LETTER- Hurt deserved the goods

This is rather profoundly none of my business, but I was bothered by one part of the otherwise interesting article on Jack Manahan: the discussion of Althea Hurt and the disposition of the Manahan estate ["Jack and Anna: Remembering the czar of Charlottesville eccentrics," July 5].

Like most long-time Charlottesville residents, I remember Jack Manahan and Anastasia well; I even once had the deeply unsettling experience of being inside their University Circle home. He was a colorful figure, yes, but I think that, as your article shows, he also had some deeply rooted emotional and psychological issues. It was one thing to run across him in the course of your day and enjoy his profound idiosyncrasies. It would be another thing again, I feel certain, to try to genuinely befriend him, as I believe Althea Hurt did, and work to help him through all the day-to-day difficulties of his radically disorganized life. 

My own sense at the time, and still today, is that the judge and the Virginia Supreme court ruled justly in this case.

Peter Walpole
Charlottesville

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