Stephen Hawley Martin shares the meaning of life
ummers are ge ing more brutal in Central Virginia.
rough Sept. 5, Richmond experienced 61 days when temperatures breached 90 degrees (the city averaged 44.9 days of 90-plus heat annually from 1991-2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; from 1981 to 2010, the annual count was 42.1 days). Globally, the average temperature has risen by 1 degree Celsius since 1880, when the e ects of the Industrial Revolution first began impacting the atmosphere.
And more heat is on the way. A recent study by the First Street Foundation warns that by 2053, the Richmond region could average at least one day a year when the heat index reaches 125 degrees.
Mary Finley-Brook, an associ ate professor of geography and the environment at the University of Richmond, says that the region is
already experiencing a climate emergen cy. Climate change is caused primarily by greenhouse gases — like methane and carbon dioxide — that pollute and trap heat in the atmosphere.
“ e emissions that have already been produced are what we’re living through now,” she says. “ ink about the emissions that are being produced right now. We haven’t felt that heat yet.”
Finley-Brook says the only chance to avoid catastrophe is to stop fossil fuel consumption. “A lot of people want to use clean coal or cleaner gas,” she says, “but these materials are dirty in other parts of the emissions cycle, and those chemicals end up in the Chesapeake Bay.”
It’s part of a feedback loop that could lead to a loss of biodiversity, among other outcomes. For example, many rivers in the U.S. and Europe are already running lower and drier, threatening water supplies and
fish populations.
“Look at the economic impact when our waterways don’t function for trade and transportation,” says Finley-Brook. “It’s already happening, and if we don’t pull back from where we’re headed, we could be at a point of no return within 10 years.”
Locally, city o cials are bracing for impact with the development of the RVAGreen2050 initiative. Launched in 2017 by Mayor Levar Stoney, the plan aims to put Richmond on track for “net-zero” emissions by 2050.
e plan lays out strategies for elimi nating the city’s carbon emissions, 66% of which come from energy used to power buildings and facilities, including electric ity and natural gas.
“Energy e ciency is the first key goal,” says Dawn Oleksy, climate action super visor in the city’s o ce of sustainability, who helped draft the plan. “We want to get solar panels on roo ops and get buildings weatherized. As we electrify our buildings and vehicles, that will reduce our carbon footprint.”
Oleksy says that the private sector will ultimately be responsible for imple menting the initiative, which includes 49 strategies for reducing Richmond’s carbon footprint. One strategy is to encourage building owners to use solar energy by providing grants and tax breaks.
The plan also aims to prepare Rich monders for the e ects of climate change, especially in the city’s most vulnerable communities. “On our website, you’ll find the Climate Equity Index, a GIS-based map that has 39 demographic layers, from flooding zones, heat levels and green space to race, income and histor ical redlining,” Oleksy says. “What we’ve seen is that disenfranchised communities have already been impacted by climate change. Urban heat islands are an easy example — it’s ho er in areas that are historically Black and brown.”
“We need to build green spaces and prepare for flooding impact in these areas,” Finley-Brook adds. “ is isn’t about the future. is is happening right now.”
—D. Hunter Reardon
The city gears up to fight climate change, setting a goal of
emissions by 2050Solar panels atop Blackwell Elementary School on the city’s South Side
Q&A
For the Rev. Hollie Woodru , the abortion debate is about justice
By Leah Small
The Rev. Hollie Woodru , co-pastor of Seventh Street Christian Church on Grove Avenue, is ardently in favor of abortion rights. And her views are not as rare among Christian faith leaders as one might think, she says. The clergywoman — who spoke in support of abortion rights at a rally this summer organized by the Virginia Reproductive Equity Alliance shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — recently shared her views on Christianity and abortion with Richmond magazine.
Richmond magazine: Is being pro-choice inherently Christian?
Hollie Woodruff: I don’t think Christianity is inherently pro-choice or pro-life. I would say that Christianity is inherently pro-justice. For me, justice is the belief in the separation of church and state. I personally don’t want people, and a specific type or brand of faith, telling me what to do with my body. I want reproductive autonomy, and that’s me. And I think there are others who likely agree with that.
I believe that God has endowed all persons with the ability to make personal decisions over our bodies. I think justice is reproductive rights and access to health care, and injustice is poor access to contraception and things like that. So, for me, thinking about this issue of abortion access, it’s a justice issue.
Sixty percent of women who seek abortions are nonwhite, so statistically speaking, women of color are already disproportionately impacted. And the CDC reports that women of color are three times more likely to die [during childbirth] or have complications. Women of color are often not taken seriously at the hospital when they’re reporting concerns. Women of
color already have lived in a reality where they don’t have true access to affordable health care.
RM: How do you respond to arguments posed by anti-abortion Christian leaders, such as the belief that God created humans in his image, and therefore, abortion desecrates his work?
Woodruff: I do believe life is holy. We should be grateful for the life that we have. Life is precious. I also recognize that there’s not a consensus on when life truly begins. Our Jewish brothers and sisters would say that life begins when you take your first breath. So, there’s a wide range of beliefs on where life begins.
And to that point, there’s a lot of things that we humans do that desecrate God’s work. We will force a woman to have a child, or anyone to have a child, and then we won’t provide health care or mental health resources for that child. We will send a child to school where they can be shot to death because we refuse to pass commonsense gun laws. We will refuse to support our schools and our teachers. I think that desecrates God’s work.
RM: Are there any other anti-abortion
arguments you would like to address, religious or otherwise?
Woodruff: I will add that I was so nervous to get up at that rally and say, “Hi, I’m Rev. Hollie Woodruff, and I am one of many pro-choice clergy.” I was shaking, and I was shaking because I wasn’t sure. I mean, we’re not supposed to do this, right? The reason why I’m sure we’re having this interview right now and why the magazine thought it was even valuable to share this story, is because it’s supposed to be an anomaly. But I can tell you, it’s not. This goes back to the ’60s, where clergy were helping women find access to abortion before it was legal.
I was shaking because I was like, “I don’t know if I’m going to be booed off this stage,” but it was so affirming. But I also felt it was so important that women out there, and men, whoever you are, to know that you’re not alone. When I was preparing, I learned that 54% of women who seek abortions are people of faith, and that’s staggering.
R
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Rev. Hollie Woodruff says the Christian faith isn’t inherently “pro-choice or pro-life.”
morning,” he says when reached by phone while si ing in his o ce on Sea Cli Avenue in Long Island, New York, on a late a ernoon in mid-September. He’s in a good mood, listening to a li le heavy metal (Ghost, a Swedish band). “ ey are going to be announcing the selection of the developer tomorrow, the parameters we are working with. We are thrilled.”
n 2009, Lou DiBella, a blunttalking boxing promoter from New York City, was a fish out of water. e Brooklyn native had built HBO into a boxing power house in the 1990s, launched a successful entertainment company, DiBella Enter tainment, and purchased a majority stake in the Connecticut Defenders, a minor league baseball team. e Defenders had been struggling financially, so DiBella was working with a group of real estate inves tors to relocate the team to Richmond as part of a $363 million development pro posal in Shockoe Bo om.
In May of that year, the deal fell apart. Suddenly, DiBella was on his own. “I was scared shit
less,” he told this reporter in 2009. He was was struggling to find investors in order to relocate to e Diamond on a prom ise from then-Mayor Dwight Jones that, eventually, a new stadium would be built.
e next day, on Sept. 13, DiBella joins a procession of city officials taking the podium in e Diamond’s parking lot to laud the selection of RVA Diamond Part ners, led by Washington, D.C.-based Repub lic Properties, Chicago’s Loop Capital and Richmond’s alhimer Realty Partners.
DiBella, however, is in the Interna tional Boxing Hall of Fame for a reason. He’s a marketing whiz, a dealmaker. He found new investors and hired a savvy marketing team. e Defenders relocated and were renamed the Richmond Flying Squirrels. DiBella and his partners invest ed millions in the aging ballpark on the city’s North Side. A endance soared.
For 12 years, the promise of a new ballpark didn’t materialize — until last month.
“I’ll be flying in tomorrow
On 67 acres off Arthur Ashe Boule vard, RVA Diamond Partners is planning a massive, $2.44 billion mixed-use develop ment — 2,863 apartments, 157 condos, two hotels, retail shops and nearly 1 million square feet of o ce space — to accom pany a new, 10,000-seat ballpark. ere’s also an 11-acre park in the plans, plus a focus on a ordable housing: e project calls for 20% of the apartment units to be leased to families earning between 30%-60% of the region’s average median income, with at least 100 units available to public housing residents.
Developers have agreed to put more than $6 million in reserve funds to help pay off the bonds for the ballpark and public infrastructure, plus $1 million to help buyers of a ordable housing with closing costs. There’s a reverter clause — the city can retain ownership of the ballpark property if the public financing for the stadium doesn’t fly. RVA Diamond Partners has also commi ed to purchasing $20 million of the bonds issued in phase 1.
I JAY PAULTo finance the project, a quasi-gov ernmental entity known as a Communi ty Development Authority would issue bonds for a $100 million ballpark and $30 million in public infrastructure, among other expenses, but the CDA can only draw from revenues created within the district — real estate, meals and business license taxes, a 2% hotel admissions fee and sales taxes (the city’s portion of the state levy plus an additional .25%). If the
After years of failed proposals, a new ballpark development gathers steamMayor Levar Stoney addresses the media in The Diamond parking lot on Sept. 13.
behavioral health service and outpatient care. It could be useful to people who are able to leave full hospitalization but still need an intensive level of care, or for those who need more than outpatient services but don’t require full hospitalization.
“ is is another resource that we can o er,” Trapani says. “It’s basically a transi tion in care.”
By Tharon GiddensTwo of Richmond’s histori cally underserved commu nities are ge ing a multi million-dollar investment in health care facilities.
Bon Secours is working on a $16 million project, a medical o ce building o Nine Mile Road in the East End, and it’s investing $3 million to renovate a building shared with the nonprofit CARITAS in Manchester for a community health clinic.
e Manchester site is at 2301 Evere St., which is also home to CARITAS’ program The Healing Place, a peer-led, residential substance-abuse recovery program. e Bon Secours Community Health Clinic in Man chester will be housed in an 8,000-squarefoot, two-story portion of the site.
e 25,000-square-foot, two-story med ical o ce building serving the East End is at the Bon Secours Center for Healthy Living Sarah Garland Jones Center and near Bon Secours Richmond Community Hospital. e final beam of the framework was placed in June, and the facility is set to open later this year.
“It’s coming along every day,” says Joey Trapani, chief operating o cer for Bon Sec ours Richmond Community Hospital.
Mental health services will be provided at the East End facility, including a partial hospitalization program for those with sub stance abuse or behavioral health disorders.
e program will be a step between hospi talization and outpatient care, according to a release. e partial hospitalization program will also be available in Petersburg at Bon Secours Southside Medical Center.
Partial hospitalization o ers an addition al layer of treatment between hospital
Bon Secours says its partial hospitaliza tion programs are unique in the East End and Petersburg.
e East End facility also will include the Bon Secours Mobile Assessment Response Team and a telehealth consult service call center for behavioral health.
The partial hospitalization program o ers group therapy led by a team of doctors, clinical social workers and registered nurses. It’s described as an intensive program that may benefit people with consistent depres sion, ongoing anxiety, a change in behavior, or who have shown minimal improvement in traditional outpatient therapy, according to Bon Secours.
e behavioral service enhancements are in response to a community need that was reflected in behavioral health treatment and in assessment numbers that showed a gap in the East End in terms of available resourc es, Trapani says. Enhancing behavioral ser
vices has been noted as a concern in recent years in Bon Secours’ Community Health Needs Assessment.
The behavioral care program will be housed at Richmond Community Hospital until the medical o ce building site opens. (If you need care or an assessment, call 804-287-7836.)
e Manchester project grew from CAR ITAS asking Bon Secours to provide a clinic for its residents and to complement the nonprofit’s work. e clinic will provide ser vices to the uninsured and the underinsured, including primary care, behavioral health services, women’s health services and care for chronic diseases. It also will seek to con nect people with community resources and promote wellness.
Care will be provided through scheduled appointments, including same-day call-ins. e clinic will have eight exam rooms and a laboratory. e facility also will be the home of the Bon Secours Care-A-Van, a mobile health clinic that has served the uninsured around Richmond for 25 years. e clinic will be located within a couple miles of three of the largest-volume stops for the Care-A-Van, which in 2021 served more than 13,000 patients.
e Manchester clinic is set to open in early 2023. R
Bon Secours increases its presence in Manchester and the East End
Stephen Hawley Martin, a former principal at e Martin Agency, the Richmond advertising firm that brought the Geico lizard to life and in an earlier iteration proclaimed that Virginia Is for Lovers, is still a creative force.
His focus these days, though, is less on earthly ma ers, and more with an eye on the paranormal. Look at his author page on Amazon, and you’ll find titles including “Your Guide to Achieve Fourth Density: e Law of One, RA, and the End of Su ering,” “Reincarnation: Good News for Open-Minded Christians & Other Truth-Seekers,” and “ e Truth About Life and How to Make Yours the Best of All.”
e meaning of life according to Martin? ere is an entity, “spirit,” at the center of everything, and we are each part of it, as is everything else. at entity wanted to know itself, and in seeking to achieve that goal it fragmented, and now it’s in pieces. at includes everything, even us, and we are striving to return to the entity.
“At some point, spirit created an almost infinite number of bubbles, or whirlpools of itself, i.e., consciousness, and turned them loose so they could interact,” Martin writes in “Facts About Life and Death.”
From that concept, he expounds on reincarnation, soul mates, politics and political leaders, extraterrestrial beings, the Buddha and Christ, and how an awareness of the nature of the entity will cure gun violence and school shootings while in general bringing about a new age of enlightenment.
His other key tenet? No worries — you’ll have infinite chances to get things right. at Judgment Day thing? ink of it as a learning assessment. “God is not going to come down and put
Ohis finger in your face,” Martin says.
Now Martin is an acolyte of sorts, spreading the word about his take on how things are and what makes the universe work. It’s a calling, a later-in-life drive to make people aware of what he perceives as the true state of things — the true state of every thing. “I feel like I have a mission to wake people up,” Martin says.
By his own account, Martin had a typical post-World War II childhood in Richmond. e son of Hawley Phillips and Evelyn Martin, he was raised in a household that was not especially religious, one more oriented toward science and rationalism.
He earned a bachelor’s in economics in the late 1960s at Hamp den-Sydney College. Advertising was the family business; his father had worked with Ferguson Advertising, and his brother, the late David Martin, had co-founded an ad agency in Richmond — Martin & Woltz. Stephen Martin began his professional career in Baltimore in 1967 with VanSant Dugdale, then moved to Martin & Woltz in 1973 and ran that agency’s o ce in Washington. He then worked with his brother at the founding of the Martin Agency in 1975. He served in several positions there at various times, including director of client services, senior vice president for plans, and senior vice president for direct marketing services. He was president and chief executive o cer for Athey Martin Webb in 1987-88. at agency became Hawley Martin Partners in 1988, with Stephen serving as a founding partner with his brother and working as chief executive o cer for the firm until 1993, when it was bought out by the Interpublic Group of Companies.
Richmond resident Jim Maxwell worked with the broth ers and managed Hawley Martin Advertising Agency. He also co-wrote an Oaklea title with Stephen Martin, “ e Martin Man aging Method.” Maxwell noted that the agency and the brothers built success in developing campaigns for national names, but would deliver the same top-tier work for clients in Richmond, too. “It was probably one of the highlights of my work as a profession al,” he says. “It’s not everyday that you get to work with giants.”
Maxwell describes Stephen Martin as having a strong sense of self-actualization and as spiritual. “ at’s what drives him,” he says.
Maxwell says that David Martin also had a deep sense of spirituality about him. Stephen Martin says that he had “lots of deep discussions” on spirituality with his brother.
Advertising was a good life for Martin, and he focused on work, but then, he says, the mystical world intruded. Martin was 35, lying on a hammock in his backyard, when he experienced an all-is-one epiphany that the grass, the trees, the sky, his own being were all part of something greater. It was life-changing, he says, the start of his pursuit of alternative theories and knowledge, but it also was not something he was comfortable sharing with coworkers.
He says that there were two other experiences early in life that he thought nothing of at the time, but that, looking back, he believes were encounters with the extraordinary.
One happened when he was a teen and was struck by a car
while strolling along U.S. Highway 1. He says he walked away without a scratch. “It was like a miracle, it had to be,” he says. “Instead of under the car, I went over it. My shoes were 50 feet ahead of me ... how is that possible?”
It wasn’t until much later in life, he says, that it occurred to him that surviv ing that accident was miraculous — and maybe an early sign that he was here on earth for a purpose. “I didn’t share that with anybody until I started writing these books,” Martin says.
e second event occurred when he was in his mid-20s. He was feverish, he says, and he experienced the sensation of feeling that he was somewhere around the ceiling of his room and looking down on his physical body. He a ributed it to partying, but he now thinks it was a near death encounter of sorts (see excerpt on Page 77).
A er his revelation in the hammock, Martin says, his outlook on life and world were altered. He had already been reading books about metaphysics and had stud ied Rosicrucianism, a mystic bouillabaisse of various religious beliefs and practic es melded with other purported secret knowledge. He read copious quantities of books about reincarnation and the a erlife, as well as chronicles of sayings from a purported space being; studied various academic writing and research into the paranormal and metaphysical; and eventually came up with his own understanding of how the universe works and what he needed to share with others.
He presents his worldview via print, e-books, podcasts and guest appearanc es on various broadcasts. He is prolific in his e orts: ere are dozens of books by Martin from his own Oaklea Press, includ ing looks at life, the a erlife, reincarnation and the clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. Their titles suggest that they hold the secret to life, the truth to life, an explanation of how to master life and a blueprint to happiness.
Martin has also delved into research
from the University of Virginia and its Division of Perceptual Studies in the School of Medicine. e late Dr. Ian Ste vens initiated paranormal studies there in the late 1950s and founded the Divi sion of Perceptual Studies. His research
more than 1,000 incidents involving people who said they had near-death experiences. For Martin, the work of Greyson and other division researchers provides “convincing evidence” that con sciousness can exist independent of the brain’s involvement; that the brain inte grates consciousness in the body, that it doesn’t necessarily create consciousness.
Martin reaches that conclusion from the division’s reviews of cases, including those of people who claimed near-death experiences; some who apparently had sustained irreversible brain damage but recovered consciousness before death; and those of children who reportedly recalled details of someone else’s life who had died.
was known for taking a scientific look at people who claimed they had memories of prior incarnations, and he wrote books on the subject, including “Children Who Rember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation.”
Dr. Bruce Greyson continued that work from the 1970s on and has reviewed
From a religious standpoint, Martin considers himself a Christian and o en uses Biblical language, encouraging people to turn the other cheek and to love their neighbors. But he contends that traditional readings of the Gospels get some things wrong. As he puts it, if all is one, then everyone’s consciousness is part of the infinite consciousness that creates physical reality.
He also says that traditional Christi anity misinterprets what Jesus said and anthropomorphizes God, but that Jesus
Publicity photo of Steve and his brother David circa 1990 with a photo of their father, Hawley Phillips Martin, when Hawley was the foreman of a ranch in Arizona.“I FEEL LIKE I HAVE A MISSION TO WAKE PEOPLE UP. ”
–Stephen Hawley Martin
was talking about his Father in a way that’s closer to the Hindu sense of God as both in the world and tran scending it. Martin says he thinks a young Jesus may have spent time in India in an ashram before he started his ministry.
In “Facts About Life A er Death,” Martin cites Ma hew 25:40, and Jesus saying that “whatever you did for the least of these brothers, you did for me.” From that, he concludes that “we are all from God and of God,” and that each person’s awareness is “a tiny sliver of a larger screen [God].”
“I have obviously a di erent take on things,” he says.
Martin contends that the one we are striving to rejoin has a side, the “love thy neighbor” side, that encourages unity, harmo ny and helping one another, while another side is me-oriented, selfish and harmful. He breaks it into Service to Self and Service to Others, and he suggests that those two sides are in conflict, which can be seen in the current political scene.
He’s concerned that the U.S. political situation may dete riorate into anarchy and issues a clarion call to readers to be aware of political gaslighting and manipulation and to vote for candidates who are working to pull people together. “ e Earth is going through a time of change,” he writes. “[We] are moving into a new time, political chaos in this country, and hopefully we will get through it.”
True to his professional roots, Martin is still at work, serving
as a marketing consultant, including recent work with a digital agency in Asheville, North Carolina, that spe cializes in recruitment for police and fire departments. Advertising was Martin’s career, but books and writ ing were his passion. He says he started Oaklea in 1995, presenting work by other authors, his own titles and some ghost writing for clients, too. As of this summer, he had six books in the queue to edit and publish. His clients find him; many of them have wri en works with a spiritual theme. Martin says that’s to be expected. “Google my name, and all these [spiritual] podcasts and books come up. at’s where I am now.”
James King, an English citizen who lives in France, says he found Martin in late 2020 through “A erlife: e Whole Truth.”
ey began a correspondence and Oaklea last year published King’s “ e Story of Us: Extraterrestrials Explain Who We Are and How Our Universe Came to Be.” “We found many things concerning spiritual evolvement of interest to us both,” King says in an email. “Stephen’s books provide answers of a broad, understandable nature.”
Oaklea Press features about 16 titles that Martin has wri en or co-wri en, as well as works by others. His titles cover the basics, ranging from “ e Secrets of Successful Entrepreneur ship” to “ e CEO’s Guide From Good to Great.”
His other titles include some fiction and his own writings on the paranormal and other New Age topics. He writes with ease, just as he talks, and writes quickly. In June, days a er the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Martin released “A No-Brainer Way
Martin started Oaklea Press in 1995, publishing works by others and titles that he has written or co-written.
Sports Backers started with the Taco Trot 5K in May, a virtual event. A cute graphic T-shirt designed in-house that read “Will run for tacos” and a modest $17 entry fee encour aged people to take to the streets for their own 3.1-mile run and then stop at a list of suggested restaurants for takeout.
In June 2020, the organization launched the Great American 5000, where teams of participants recorded their running via an online portal, tracking their virtual progress across the country and “visiting” landmarks such as Dino saur National Monument in Utah, Arsenal Bridge over the Mississippi River and the world’s largest rubber stamp in Cleveland. Participants were also encouraged to donate to Feeding America, raising $31,500 for the nonprofit over the three “runnings” of the GA5K in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Roughly 7,000 people participated.
While that number is dwarfed by the more than 25,000 runners and walkers who participated in the 2019 Monu ment Avenue 10K, it was something. And the success of the GA5K came as no surprise to Al Kidd, president and CEO of the Sports Events & Tourism Association, the national association for sports commissions and sports tourism agencies.
Kidd remembers when Sports Backers Executive Direc tor Jon Lugbill called him in spring 2020 to say he was planning a virtual race. Sports ETA had just hosted an online trade show, and Lugbill knew Kidd, with whom he’d had many conversations over the years, would be a good sounding board.
“It was such a cool idea, we wanted to do everything we could possibly do to make it work,” Kidd says of the virtual cross-country race. “We used our [Sports ETA] media firm to help send out [announcements]. The race provided much-needed capital at the time when [Lugbill] was think ing about how to stay in business. It was an awesome event.”
Kidd wasn’t surprised by Lugbill’s reaction to pandemic challenges. A former marketing and advertising executive who had also run San Diego’s sports commission, Kidd has known Lugbill since the early 2000s and says his skills were evident from their first conversations.
“I found [many nonprofits] were subpar in terms of business acumen until I ran into Jon,” Kidd says. “I could have a meaningful conversation about how to run a business with Jon.
“I would say Jon was a visionary. He shifted [Sports Backers] to a business model where he could have some level of control over sustainability.”
The model had been working well. As a 501(c)(3) orga nization, Sports Backers’ revenue in fiscal year 2019 was
$7.2 million. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, revenue shrunk in 2020 to just under $4.2 million. In response, Lug bill and several senior staff members took pay cuts, while most other staff members were furloughed at various times. Some staff left permanently; the current roster numbers 23.
The organization is bouncing back. Fiscal year 2021 showed revenues of nearly $5.5 million, and 2022’s reported revenues were $6.3 million. Something that hasn’t returned: the paid membership to Sports ETA, which named Sports Backers member of the year in 2006, 2007, 2011 and 2015. “We dropped all our memberships,” Lugbill says. “It’s probably time to rejoin.”
Sports Backers was formed in 1991, a merger of two groups whose members were interested in local sports, but from different angles. Greater Richmond Sports Backers con sisted primarily of business leaders who would gather to listen to speakers — o en accomplished athletes — and brainstorm how to support sports activities in the region.
Metropolitan Richmond Sports was started by area gov ernment localities hoping to a ract large sporting events. As the two came together, there were some growing pains.
“In the early years, it was hard work” to merge the busi ness and government sensibilities, says Lugbill, who was hired as then-Metropolitan Richmond Sports Backers’ executive director in spring 1993.
But Lugbill’s experience with the Metropolitan Wash ington [D.C.] Council of Governments, where he had worked on a feasibility study exploring how the nation’s capital could attract the Olympic Games, proved useful. Also useful was Lugbill’s experience as an athlete. A five-time world champion in whitewater canoeing with a fourthplace finish in the 1992 Olympics, he’s also the only canoe ist to appear on a Wheaties box, which happened in 1986.
In 1992, while he was on his Olympic journey, in his day job he was researching how to create a sports commis sion for the D.C. area. Then he saw an ad for the Sports Backers position.
“I was really looking to do that job switch to sports,” he recalls, “and I thought it would be easier to [create a sports commission] in Richmond than in Washington, D.C.” At the time, Sports Backers was a considerably different entity.
“There were ambitions to do big things, but we didn’t know what that meant at the time,” he says. “We really wanted to improve the community through sports, and there were really wide-ranging thoughts on the board [of directors] as to what that could be.
“Because I competed nationally and internationally,
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BY DUNCAN ROBERTSON
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When something is the oldest of its kind, it can some times get a bad rap, tarred with the notion of being stuck in its ways. Similarly, the same can be said about being the biggest, because we all know that quality trumps quantity. But the Shenandoah Valley American Viticultural Area, situ ated on 2 million acres between the Allegheny and Blue Ridge mountains, takes both titles. A winemaker’s para dise, the limestone-soiled valley sur rounded by protective mountains b ecame the first AVA founded in the commonwealth, back in 1982. And now, it is beginning to gain a reputation as one of the most fun, ideal and eccentric regions for vino producers in Virginia.
“There’s a natural freshness and acidity that wines from Central Virginia may lack,” says Lee Hartman, a winemaker and a co-owner of Bluestone Vineyard. “Here in the Valley, we definitely have acid.”
A recent visit to the wineries that make up the Shenandoah Valley AVA served as a reminder of all the diverse grape-centric nooks and crannies scat tered throughout the state. Receiving less rainfall annually, and with a higher, opti mal elevation, the valley provides the opportunity for many grapes to thrive. The relatively cool, dry, gentler climate of the Shenandoah Valley AVA produces a wider breadth of more resilient vari etals, leading to bright wines that pack bright acidity.
It’s also a region that fellow vintners across the state turn to when sourcing grapes for their own wines. Stretching
from the eastern panhandle of West Vir ginia to bucolic Botetourt County, it’s an area where long-seasoned cabernet sau vignon fruit, finicky chardonnay and petit verdot, and Austrian and German grape varieties ranging from grüner velt liner to riesling can shine.
“In the Valley we have less big rain events during ripening and during har vest season,” Hartman says. “A on [Moun tain] is the great protector of the Valley.”
While petit verdot, chambourcin and cabernet franc are noted as some of the grape varietals that best express the spirit of the Shenandoah Valley AVA, hybrid varieties such as marque e and cayuga, in addition to those found in dessert and sparkling wines, have been proving their potential. Bust out that grape-centric wish list, because Virginia Wine Month is upon us, and the Shenandoah Valley has plenty of noteworthy pit stops.
Decanting the wineries of the Shenandoah Valley Muse Vineyards
