So long, Larry.
PHOTO COURTESY POLLSTAR

John Paul Jones Arena officials announced March 16 that Jason Pedone, assistant general manager for the venue since 2007, has replaced Larry Wilson as general manager. Wilson, who has been GM since the arena opened in 2006, has taken a loftier GM position for SMG— the management company that operates the Arena on behalf of the University— in Jacksonville, Florida, where he’ll manage six venues in the city.

“Larry leaves us in a great situation,” says Pedone, who served as the director of event services for SMG at Reliant Park, home to the NFL’s Houston Texans, before coming to Charlottesville to assist Wilson. “My goal,” he says, “is to keep a good thing going.”

Indeed, despite some early skepticism about whether or not such a small community could support such an arena, Wilson lured many of the world’s top touring acts to town, including The Police, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billy Joel, Justin Timberlake, Eric Clapton, and U2, with acts like Larry the Cable Guy, Lipizzaner Stallions, and The Wiggles thrown in for good measure. Under Wilson’s management, the arena was named Pollstar’s Best New Major Concert Venue 2006.

Wilson also managed the Paramount Theater in town, but Pedone says (more)

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Mark Linkous was the subject of a February 28, 2002 Hook cover story.
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He died once 14 years ago, but this time Mark Linkous won’t be coming back. The 47-year-old musician who performed under the name Sparklehorse and was known for his haunting melodies and poetic lyrics, committed suicide on Saturday, March 6 in an alley outside a friend’s home in Knoxville, Tennessee by shooting himself through the heart.

“It’s very distressing,” says his cousin-in-law, Tracey Linkous of Charlottesville, noting that Linkous had become increasingly withdrawn from extended family over the past several years and that he was devastated over the disintegration of his marriage. Linkous’ manager, Shelby Meade, confirms that the musician was in the process of divorce.

The subject of the February 28, 2002 Hook cover story, when he was living near the tiny Buckingham County town of Dillwyn, Linkous famously overdosed in London in 1996 and suffered cardiac arrest, but was revived after spending several minutes technically dead. Hospitalized for months, he regained the ability to walk with leg braces— but more importantly, he retained his ability to sing and write songs. While his work never achieved mainstream commercial success, it inspired (more)

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UVA’s Institute on Aging presents Virginia Morris, a nationally recognized authority on eldercare and author of How to Care for Aging Parents, who will discuss how families can effectively engage in the difficult but necessary conversations about legal, financial and medical plans for aging parents and spouses at the Culbreth Theater, as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book, on Friday, March 19 at 2:00pm.

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Legendary point guard Jerry West

Local writer Jonathan Coleman, the best selling author of At Mother’s Request, Exit the Rainmaker, and Long Way to Go: Black and White in America, will be reading from a work-in-progress, a collaboration with NBA great Jerry West to pen the legendary Los Angeles Laker’s autobiography, at Random Row Books on West Main street on Tuesday, March 9 at 8pm.

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Kay Peaslee is moving to Indianapolis and will take along her cat Yang Guifei– named for the most famous concubine of the Tang Dynasty.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

She covered news as the founder of the theObserver, a long-lasting weekly paper, and made news as an activist who, along with her late husband Alexander “Sandy” Peaslee, pushed for the controversial— but ultimately unsuccessful— reversion of  Charlottesville to town status. Now, Kay Peaslee is preparing to start a new chapter.

“I’m moving to Indianapolis, to be near my youngest daughter,” says Peaslee, sitting in her spacious downtown McGuffey Hill condo while her oldest daughter, Sarah Peaslee, packs boxes and sorts family photos in preparation for her mother’s Thursday, March 4 departure.

Now 87, Peaslee says the decision (more)

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Boston Globe correspondent Michael Kranish’s new book is politely called Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War, but it could just as easily be called “Jefferson on the Run” or “Jefferson’s biggest blunders,” as it chronicles the successful 1780 invasion of Virginia led by Benedict Arnold, the famous traitor that Jefferson had famously supported, which found an unprepared Jefferson having to stuff his belongings in a bag and flee Monticello with the British only minutes away. Appropriately enough, Kranish will be discussing his book at Monticello’s Jefferson Library during the 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book. For a little primer of what you’re likely to hear, here’s a recent piece by Kranish that appeared in the Globe.

The event starts at 4pm Thursday, March 19 in Monticello’s Jefferson Library and is free to the public.

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2/4/2010 POSTPONED: Due the the approaching bad weather, this event will have to be rescheduled.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, gives a talk, entitled “The Promise of an Interstate Energy Grid,” at the Miller Center on Monday, February 08 at 11:00am. Eisenhower’s books include Islam and Central Asia: An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat? (The Eisenhower Institute, 2000) and Mrs. Ike: Portrait of a Marriage (Capital Books, 2002). She has written for the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, and appeared on CNN, FOX News, PBS, and the BBC.

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Update: Rescheduled from February 10 to February 17 due to the weather.

John P. Kaminski, founder and director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, presents selections from his new biography The Great Virginia Triumvirate: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison in the Eyes of Their Contemporaries at the New Dominion Bookshop on Wednesday, February 10 at 12:15pm.

Taken from letters, speeches, diaries, and memoirs, the quotations and vignettes included here shed light on the actual person behind each public image. George Washington offering a bowl of hot tea at night to a guest at Mount Vernon who has a cold; Thomas Jefferson extending condolences to John Adams on the death of his wife, Abigail; and James Madison bequeathing the silver-hilted walking cane, left him by Jefferson, in turn to the third president’s grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph—such moments reveal personality and character in a way that no official act ever could.

“Much is known to one which is not known to the other,” Jefferson wrote, “and no one knows everything.” The cumulative effect of many voices, however, can create a portrait of invaluable insight.

“Kaminski is an extremely well informed guide through the tangled tale of our political origins…. This book, clearly a labor of love, represents his distilled wisdom of the three great Virginians—Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.”—Joseph J. Ellis, Mount Holyoke College, author of Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

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Sheriff William Morris in 2003.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Greene County’s flamboyant five-term former law enforcement head, Sheriff William Morris, 65, has been taken off life support January 28 after what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, NBC29 reports.

According to family members, Morris, who ran for his second term in 1987 with the slogan, “Don’t be silly, re-elect Sheriff Willie,” suffered from long-term health issues.

A champion weightlifter, Morris set world records in power lifting and won more than two dozen national championships. In September, he suffered an injury that caused tinnitus, which sounded like a constant “buzz saw,” says his daughter.

“I hope my death will help bring about some cure for those who suffer from tinnitus by bringing attention to it,” he wrote in a suicide note, the Daily Progress reports.

And according to the American Tinnitus Association, there is no cure.

Morris rose to fame in the mid-1980s with such high-profile activities as housing a prisoner in his own home when space at the jail ran thin and holding a bake sale when the County supervisors denied his requested drug enforcement money.

The Board of Supervisors, he told the Hook seven years ago, is a place to see “how much money can you put in your pocket.”

This from the man who once arrested one board member’s son on charges of wife-beating and another’s brother for a DUI– and he said he once chased a supervisor who might have been illegally hunting.

Morris was buried February 1 at Evergreen Church of the Brethren in Dyke.
–updated 9:29pm with news of his death
– updated January 29– Spelling of “Willie” changed.
– updated February 1
– updated February 2

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Wendell Wood’s house on Carter’s Mountain takes shape. Click on the image for a closer view.
AERIAL PHOTO BY SKIP DEGAN

“Why would you want to write about some house I’m building?” That was developer Wendell Wood in a Hook cover story last February, when asked about the mansion he was building. The “real story” he said was the expansion around National Ground Intelligence Center and the prospect of 1,500 new jobs. “Now that’s a story,” said Wood.

Indeed, Wood’s developments along Route 29 over the last 30 years have been an ongoing story that earned him plenty of economic kudos and conservation-minded critics, but as the size of his new house becomes apparent (even from miles away), one may recall his reluctance to talk about it.

“It’s just,” he said with a smile, “that people hate me enough as it is.”

According to County records, Wood’s new house will tip the scales at 15,554 finished square feet with another 14,269 square feet of unfinished basement, decks, and porches— putting it within range of Patricia Kluge’s 23,000 square-foot Albemarle House and making it not only one of the biggest houses ever built in Virginia but also (more)

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Picket’s Charge from the point of view of the Confederates.
PAINTING BY EDWIN FORBES

In February, feasting meets history at the Michie Tavern when award-winning author, writer and lecturer, Rick Britton offers a dramatic re-telling of the July 3, 1863 attack on Cemetery Ridge (commonly known as Picket’s charge), which is “arguably the most famous attack in American history,” Britton says.

Albemarle County was featured prominently in this celebrated, but terribly failed assault. Over 440 Confederates, the vast majority from Charlottesville and Albemarle (including the great grandson of Innkeeper, William Michie) “marched in lockstep across that valley of death as the 19th Virginia Infantry.” Half of them would be killed.

The lecture, “Albemarle Boys in Pickett’s Charge,” will be held at Noon on Thursday, February 25, and a mere $15 gets you the full Michie Tavern buffet, drinks, dessert, and an education in local Civil War history. Now that’s truly a feast for the stomach and the mind! Make your reservations by calling 434-977-1234.

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A smiling Teresa Sullivan, current provost at the University of Michigan, greets future colleagues in the Rotunda at an event announcing her hiring as UVA’s eighth president.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

The UVA board of visitors voted unanimously on January 11 to appoint Dr. Teresa Sullivan, provost and vice president of academic affairs at the University of Michigan, as UVA’s eighth president, replacing John Casteen III when he retires in August.

Following the vote, UVA Rector John O. “Dubby” Wynne introduced 60-year-old Sullivan, praising her more than three decades experience in “almost every aspect of higher education,” and claiming with incredulity that Sullivan met a list of requirements put forth by the board “so comprehensive as to be unattainable.” Among other things, he said, she is a leader “who could create a vision that could be measurably achieved”; a recruiter of top notch faculty; someone who values diversity and understands the benefits of athletics; and an experienced budget manager who was chancellor over nine schools in the University of Texas system. Beyond those characteristics and skills, Wynne said, the board wanted someone with “emotional intelligence, who is self aware, sociable and empathetic.”

In her acceptance speech, Sullivan praised Casteen, promising to “pursue the course he has charted.” She introduced her husband of 38 years, Douglas Laycock, who will teach at UVA Law, and her two grown sons, Joseph, a doctoral student at Boston University, and John, a recent college grad who is planning a fall wedding.

In the coming months, Sullivan said, she will continue her full time work in Michigan, where, she noted with a smile, “I have a budget due and 200 promotions to make decisions about.” She plans to visit Charlottesville at least once a month to meet with faculty, students, board members, and Virginia legislators in preparation for taking over this summer.

While Sullivan may be amply qualified to head a university of any size, UVA’s presidency, she confessed, is the only such position she has ever applied for.

“This,” she explained of UVA, “is one of the jewels of higher education.”

As for the challenges she will face, Sullivan, who is also a demographer and a sociologist whose research focuses on consumer bankruptcy, says her biggest short term challenges as president will be financial. The long term challenge, she believes, will be the “hot competition to get the best minds.”

Sullivan’s five-year contract promises her total annual compensation of $680,000.

— story updated at 4:39pm
–Old headline: “Sullivan becomes new UVA president”

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Former park ranger Bruce W. Bytnar discusses and signs copies of his memoir, A Park Ranger’s Life Thirty-two Years Protecting Our National Parks, at New Dominion Bookshop on Saturday, January 16 at 11am.

From the author’s blog: “I started my National Park Service career in 1975 as a seasonal employee at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland. I later worked at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, and three districts on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and Virginia. During this time I worked as an interpreter of historic, cultural and natural resources, a federal law enforcement officer, wildland and structural firefighter, resource manager, emergency medical technician, search and rescue worker, supervisor, manager, mentor, and instructor. It was a rich and productive career that produced an inordinate number of experiences and stories.”

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UVA athletic director Craig Littlepage, left, introduces UVA’s new head football coach Mike London.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

UVA athletic director Craig Littlepage announced that University of Richmond head football coach Mike London will replace recently fired UVA head football coach Al Groh. London comes to UVA after only two seasons as head coach for the Spiders, but Littlepage expressed no reservations about his decision.

“We need a coach that can win,” Littlepage told the crowd of spectators and media that had gathered in the dining hall at John Paul Jones Arena. “Mike stood out on the strength of his character, as a coach, teacher, and leader. He will give UVA football an exciting jump start.”

London racked up a 24-5 record at Richmond and won the 2008 Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA) title.

London becomes the third African-American head coach in (more)

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Tiger Woods meets with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office back in April.
PHOTO BY PETE SOUZA

While the world appears shocked by Tiger Wood’s recent car accident, the result of an apparent argument with his wife, Elin, over admitted infidelities, which may, appropriately enough, have involved his wife brandishing of a golf club, Golf Digest writer Tom Callahan, a former Barboursville resident who wrote a 2004 biography of Woods called Searching for Tiger, wonders what all the fuss is about.

“He’s a famous billionaire, and he’s been with other women,”  says Callahan, who now lives in Florida and says has no idea what really happened at Tiger’s house that night. “Gee, stop the presses. It’s just not that startling to me.”

Callahan says he’s not particularly close to Woods, despite tracking down his subject’s namesake for the book, and he won’t speculate on what happened the night of the accident.

“I haven’t seen him since the Players, but I’ve been in his house, talked to him,” says Callahan. “He associates me with his father, because I went to Vietnam.” (more)

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