After more than a decade at the mic at UVA football and men’s basketball games, Mac McDonald announced yesterday that he is resigning his post with the Virginia Sports Network as the Cavaliers’ radio play-by-play man.

“I now have an opportunity on a couple fronts to move forward in my career and pursue a couple goals that I have had for some time,” he says in a press release. “I will always treasure my time with the players, coaches and administration.”

This marks the second time McDonald has said goodbye to Charlottesville. The first was in 1985, when he went to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to call games for Wake Forest University. In 2006, he left the morning show with Jane Foy and the late Dick Mountjoy at Virginia Sports Network flagship station WINA-AM to focus on his UVA duties.

McDonald did not immediately return calls for comment, but his football broadcast partner Frank Quayle says the news took him aback.

“He sent me an e-mail yesterday and I was (more)

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The folks at Big Jim’s BBQ on Route 29 tell us that, after over 27 years, today is their last day. Big Jim’s has been a local institution for years, and a favorite hang out of former Senator George Allen, civil rights attorney John Whitehead, and scores of other BBQ fans. Big Jim’s declined to comment on the reason for the restaurant’s closure, but they did encourage everyone to swing on over before 7pm and say good-bye.
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During a couple of hours I spent researching civil rights in Charlottesville in preparation for our April 3 cover story about the 1963 visit of Martin Luther King Jr., I came across a bunch of random tidbits that didn’t seem to fit in the timeline we ran with the story. But for local historians, I thought I’d toss them out here– and in keeping with the usage of the day, I’ve used the word “Negro” as it was used in news accounts during that time:

�€� December 1958 - Look magazine runs a multi-page feature showing angry (and then all-white) Lane High School students debating each other over the topic of integration.

�€� September 1958 - Robert E. Lee School, a segregationist white elementary institution, opens in a large house on the City’s southwest side. (On September 18, after 12 black students prevailed in their lawsuit to attend Lane and Venable Elementary, Governor Lindsay Almond orders the two schools shut. They wouldn’t reopen until January 1959.)

�€� February 1963 - John Dos Passos is the UVA Writer-in-Residence

�€� April 1963 - UVA law student Teddy Kennedy chairs (more)

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Two weeks after 12-year-old Lorena Sanchez-Toledo disappeared from outside her home near the intersection of Route 29 and Hydraulic Road, Charlottesville police have announced that the FBI found her alive in Chicago and that she is safely returning home. Thirty-one yearold Jeremias Chagala-Mil of Swanson Drive now faces local and federal charges in connection to the young girl’s disappearance, though the police have declined to announce the specific charges as of right now.

“We are extremely pleased we were able to resolve this case safely,” says Charlottesville police chief Tim Longo is the press release. “We are looking forward to returning Lorena to her parents and to her school where she belongs.”

Police also declined to note how they found the Buford Middle School student in Chicago, except to say that the arrest was “based on leads generated by local and federal authorities.”

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When Staples opened a downtown store in 2004, Order from Horder owners Carole and Fred Wells vowed to fight the office supply giant. Four years later, the Wells are pulling the plug on their Downtown Mall store after 15 years in business.

“We’re going south,” says Carole Wells. “We’re ready for a change.”

In the end, it may not have been Staples that led them to sell out. “That had nothing to do with it,” says Wells. “I’ve been dealing with them for years.”

Instead, she cites larger factors: “Retail’s not easy now. The economy sucks.” And competition (more)

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Paul Summers still remembers the Valentine’s Day in 1954 when he met Jill Faulkner at Fort Bragg. He was a young infantry officer back from Korea, and she was a bridesmaid at a wedding. By June that year he’d asked her to marry him, and on August 21 they tied the knot.

“That was against the wishes of both sets of parents,” says Summers, and one of those parents was Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner. “They thought it would be doomed to failure.”

Fifty-three years of marriage later, Summers mourns the loss of his bride, who died April 21 at their White Hall home, Knole Farm, at age 74 following a severe stroke in November 2006.

The couple moved to Charlottesville when Paul attended law school. They had three children– Paul III, Cathy, and Bok– and moved to the country in the ’60s.

She was happiest when hunting, recalls her husband. At Farmington Hunt Club, Jill Summers was master of foxhounds, the longest-serving active female master in North America.

“Jill was anything but a feminist,” says Paul Summers. “She was appalled at the word. She was proud to be an attractive woman. She was a lady.” (more)

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A recent Freedom of Information Act request by the Hook finds that the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority isn’t willing to let favored consulting firm Gannett Fleming rest on its existing multi-million-dollar contracts.

Despite having already received over $2.5 million to rewrite local water plans plus another $3.1 million to design a controversial dam– not to mention $123,800 for “public involvement”– the firm just won approval for two contract amendments totaling $17,000.

The Freedom of Information Act request also turned up a rough draft of a PowerPoint presentation that (more)

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When city officials, neighbors, and members of the UVA community gather this Friday to celebrate the completion of Watson Manor, the new headquarters for UVA’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture located on University Circle, there’ll be one thing conspicuously absent–the 150-year beech tree the original developer of the project axed without permission.

In 2006, developer David Turner ordered the old tree felled in violation of his special use permit, a move that infuriated Charlottesville Planing Commission members, who called it a “criminal act” and the “most egregious violation of a special use permit” they’d ever seen.

“They should be fined a $1,000 for every year that tree was alive,” said commissioner Jon Fink at the time. “It was irreplaceable. I’m deeply saddened and angered.”

As a result, the City issued a stop-work order on the project.

“You can’t murder the tree and call it the death of the tree,” said Neighborhood Development chief Jim Tolbert, during a BZA hearing at which a lawyer for Turner tried to argue that the tree was dying anyway. “Saving the tree was an important condition of the special use permit, and they violated it.” (more)

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The only child of William Faulkner, Jill Faulkner Summers, has died at the age of 74, 17 months after suffering a debilitating stroke. An avid fox hunter, Summers was, until the time of her illness, the Master of Foxhounds for the Farmington Hunt, a role she described in a 2005 story in the Hook. Married to a professional money manager, Paul Summers, Summers was the mother of three children, daughter Cathy as well as Bok and Paul Jr., who for many years operated the former Blue Ridge Brewing Company, Charlottesville’s first restaurant/brew pub, on West Main Street. The Daily Progress has an obituary.

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After the Miami Dolphins passed on him with the first selection in the NFL Draft, Chris Long hoisted the jersey of the St. Louis Rams on stage at Radio City Music Hall, as the Rams used their second overall pick to take the fourth-year UVA defensive end.

Long is the highest Cavalier ever selected in the history of the NFL Draft in the Super Bowl era, and only the second highest after the Pittsburgh Steelers chose Wahoo running back Bill Dudley first overall in 1942. He is also the first Cavalier to be chosen in the first round of the draft since 2006, when the New York Jets chose offensive lineman D’Brickashaw Ferguson with the fourth overall pick.

Long’s pigskin legend father, Howie, accompanied his son backstage before the selection. After the Rams announced their pick, Long became only the fifth son of a Pro Football Hall of Famer to be drafted into the NFL.

3:52pm update: Long isn’t the only Wahoo of interest to teams picking in the top 10. ESPN has a camera trained on third-year guard Branden Albert, awaiting his NFL fate at home in Edgewood, Maryland. If Albert goes to the Jacksonville Jaguars (who traded up to get the Baltimore Ravens’ eighth-overall pick), the Cincinnati Bengals, or the New England Patriots, it will be the first time ever that two Cavaliers have been chosen in the top 10.

4:10pm update: The Patriots chose Tennessee linebacker Jerod Mayo at #10, so Cavalier history will have to wait another year. Still, if a team drafts Albert in the first round, it will be the first time two ‘Hoos have been chosen in the first round since 1997, when linebacker James Farrior went to the New York Jets as the eighth pick, and defensive end Jon Harris landed with the Philadelphia Eagles as the 25th selection.

4:41pm update: Branden Albert is a Kansas City Chief. The Chiefs chose the Cavalier offensive lineman with the 15th overall pick. Seeking to fill a porous offensive line, the Chiefs traded up for the 15th spot from the Detroit Lions.

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The 16-year-old Crozet boy accused of being with Slade Woodson, 19, in the March 27 shooting spree that shut down Interstate 64 will be tried in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. Judge Susan Whitlock today denied a request by the commonwealth to move the case to Albemarle Circuit Court.

“The issue is the seriousness of the offenses,” said Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Darby Lowe, in arguing for the transfer. She noted the “willful manner” of the rampage, the property damage, injuries and the fact that firearms were used. Five occupied vehicles were shot and two people sustained minor injuries. The teen faces 15 charges.

“He’s a kid,” argued defense attorney Dana Slater, pictured left. “He’s made some very bad decisions,” but she pointed out that he had no previous criminal record.

Judge Whitlock also denied a defense motion that the transfer hearing be closed, except for matters pertaining to the youth’s psychological and school records. “The commonwealth recognizes the public interest in this case,” said Lowe in requesting the hearing remain open to the public.

The case will be heard May 7, and Slater waived a bail or bond hearing for the boy, whose mother sat beside him during the hearing. She left with a handful of supporters.

“The court considered all information and made the appropriate decision,” said Slater afterward. “Just because a person is charged doesn’t mean they’re guilty,” she added.
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Despite the speculation of some experts, it turns out Virginia football standout Chris Long will not be the first selection in Saturday’s NFL Draft. Today, the Miami Dolphins reached a six-year, $30 million deal with Michigan offensive lineman Jake Long (no relation to the UVA defensive end), thus ending the mystery about whom the Dolphins would choose with the first overall pick. Some had guessed that the Cavalier would go to Miami because of UVA coach Al Groh’s close ties with Dolphins head of football operations Bill Parcells.

That means that with the second overall pick, the St. Louis Rams are unofficially on the clock to determine if they, too, will opt to go Long by choosing the 6′ 4″, 285-pound Charlottesvillian. Should the Rams pass on Long, then he could be hoisting the jersey of either the Atlanta Falcons, the Oakland Raiders (for whom his father Howie played for 12 seasons), or the Kansas City Chiefs, in that order. Rounding out the top 10 picks in the draft are the New York Jets, the New England Patriots, the Baltimore Ravens, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the New Orleans Saints.

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