Downtown Ivy, Sunday morning and….
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

the same spot 24 hours earlier.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Unlike the late-December ’snowpocalypse’ (not to be confused with this weekend’s predicted ‘snowmageddon‘) when fast and heavy snow scattered dozens of cars in a botched commute, a Hook reporter journeying from Ivy to Afton and then downtown via varying routes on Saturday, January 23, saw at least a dozen VDOT plows plowing— and zero stranded vehicles. And although no asphalt was showing, traffic moved smoothly at speeds ranging from 35 to 45mph, and the next day black asphalt popped out almost as fast as the sun overhead.

Why didn’t this happen last time?

For starters, the depth was less: 10.5 inches this time versus 20.5 inches, as measured at UVA’s McCormick Observatory.

The other big thing was timing, says (more)

Comments(103)

Three weeks after Snowpocalypse, this sidewalk at the major intersection of Ridge and West Main was impassable in a wheelchair.
PHOTO BY KEVIN COX

For weeks after December’s massive volume of snowfall ceased, snow remained on sidewalks in violation of Charlottesville’s City Code and causing frustration for both able and disabled citizens who use sidewalks.

The latest 10.5 inches officially recorded at McCormick Observatory for the January 30 snow brings a different grade to city efforts: much improved.

“The city has done a (more)

Comments(23)

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

Comments(137)

The staging of Governor Bob McDonnell’s Republican response echoes the State of the Union address.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

In office as governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia for 11 days, Bob McDonnell added another role to his new duties: spokesman for the GOP following President Barrack Obama’s January 27 State of the Union address.

When McDonnell was invited to provide the Republican response last week, political pundit Larry Sabato warned that the president and the pageantry of the State of the Union in Congress were a tough act to follow.

Perhaps McDonnell heeded that warning. His response in the House of Delegates chamber, surrounded by a diverse group of supporters who applauded and looked at him adoringly, prompted NBC political commentator David Gregory to note that it looked like a (more)

Comments(21)

O’Connell has served another, more powerful water body, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Gary O’Connell says that he will leave his job as Charlottesville City manager, a post he has held for nearly 15 years, in order to take the director’s role at the Albemarle County Service Authority, the body that sells water to households in the urban area.

“A few minutes ago, the Albemarle County Service Authority approved my employment as their new Executive Director effective May 1,” O’Connell wrote to supporters of news that first broke on WINA radio’s morning show. “I will stay on as City Manager the next 90 days until April 30. I’m excited about this opportunity, a good fit for my utility experiences over 35 years, and my passion for water and the environment.”

O’Connell will be assuming the vacancy that will be left when Authority director Gary Fern departs to take a role with a private engineering firm.

Ironically, in recent years, O’Connell— who has (more)

Comments(45)

Former collegiate gymnast Gretchen Kettleberger will compete in this weekend’s Superfit Games.
PHOTO COURTESY CROSSFIT CHARLOTTESVILLE

The Olympics may be two weeks away, but anyone interested in watching high intensity athletic competition can get a fix this weekend at Charlottesville’s first-ever Superfit Games, taking place Saturday, January 30.

There won’t be slalom or bobsledding in these games. Instead, the 100 participants from around the country– all of them adherents to Crossfit, a method of training that involves short, varied, extremely high-intensity workouts– will leap, lift, sprint and flex as they vie for the title “Fittest person in Charlottesville.”

“This is a chance to see A-list Crossfitters,” says organizer Kyle Redinger, who opened the Crossfit Charlottesville gym six months ago, but notes that Crossfit– the subject of a Hook cover story– can be adapted for all fitness levels.

“I’m sure there’ll be butterflies, never having done any type of competition like this,” says Todd Edmunds, who’s traveling in from Pennsylvania for the Games. “I’m looking to see how I can compete, compare with people outside my area.”

For contestant Gretchen Kittelberger, the Superfit Games will be her first Crossfit event but she’s no stranger to high level athletic competition. A gymnast at University of Maryland until her 2008 graduation, Kittelberger is now a law student and Crossfit trainer.

“In gymnastics, competing is down to a science– the way you warm up, the person you talk to beforehand to get you psyched up,” she says. “Crossfit is not like that, so I’m interested to see how I react in that situation.”

The competition takes place Saturday, January 30 from 7am to 7pm at the old National Linen Building at the corner of Market Street and Meade Avenue. Observers are asked to make a donation of $5 or $10; all proceeds will benefit the Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad and Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit benefiting veterans.

Comments(20)

Dan, Gil, and Alex Harrington tie a black ribbon to Copeley Road Bridge a day after Morgan’s body was found.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

“Our sorrow is etched in our faces; our pain has been carved in our hearts.” So said the mother of Morgan Dana Harrington, a day after her 20-year-old daughter’s body was found in a cowfield south of Charlottesville.

“I can tell you, having seen them,” continued Gil Harrington, “that girl even had some lovely bones.”

The attractiveness of the blonde, blue-eyed victim and the sudden, heart-breaking mystery following her unexplained departure from a long-anticipated concert combined to make the case a top national news story.

At the emotional January 27 press conference for approximately 30 journalists, the family— including the victim’s silently grieving brother, Alex— tied a black ribbon to a pole on the Copeley Road bridge, the last place where the Virginia Tech education major was positively spotted after leaving the October 17 Metallica concert at nearby John Paul Jones Arena.

Clad only in a t-shirt, tights, skirt, and knee-high boots on a misty 42-degree night— she was, police believe, trying to hitch a ride on the bridge.

On that same bridge Wednesday, her father expressed (more)

Comments(103)

The missing Morgan poster and the main house at Anchorage Farm where a body was found.
VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT HISTORIC RESOURCES;

After all the rain and high winds in recent days, 68-year-old North Garden area cattle farmer Dave Bass says he went out Tuesday morning, January 26, to check his fences. Around 8:30am, in an area he describes as far from Route 29 South, which fronts his farm, he spotted what he initially thought might be a deer carcass.

“I was on my tractor feeding cows on a remote part of the farm I don’t normally go to,” says Bass, who quickly realized he had spotted a body.

“It’s a shock,” says Bass.

State Police Colonel W. Steven Flaherty convened a press conference in Charlottesville at 5 o’clock that evening where he said that, due to “significant items of evidence,” investigators believe the body was indeed Morgan Dana Harrington, the 20-year-old who disappeared October 17 from a Metallica concert in Charlottesville.

Anchorage Farm lies about 9 miles south of Charlottesville along Red Hill Road.
HOOK GRAPHIC

And so the search for Morgan Harrington switches from the case of a missing person to a homicide case, as Albemarle’s top prosecutor, Denise Lunsford, arrived mid-morning to inspect the scene.

State Police spokesperson Corinne Geller revealed that what farmer Bass found was “skeletal remains” and that the remains and scene were evaluated by forensic technicians, who will make the positive identification. Her colleague Lt. Joe Rader said the body was found in a hay field that had been cut in August, so that when the body arrived it may have been hidden in waist-high grass.

“We have a perpetrator or perpetrators at large that we certainly intend to catch and to prosecute,” Rader said at the press conference.

The search for Morgan Harrington was arguably the biggest story of 2009, with the photogenic Virginia Tech education major’s face appearing on everything from pizza boxes to the cover of People magazine. The plight of her parents, an everycouple consisting of a high level hospital physician administrator and a nurse with a tendency to make humanitarian trips to developing nations, drew the attention of the father of abducted teen Elizabeth Smart.

A State Police forensic van arrives at Anchorage Farm Tuesday morning.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

“One of our fans is missing,” read a message from the band members of Metallica, which contributed $50,000 toward an eventual $150,000 reward. And when a professional search organization announced a chance for the public to join the search, 1,600 volunteers leapt from armchair to outdoors to scour the areas around the John Paul Jones Arena.

As it turned out, that search– like many conducted by police– turned up nothing in the way of hard evidence, so parents Dan and Gil Harrington had to face the prospect of Christmas without their daughter as well as a new life as just (more)

Comments(420)

No more Corks & Curls? From right to left, the 1928, 1930, 2007, 1908, and 1913 editions of the yearbook.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

After a nearly 120-year run, there’ll be no University of Virginia yearbook for sale this year, say UVA officials.

“The Corks & Curls yearbook is traditionally published by UVA students, but the group is currently not active,” says Karen Shaffer, UVA’s director of student services. “While they may choose to regroup and publish a yearbook in the future, there is no plan to do so in the 2009-10 academic year.”

The news came as a shocker for historian Coy Barefoot, who says he drew heavily on archival copies of Corks & Curls in compiling his own book, The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia.

“It’s a prime historical resource,” says Barefoot, who is teaching a local history course this semester. “This is just awful from a historian’s standpoint.”

However, according to Cavalier Daily editor Andrew T. Baker, the yearbook hasn’t been making much of an impression on current UVA students.

“I haven’t seen much publicity or presence from the yearbook around Grounds in the four years I’ve been here,” he says.

“I’ve tried testing the waters with some of my friends, casually mentioning that the yearbook isn’t going to be published,” says UVA student and Hook music writer Stephanie Garcia, “and no one seemed to really care.”

An even bigger shocker, according to Aaron Josephson, who serves on the executive committee of the Class of 2009, was that the historic treasure wasn’t (more)

Comments(7)

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)

Comments(31)

Family— and alleged victims— of Patrick Crider gathered at his bond hearing in Albemarle General District Court.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Patrick D. Crider, 18, the Western Albemarle High School student arrested January 14 for threatening to kill four of his classmates one day earlier, will remain in jail.

“I cannot find, Mr. Crider, you are a reasonable risk,” said Judge William Barkley at a hearing Monday, January 25, in Albemarle General District Court. The defendant, a slight young man wearing jail stripes, sobbed when the judge announced his decision.

In issuing his ruling to deny bail, the judge cited Crider’s present and past psychiatric issues, and the number of people on Facebook that Crider specifically identified and described how he would kill.

Psychiatrist Vanessa Camperlengo testified that (more)

Comments(15)

The Mechums River closes Browns Gap Turnpike in Crozet.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Albemarle County public schools— which delayed their opening by two hours for threatened-but-undetermined ice on Friday, January 22— are closed Monday, January 25 due to flooding. Alas, the school system hasn’t yet Twittered or even announced the news on its website (only revealing by automated phone message thus far), so there may be a raft of confusion this morning.

Update 7:45am: Charlottesville schools are on a two-hour delay. By 7:45 am– when Walker and Buford students are typically arriving at school– parents had received no alert and the news was announced only on the (more)

Comments(33)