritance into the space on Garrisonville Road, turning it into the ultimate ’80s-style hangout. (Early investors included the owners of the similarly themed Tosche Station in Springfield.)
from “Tron,” and where games are free. A full-size Stripe from “Gremlins” peeks out mischievously from behind a wall, his signature white mohawk stylized by Courtney.
Little wonder Courtney is a fellow traveler in the geeky lifestyle – and, like many budding nerds, she sometimes suffered for it. Due to her height, people often called her “Wonder Woman” or “Amazon.” Though primarily a fan of horror, she said she got more into comic culture thanks to the “Iron Man” movies and extended MCU universe.
One way McKee gives back is by traveling to local schools to hand out comic books to show kids, in his words, that reading “doesn’t have to be boring.” And if a young customer isn’t “sold” on his particular recommendation, he will allow them to trade it in at the store for something else.
“I used to skip Sunday school just to go to the local comic book store in Vienna, and I would hide [comics] in my suit,” McKee recalls. “My dad said, ‘You don’t have to hide it; you know you were named after
During McKee’s earlier career as a trucker, he visited “almost every comic book store in America,” so he knew precisely what Time and Space could, and should, be. And, as a professional videographer, he says attention to detail is everything. Therefore, his shop is “a compendium of…the best of everything I’ve seen,” including allowing for ample wheelchair accessibility.
And interactivity. An area in the back features signage boasting “Flynn’s Arcade”
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!
Courtney and Kent met on a night out with mutual friends. On their first official date, he wore a Superman shirt. Courntey learned quickly about his similarities with the superhero.
“His dad used to tell him that they found him in a ship in the woods,” Courtney recalled. “It’s amazing how much we clicked – we just kept talking about movies and comic books. He asked if I’d ever seen ‘Tucker and Dale Versus Evil.’”
Five years later, the couple has a house, the store, a cat and two dogs – one of them named Tucker.
Although their planned Superman-
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Kent and Courtney McKee in their store on Garrisonville Road.
Wonder Woman wedding was upended by COVID, they nonetheless got engaged at Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash in Red Bank, N.J., owned by filmmaker and noted comic book fan Kevin Smith. Kent proposed in front of the “Buddy Christ” statue from Smith’s “Dogma,” one of Courtney’s favorite movies. (In one hand was a ring, in the other a comic with Superman and Wonder
Woman kissing on the cover.)
The name for the store came from the couple’s shared mantra: “I love you through all time and space,” which they said sprang from their shared fondness for Doctor Who. Courtney even gifted her husband a pocketwatch with the phrase engraved on it. When the pandemic essentially mothballed McKee’s videography work in
Washington, Courtney encouraged him to chase his dream. Their love language even infuses how they run the business.
“We’ve traveled through ‘time and space’ to find you what you want,” Courtney said.
Although she is often found at Time and Space Comics chatting with customers, Courtney, who has worked in retail for 25 years, maintains her retail career so the couple can have health insurance. She brings that experience to Time and Space in terms of product layout and balancing the register.
“[Whenever] I walk in here, I’m still amazed and I see my childhood everywhere,” Courtney said, noting the prominent SheRa castle donated by the owners of Tosche Station. “Every time somebody comes in they notice something new.”
THE HERO’S JOURNEY
For the first several weeks after Time and Space opened this summer, McKee wore a Star Trek uniform – he was the captain of this enterprise, while his employee, Ramses, was “first officer.” (Unsurprisingly, the shop later hosted a Halloween party.) The fun didn’t stop there: Staff still engage in cosplay every Friday, and McKee and his first mate can
often be found playing video games inside their arcade. Customers often join in.
McKee, an Eagle Scout, said that in addition to recommending comic books, he will also dispense such practical skills as helping youngsters learn to tie a fishing hook. This sense of community, he feels, has been somewhat lost in an era when Amazon can deliver essentially anything by morning.
“After COVID, it wasn’t just [needing] to open a store; you need to open a store that people actually want to go to and want to be in and have an experience while they’re there,” McKee said.
Caleb Poole, one of McKee’s frequent customers, said Time and Space has effectively become his home away from home.
“I’ve enjoyed how Kent has created a community here,” Poole said. “He has taught me so much about characters I didn’t know existed and the importance of characters I love like Batman and Spider-Man. Kent has become … a mentor in life and a good friend that has helped me in my journey.”
Another frequent shopper is Donn Wilson, who unexpectedly discovered Time and Space one day en route to Walmart. Wilson, an avid collector of comics and vintage toys, expresses his joy at that sense of “re-found” childhood that is essential to McKee’s mission.
“I found it to be a breath of fresh air –something new and unique in Stafford,” Wilson said. “The customer service is great, and the environment is quite fun and exciting.”
McKee continues his mission to encourage kids to read by handing out comic books, especially to those who may not be able to afford them – allowing McKee to pay it forward so many years after receiving that free stack of Batman books. In addition the business sponsored Mountain View High School’s fall play.
McKee wants to continue fostering this sense of belonging in Stafford “for the next 40 years.”
“[Going] to Target and picking up a toy from the toy aisle, that’s not a story. No, going to your first comic book store is,” he said. “I walk into my own store every day, and I [help teach] kids how to read. I’m doing my dream.”
Eric Althoff is a freelance writer who lives in Stafford County.
For hours and more information, visit timeandspacecomics.com
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Stafford Airport showcases predecessor to Wright Brothers
BY ERIC ALTHOFF
In honor of the 30th anniversary of “Speed,” here’s a pop quiz: Where and when did the era of heavier-than-air flight commence?
If you said at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903 then you…are…wrong. Believe it or not, the first successful test of such a craft occurred right here in Stafford in 1896.
Seven years before Wilbur and Orville Wright flew their powered plane on the Outer Banks, Samuel Pierpont Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Museum, successfully flew his unpiloted Aerodrome #5 over the Potomac River near Quantico. On May 6 that year, Langley made two flights of Aerodrome #5 at a speed of 25 mph, with the craft splashing down in the river.
“He flew it in Stafford County, Virginia, [for] a minute and a half. Right here.
And nobody knows about it,” said Chris Hornung, president of the Langley Flight Foundation and chief development officer of Rappahannock Development Group, a residential real estate developer. “In some circles he was kind of laughed at, [but] after three years of testing, he successfully flew the first airplane for 3,300 feet.”
Langley’s plane took off from Chopawamsic Island, a secluded hovel in the Potomac that is home to hunters and just a few hundred feet from the Marine Corps’ operations at Quantico. Among the first flight’s witnesses was none other than Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the
PHOTOS BY DOUG STROUD
“If you ask most people in Stafford [about] Stafford Airport, they’ll say, ‘Where is it?’” said Chris Hornung of the Langley Flight Foundation. Hornung is also vice chairman of the Stafford Regional Airport Authority, where he supports airport director James L. Stover.
Stover is most directly responsible for ensuring that not only does the public know about the airport – just off Interstate 95 near Exit 136 – but that they continue to keep using it. Including Stover, the airport has six employees who handle maintenance and maintain such interpretive exhibits as the Langley Aerodrome display.
“It takes a full generation to get an airport fleshed out to the point where it becomes selfsufficient,” Stover said at his office adjacent to the runways, which opened in 2001. “People drive by and go ‘Oh, what a waste of my taxpayer money.’ Well, no, it wasn’t your money at all. … The people that pay for the airport are the people that use an airport. So this is not a county waste by any stretch of the imagination.”
Stover, who has himself been flying for over 50 years, including as an instructor, knows the ins and outs of the rather small community of regional airport executives. His charge includes all operational and administrative tasks associated with Stafford Regional Airport, whether that means funding a runway extension or ensuring compliance with county building codes.
He has overseen the addition of more hangars to handle larger planes that, with enough fuel, could head to the West Coast in one shot. And while there is no commercial service or TSA checkpoint at Stafford, private passengers could in theory fly all the way to Europe as long as they have documents to go through customs and passport control.
Other uses of the airport include would-be pilots who can log hours toward earning their wings, cropdusters and humane organizations landing with loads of animals seeking new homes. Corporate jets representing Walmart, Sheetz, 7-Eleven and others have pulled in, as have builders of the Kalahari water park in Spotsylvania. Stover said this summer, a plane landed at 2 a.m. with a team of medical professionals who headed to Fairfax to harvest an organ, returned to Stafford, got back on the plane and flew that organ to its recipient.
The airport currently handles about 25,000 takeoffs and landings each year on its 6,000-foot runway, and about 90 aircraft are based there.
telephone, so the story goes.
Like nearly everyone else, Hornung grew up believing the Wright Brothers started it all. While the Ohio siblings were pioneers, the bicycle makers stood on the shoulders of people such as Langley, who himself refined ideas from even earlier highflying thinkers such as glider theorists Otto Lilienthal and Octave Chanute.
Stover’s job also entails persuading more non-pilots to use the airport. He allows the local Experimental Aircraft Association to use a conference room, and pilots give free rides to kids as part of the “Young Eagles” program. Embrey Mill’s Ebenezer Methodist Church stages its Go For Bo charity run on the airport’s taxiways and runways, and there’s also a Thanksgiving “turkey trot” and Fourth of July race.
And each fall the Fredericksburg Stangs and Fangs Mustang Club holds a classic car show at the airport, with proceeds used to support Cooking Autism and Toys for Tots.
“Working with Jim and the Stafford Regional Airport has helped us make huge strides in growing our car shows so that we can make a larger impact on the community,” said Jeannette Bignotti, president of the organization.
Colin J. Fischer, president of NX Aviation, said he based his company at Stafford Airport because he believes Stover is “delivering on the promise” of what the local airport can be.
“He has the right forward-thinking mentality that will enable Stafford to build toward the future, enabling more jobs and industry to grow, and ultimately keep the airport relevant to the aerospace challenges of the 21st century,” Fischer said.
Other events at the airport include hazardous household waste collections and “sidewalk” drawing contests with chalk in the parking lots while bands play nearby. Motorcycle police officers often use the parking lots to train. The Army’s parachute team has dropped in. And the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts use the airport to set up distribution of their respective popcorn and cookie sales.
The airport also has a pavilion with outdoor picnic tables where families can eat while watching planes take off and land. A ground-based radio even allows kids to hear pilots communicate in the skies above.
“What would want people to know is there is a lot of stuff going on down here,” Stover said. “The public is certainly welcome to come out here and look at what’s going on.”
– Eric Althoff
The Wright Flyer’s canard wings borrowed from earlier designs by Hiram Maxim; their dual propellers were used by Langley for his aerodrome and other designs before it. Hornung says it took someone of Langley’s foresight to marry Industrial Revolution notions of smaller, steam-powered machines – which would lead to the internal combustion engine –with newer theories about flight.
“Others were trying to power things on the ground but the engines were too heavy. [Langley] was the one who ultimately put it all together in a machine that would fly,” Hornung said. Before his flights, Langley had published a book, “Experiments in Aerodynamics.”
“When the Wright Brothers started their work, they reached out to folks like Langley and [the information] was shared freely with them,” Hornung said. “So they were starting from a point where they knew heavier-thanair mechanical flight was possible… And from the Wright Brothers on, people have taken it to what we have today.”
A FIGHT OVER FLIGHT
Langley’s Aerodrome A hangs in the Air & Space Museum on the National Mall, as does the Wright Brothers Flyer – but there is no signage for the Aerodrome.
Hornung said Langley, unlike the Wright Brothers, was averse to patenting his work, which allowed the Wrights to become rich and famous (even as their model quickly became obsolete when ailerons and elevators were added in newer designs).
Politics and financial concerns explain why Langley’s flying machine receives significantly less attention than its museum neighbors. In 1914, the Smithsonian added a note to Langley’s craft labeling it the “first successful manned aircraft,” which didn’t sit well with the Wright brothers because the Aerodrome was unmanned and, essentially, unsuccessful in its test flights.
Smithsonian wonks even built a mockup of Langley’s Aerodrome in the 1910s to demonstrate it could fly with an onboard pilot to “prove” the Wright Brothers had in fact been late to the party. (Langley had died in 1906.) The atmosphere became so
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James L. Stover is director of the Stafford Airport.
heated that Orville, in a fit of pique, sent the Flyer to the British National Museum in 1928. (Wilbur died in 1912.)
Orville died in 1948, the same year an agreement was reached to bring the Flyer back to the Smithsonian, with the proviso the museum could never advertise anyone other than the Wright Brothers as the first to create a successful airplane. (The Smithsonian’s website features two short paragraphs about Langley’s flights, curtly calling the Aerodrome A’s 1903 test “disastrous.”)
Langley slowly got his due. And now, thanks to Kip Lankenau and his team at Dallas-based KipAero, a $250,000 recreation of Langley’s Aerodrome #5, commissioned by Hornung’s organization, is on display at Stafford Airport, not far from where it took to the skies nearly 130 years earlier. Hornung calls it the world’s first unmanned aerial vehicle.
Hornung said his father, who served on the Stafford Board of Supervisors and was on the selection committee for Stafford Airport, was perturbed that there were no signs in Stafford honoring Langley’s contributions to aviation. With a recreation of Aerodrome #5, the thinking went, perhaps that might change.
Hornung said his organization was granted permission by the Marine Corps to tour Chopawamsic Island and fly a drone over the creek where the flights occurred. While most of the Potomac River technically falls within Maryland, the part where Langley flew his machine is actually on the Virginia side in Stafford.
“From our standpoint, both stories are terrific; there’s no reason that both shouldn’t be told,” said Hornung of Langley and the Wrights’ joint claim to history. “[Langley] solved the most incredibly mechanical mystery of the world. No longer are we going to be on bicycles and horses; we’re going to be flying. And it inspired hundreds, if not thousands, of inventors to solve the problem.”
A NEW ITERATION OF AN OLD DESIGN
Based in Dallas, KipAero specializes in creating contemporary replicas of old planes and souping up vintage automobiles.
Founder Kim Lankenau is a tinkerer and enthusiast for historic engines, which made him a natural choice for the reproduction of Langley’s Aerodrome #5 to hang in the lobby of Stafford Airport.
#5.
Lankenau’s company built the replica of the 1896 craft to scale, including with a steam engine. Although the plane will probably never fly (“If you flew it you’d probably destroy it,” he said), the engine is functional, the propellers turn and the pistons go back and forth. And, unlike the Smithsonian original that crashed many times, this reproduction is in pristine condition.
The mockup was installed in the airport lobby in May, where visitors can read placards and other interpretive displays about the Aerodrome, Langley, his experimental 1896 flights and the so-called birth of aviation right here in Stafford.
“The artifact was to make it look like it did on its first flight, or first successful flight, which…actually took a lot more research because you only get part of the story by looking at the original,” Lankenau said. “It is exactly the way it would have looked on that first flight.”
Hornung said he worked with the Smithsonian to obtain some of Langley’s original drawings to guide Lankenau’s reproduction. KipAero was able to fashion a new craft that is, in Hornung’s estimation, even more singular than the original.
“In [Lankenau’s] research he also had to go through all of Langley’s waste books and writings in order to figure out some of the questions that were left unanswered,” Hornung said. “So he’s a great student of the aerodrome and Langley and what it achieved.”
The Stafford reproduction can be lowered to ground level for a closer look.
“We have to be very careful with it because it’s very fragile, but it’s something we can bring it all the way down to eye level and we can tell you exactly how it operated and what it did,” Hornung said.
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The world has come a long way from the time of Samuel Langley and his humble Aerodrome – in ways neither he nor any of his fellow aviation pioneers could have imagined. And it all started here in Stafford, at a time when most residents were farmers who had never even seen an automobile, let alone a flying machine.
“Very few homes or businesses had electricity of any kind. Indoor plumbing was rare, very rare,” Lankenau said. “So it’s not just an artifact. It represents a real state of the art, which most people would have a hard time imagining today.”
Eric Althoff is a freelance writer who lives in Stafford County.
Visit staffordairport.com for more information.
On Her Mark T
Colonial Forge runner wins state cross country title
BY DAVID FAWCETT
PHOTOS BY BILL KAMENJAR
he day before she competed in her final state cross country meet, Kate Loescher reviewed the tape of last season’s second-place finish one more time.
The Colonial Forge runner had first watched the tape seven days after her disappointing outcome to see what changes she needed to make to come out on top in her senior season.
Now, she wanted to check again to make sure she left nothing to chance. She didn’t.
Even though the Nov. 16 race started faster than she expected, Loescher was in command by the time she reached the final stretch, finishing in a time of 18:07 and winning by 13 seconds over Gainesville senior Caroline Tribett.
The victory made Loescher the second state girls cross country champion from the Stafford County high school. The other was Mckenzi Watkins, who won the title in 2018.
This was Loescher’s second overall state title – she also won the 3,200 meters at the 2024 outdoor state meet.
“I’m definitely relieved,” Loescher said after the state cross country race. “This was my big goal.”
Loescher’s preparation speaks to her evolution as a runner.
“As a freshman, I didn’t have the mental toughness to push through,” she said. By sophomore year, though, she’d implemented changes to her routine. One, in particular, helped a great deal. She stopped wearing a watch.
“Subconsciously I slowed myself down,” Loescher said.
“I wanted to focus on racing
people instead of times.”
Colonial Forge first-year cross country coach Mike Wood was impressed with Loescher’s dedication.
“She’s very meticulous with her training and her race strategy,” Wood said.
Going into the state meet, Loescher knew exactly what she wanted to do and how to do it.
Learning from last year’s meet, Loescher did not want to go out fast from the start at the 3.1-mile Oatlands course in Leesburg. Instead, she planned to stay close to the other runners until the second mile. It was then that she would break free to create a gap between herself and anyone behind her.
She increased her lead by using her speed and strength to overcome a hill at the 2.5mile mark.
“Once she was on top of the hill, no one was going to beat her,” Wood said.
This season, Loescher relied more on her Christian faith to calm her fears by surrendering her anxieties to God before a meet. The approach also reminded her that she needed to be a leader for her team. One thing the team did before a meet was pray together.
Other members of Loescher’s support network contributed as well, including her parents, Ken and Kristen, who both ran cross country at Cedarville University in Ohio, and her two older sisters, Kendall and Kayla. They all positioned themselves around the course to let Loescher know where she stood in relation to the other runners.
Still for all the help and determination, Loescher battled nerves.
“That last part of the race
was rough on me,” Loescher said. “I was terrified I would get passed.”
After crossing the finish line, Loescher’s nerves caught up with her again.
Instead of celebrating, Loescher found a space off to herself to throw up. She felt bad, leaving everyone. But her stomach hurt too much.
By the time she got home, though, Loescher was
ready to savor her win by eating pizza and ice cream with her family.
“I’m hungry now,” Loescher said afterward.
Once her high school career is over, Loescher will compete at Liberty University.
She chose the Lynchburg school for the chance to run at a Division I level.
Loescher also felt welcomed by the team, and the overall environment appealed to her.
“I knew from the start that I wanted to be surrounded by Christ-loving people,” Loescher said.
David Fawcett is sports editor of InsideNoVa and a resident of Stafford County. Reach him at dfawcett@insidenova.com.
Christmas stories and memories
BY DAVID S. KERR
Most people have memories of Christmases past that come to mind this time of year. A night caroling. Time spent with friends and, of course, Christmas dinner, family and presents.
I still remember – classic Americana – my sheer delight in finding a train set under the tree when I was 9 years old. I loved it. Oh, and true to 1960s fashions, we had one of those aluminum foil trees. I never really liked them very much. These days I buy real trees.
My family had its unique Christmas traditions and quirks. For instance, my greatgrandparents, remarkable people from all accounts, were married on Christmas Day 1890. Even by standards of the 21st century, they weren’t conventional.
The service was held at the local Methodist chapel and the reception was at the parsonage. He was 36 and she was 19. Not quite call-the-sheriff time, but that was a considerable age gap. It didn’t matter – they went on to have a lively, successful and happy marriage that lasted 45 years. And they had five children, all of whom I knew.
Even now, 134 years later, I still raise a toast on Christmas Day to Ida and Louis Thomas to commemorate their anniversary.
Another memory of Christmas my family saved (they weren’t hoarders, but they kept a lot of stuff) was a copy of the Centerburg (Ohio) Gazette
with two letters to Santa Claus from my great uncle and grandfather. The date on the paper is Dec. 22, 1899. Of note, my grandad would eventually work for that newspaper before moving to Washington in 1929.
The letters are cute. My grandad, age 5, wanted a train of cars, an ABC book, a horn and lots of candy. Actually, he mentioned the candy twice in the letter. Did I mention my family has always had a sweet tooth? His brother, a bit older and more studious, wanted a story book series, a map of the United States and a sled.
He would later go on to be a professor in English literature at Kenyon College.
A few things that were in the Centerburg paper that wouldn’t be in, say, the InsideNoVa of today were advertisements for train tickets “for young men seeking adventure and new opportunities in the West.”
Then there was an ad suggesting a Christmas gift of “Dr. David Kennedy’s favorite remedy – the sure cure for the kidneys, liver and blood.” And to round it out, there was a “Cyclone of Bargains at Ulmers,” a local department store, whose big sale ran until Jan. 1,1900.
One of my father’s recollections was of Christmas in 1944 and 1945. He had a rough war, but Christmas Day of both years found his ship, the U.S.S. Sumner, a hydrographic survey ship, anchored at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands in the Western Pacific.
It was a large-scale port built by the Navy. It wasn’t home –that’s for sure. But it was also a
good place to forget the war for a little while. There was beer, baseball and on Christmas Day aboard ship, there was Christmas dinner. It was quite a production, I understand. The military during World War II did its best to provide turkeys and all the fixings wherever they could.
One particular Christmas recollection is of my grandfather’s reading Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” on Christmas Eve. He had a gift for the accents and making the ghosts sound scary. Alas, I was so little that I sometimes fell asleep before the end.
Years later, when my mother was in a nursing home, I decided to duplicate my grandad’s efforts and read the story in the home’s common room. We were the only ones there. I don’t have grandad’s performing gifts, and I figured Mom would either tire of the story or fall asleep. Hardly. She was taken by the timeless tale, and before long, I had a small audience of other residents and staff. Charles Dickens’ story can still hold an audience.
These are just recollections – snippets if you will. Every family has them. Most of us have a favorite Christmas or a fond Christmas memory, or remember the stories of our parents and grandparents – something that makes us smile and recall the magic of the season.
Merry Christmas.
David Kerr is a Stafford resident and an adjunct professor of political science at VCU. He worked on Capitol Hill and for various federal agencies for many years.
