This Price Is Right For Piedmont Heritage

This Price Is Right For Piedmont Heritage

By Leonard Shapiro

VPHA Chairman Stephen Price

Photo by Leonard Shapiro

Growing up in Falls Church in the 1950s, Stephen Price can almost pinpoint the precise time he became enamored with history. His older sister was teaching at the Calvert School in Baltimore and gave her elementary school little brother a copy of a book, “A Child’s History of the World.”

“That definitely stimulated my interest in history,” said Price of what has become a lifelong passion. In August, the board of Virginia Piedmont Area Heritage Association voted him to a three-year term as chairman, replacing outgoing Dulany Morison, who will continue leading the Preservation Committee in his capacity as Chair Emeritus with Ashton Cole.

Price, a long time and widely regarded Leesburg attorney who is a partner in the Northern Virginia law firm of McCandlish & Lillard, has been on the board since 2010 and served as its chairman from 2018-2019.

“I guess you could say this is my second coming,” Price said. “Preservation through education is what we do. Along with the real landscape, the cultural landscape in our area is also beautiful, and we want people to experience and appreciate the significant events that occurred right here.”

Over the years, Price, a VMI graduate with a law degree from the University of Virginia, has been instrumental in developing new VPHA programs and three years ago, directed the successful “Year of John Marshall,” which brought guests to Llangollen, Oak Hill, The Hollow, and the John Marshall House in Richmond to study the Fauquier County born Chief Justice who served in that post from 1801 until his death in 1835.

Price was particularly taken with two new significant Piedmont Heritage programs last year, including a concert in Purcellville dedicated to the works of country singer Patsy Cline and a presentation at Buchanan Hall and Welbourne on F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“We’re going to do the Patsy Cline program again, people really liked it,” he said, adding that he also plans to focus on the history of the area’s endangered historic villages, and programs are underway to focus on places like Paris, Lucketts, and Browntown.

Looking ahead to 2024, he’s also excited about the organization’s plans to commemorate the 200-year anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette’s reunion tour through the United States, which will include a series of events highlighting the sites he visited in the Heritage Area.

“He came back to the United States in 1824,” Price said of the French officer who was a hero of the American Revolution. “And he came back to Virginia in 1825. He rode out here from Washington in a carriage with John Quincy Adams and we’re going to have events in Leesburg and Warrenton and Oak Hill, James Monroe’s home.”

As always the mantra of the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area Association will remain “preservation through education” and it’s slogan “see it, save it, pass it on.” The goal is to “educate about the history of, and advocate for, the preservation of the extraordinary historic landscape, culture, and scenery in the Northern Virginia Piedmont for future generations to enjoy.”

Much of that work goes on with the association’s outreach to a wide variety of local schools. Since 2005, the association’s programs have reached out to more than 55,000 students, providing a variety of educateonal experiences based on the history the areas where those students live and attend school. They hope to reach 75,000 students by 2025.

In addition to his work for the PAHA, Price also has served as president of the George Marshall International Center at Dodona Manor during the restoration of the General’s home, and he was a member of the Loudoun County Sesquicentennial Committee and Commissioner in Chancery for the Loudoun County Circuit Court. He also serves as general counsel for the Land Trust of Virginia.

“I’m a great believer in working with like-minded organizations,” he said. “There is definitely strength in numbers.”

VPHA Annual Civil War Conference

Since 1998, the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area Association has hosted an annual three-day Civil War conference examining the war in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania through the lens of leadership as well as historic preservation.

VPHA brings vetted experts with links to both the leaders of the Civil War and the battlefields and landscapes on which their actions played out. Meeting at the Middleburg Community Center, eight provocative talks on the annual topic begins on the Friday night of the conference and ends with a panel discussion of historians on Saturday.

Saturday’s talks are followed by an evening banquet. On Sunday, the final day of the conference, several of the historians take attendees by bus into the field to walk the ground and note the preservation efforts involved. The 2023 conference, with a topic still to be determined, is scheduled from Friday, Oct. 6 through Sunday, October 8.