The nonprofit Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, headquartered in Winston-Salem, is partnering with universities to conduct a comprehensive light pollution survey from the parkway’s northern gate at Rockfish Gap to its southern terminus near Cherokee, N.C.
Randy Walker
Randy Walker is a musician and freelance writer in Roanoke. He received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was formerly a staff writer on (as it was then called) the Roanoke Times & World-News. He can be reached at randywalker7983@gmail.com.
Posted inCardinal News 250
Angus McDonald, the man who turned down George Washington
The Winchester merchant and land speculator was an experienced military leader from two wars. George Washington begged him to serve in the Revolution, but McDonald refused. Why?
Posted inCardinal News 250
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, but George Wythe was ‘the man behind the man’
Wythe has been called “Jefferson’s godfather” for training Jefferson in the law — and more. He became the first university-affiliated law professor in the country, then he was poisoned by a relative.
Posted inCardinal News 250
Norfolk was burned, the only American city destroyed during the revolution; 250 years later, controversy remains over who ordered its destruction
The conflagration was a decisive propaganda victory for the Patriots, but there’s evidence, suppressed at the time, that they actually ordered the burning.
Posted inCardinal News 250
As Virginia prepared for revolution, some of its leaders took time to found a college: Hampden-Sydney
The founding of Hampden-Sydney College during a revolution was partly a coincidence, but the founders were also anti-royalist — so much so that they named the school after two Englishmen who lost their lives as enemies of the crown.
Posted inCardinal News 250
Peter Francisco, the ‘Hercules of American independence’
He turned up as an orphan of 4 or 5 on the dock of what is today Hopewell. He grew into a giant of a man who struck terror into the British. When he died, Virginia gave him a state funeral. Now a filmmaker wants to turn his story into a miniseries.
Posted inHealth Care
Remembering Wytheville’s polio epidemic, 75 years ago
In the summer of 1950, Wytheville had one of the nation’s highest per capita rates of polio infection.
Posted inCardinal News 250
William Fleming, Virginia’s oft-overlooked acting governor, presided during a Revolutionary War crisis
When Thomas Jefferson’s term expired without a successor being chosen, this doctor from the Roanoke Valley took charge for eight eventful days.
Posted inCardinal News 250
William Fleming’s gravesite gets an overdue cleanup
The doctor who served as acting governor during a crucial period of the Revolution is buried in Roanoke.
Posted inCardinal News 250
Why Patrick Henry never had a mansion the way other famous founders did
This Founding Father preferred simplicity, “not like these other guys.”