May 12th, 2021 … Summer of Fun continues!

Until today, the life of these tail-enders was filled with counting people, obtaining dinner selection choices, traveling in the last car (wherever we went), ensuring everyone is happy, healthy, thumping tires before we moved to the next campground and enjoying the sights on the caravan.

On May 10^th, that changed. A couple in our tour were involved in accident on the highway in their car. Thankfully, there were no serious injuries, but the car is no longer towable and we need to help them. That is the biggest job of the tail-ender, is to help people. If you don’t like to help people … this is not the “job” for you. 

The remainder of the group departed the morning of May 11^th and headed toward the next campground. Charlie & I stayed behind to help the couple with whatever they needed to be sure they were safe. We spent the day taking them to the store, to the towing yard, emptying their car, getting some lunch and being sure they were in “good shape.” Once we had accomplished all these tasks, including a few conversations with their insurance company. We called the wagon master and asked if he wanted us to stay with them, or join the rest of the caravan group. The couple left behind would be joining us tomorrow … they would just be minus their tow car. Wagon Master told us to come ahead. Our job was accomplished her, they had what they needed, they were secure and in a safe location. We departed Williamsburg, VA and headed for Greenwood, VA. We arrived in time to enjoy “grill night” and a campfire with the remainder of the caravan group.

The other event that we had to handle, as the tail-enders, is an oil leak that was discovered on a coach at the last campground. Charlie put 2-quarts of oil in it there and Nancy drove it from Williamsburg to Greenwood, about 130 miles. He checked the oil level when we arrived and it was down 2-quarts again. Charlie conversed with other mechanically inclined members of the caravan and they all slept on it the night of May 11^th. The morning of May 12^th, we talked to the wagon master and we felt it was best to get the Class A checked out, to determine why it was losing oil. 

Did I mention the coach, belongs to our dear friend Nancy Ragland. This is her first long, long, solo trip since her husband passed away suddenly. I don’t consider the trip we made with her to Perry Ga, long! We spent the morning calling around to mobile RV techs and to diesel repair shops looking for help. We finally found a truck repair, about 30 miles away from us that could look at it tomorrow morning. So, we nursed it down to the repair shop and prayed the whole way we would not “die” on the side of the road. We picked this place, because there was a Comfort Inn, close that accepts pets. Since she cannot stay in the coach while they have it in the shop. We got the coach dropped off and gathered things from the coach that she and Gracie & Lily (her two cats) would need. We got her set up in the hotel and picked up a little food for a few days. We are hoping that it will only be a day or two! There were a few tears and lots of hugs as we left her … but, she is safe and secure where she is.

Since the rest of the caravan headed to Monticello, Miche’ Tavern and Ash Lawn today, while we were helping Nancy, we stopped at a couple of things to create our own adventure … like all we did today was not an adventure!

Our first stop was at the VDOT Road Workers Memorial. The memorial honors state highway transportation workers who died performing their jobs. It is a place where family members, friends and colleagues can reflect on their loss and where the traveling public can become more aware of sacrifices made by state highway transportation workers. The view of Afton Mountain is one of the state's most scenic sites, complete with panoramic vistas of beautiful western Albemarle and Nelson counties.

The names of 134 employees are engraved on the memorial. The employees died between 1928 and 2012. Their names appear randomly in columns. The state highway organization was established in 1906. It is now known as the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). No public funds were used to build the memorial. It was entirely self-funded with donations of money, materials and time from VDOT employees and retirees, family members, businesses and organizations throughout the state. Nearly $172,000 was contributed for the monument and surrounding features. The monument was dedicated on Sept. 17, 2004, in a ceremony attended by nearly 200 family members. The first remembrance ceremony was held on April 4, 2006, during VDOT’s annual Work Zone Awareness Week.

To qualify for inclusion on the memorial, the deceased must have been an active full-time or part-time state highway transportation employee. The death must have been from a work-related accident, injury or illness. All confirmed for inclusion thus far died from on-the-job incidents. Many of the deaths occurred in work zone incidents. The fund-raising effort was carried out through a non-profit group of VDOT employees who represent a variety of positions and professions throughout the agency. Pam Kida, founder of Pathways of Virginia, an organization that promotes highway safety, was also a member. Mrs. Kida is the widow of VDOT employee Alan Rotach, who was killed along Interstate 295 in 1993.

The memorial is 13 feet long and nearly 10 feet high. It sits on a large grassy area within the second scenic pull-off on I-64, east of Afton Mountain between mile markers 103 and 104. The site was selected because it belongs to VDOT, it is easily accessible by interstate and major highways, and it overlooks a beautiful, serene view of a valley. The design shows three profiles of workers wearing hard hats cut into black, white and gray granite layers. The layers are intended to reflect the diversity of VDOT's employees. An open profile at one end implies a "missing" worker and lets visitors see the scenic view of the overlook. The memorial's design was selected from 41 entries submitted by VDOT employees. The design was submitted by Fredericksburg District Location and Design Engineer Harry Lee and his daughter, Stephanie, a studio arts senior at Mary Washington College at the time.

Our second scenic overlook features a view of a portion of the Greenwood-Afton Rural Historic District. Covering approximately 16,200 acres in western Albemarle County and a small corner of Nelson and southeastern Augusta counties, the Historic District was first settled by Europeans with the arrival of 18th-century Scots-Irish immigrants from the Shenandoah Valley. Early settlement developed along wagon roads and turnpikes that passed through gaps in the Blue Ridge Mountains. During the second-quarter of the 19th century, French-born military engineer Claudius Crozet, known as the “Pathfinder of the Blue Ridge,” directed the building of four railroad tunnels through the mountains, including one that was the longest in the US when it opened in 1858 (reopened in 2021 as a hiking trail). The advent of rail transport dramatically boosted agriculture and trade in the Greenwood-Afton district, giving rise to one of Virginia’s most successful early commercial orchard industries.

Today the Greenwood-Afton Rural Historic District is dominated by large farmsteads, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and early-20th-century estates. It also includes the mid-19th-century villages of Greenwood Depot and Afton, as well as the early-20th-century historically African American communities of New Town and Free Town. Greenwood’s legacy as a seasonal playground for the wealthy is reflected in the area’s large number of estates and “country houses” designed by prominent architects. In early 2016, a small boundary increase to the original district was listed in the National Register, adding several properties along Howardsville Turnpike adjacent to the Swannanoa property. It was originally listed in the National Register of Historic Places on May 6, 2011.

Also near this site, I learned about Richard Chichester DuPont. He was a member of the prominent Delaware duPont family. Born in 1911 to Alexis F. duPont and Mary Chichester, his father was the vice-president of the E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Richard developed an interest in aviation at an early age. He started piloting gliders in 1929. By this time he had already logged some 1,000 hours as an airplane pilot. He learned skills for flying gliders through the Soaring Society of America at Elmira, NY. While at the University of Virginia he founded a campus soaring club. He studied aviation in 1932 at Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute while in the same year with his sister, Alice flew a open-cockpit airplane up the Amazon River. 

Following a soaring meet in Elmira, NY, Richard du Pont was discouraged by few days of favorable winds for soaring and he and others thought there had to be other soaring sites in the eastern US. He had been studying maps and he was certain the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia offered an ideal solution for an alternative soaring site. To test his theory Dick duPont invited other pilots to an informal meet centering at the Swannanoa Country Club near Waynesboro, atop the Blue Ridge in western Virginia. On September 20, 1933, Emerson Mehlhose of Wyandotte, Michigan took off from Rockfish Gap in a wind that nearly tore his wings off, soared up the Shenandoah Valley 71 mi. for a new US distance record. (Old record: 66.7 miles, by Martin Schempp, from Elmira, NY.) Richard duPont on the next day started on Afton Mountain at Rockfish Gap, he passed Mehlhose's landing place, kept on soaring, crossed the Maryland line, started to head into Pennsylvania when rain and fog forced him back to Frederick, MD, a distance of 121.6 mi. — 14 mi. short of the world record.

During World War II, the U.S. established the American Guilder Program. Richard duPont was special assistant to General “Hap” Arnold and placed in charge of the glider program after the death of director Lewin B. Barringer. During a demonstration flight on September 11, 1943 at March Air Field in California, duPont and other passengers were killed in a MC-1 glider. William H. Bowlus who was also a passenger managed to parachute out to safety before the glider crashed. Richard's brother, Major Felix duPont succeeded him in the glider program. This marker is in the approximate area for the start of his flight in 1933 and is close to the southern entrance to the Skyline Drive. Both Richard C. duPont and William H. Bowlus were inducted in the Soaring Hall of Fame in Elmira, NY.

Former President Thomas Jefferson questioned whether he should attend the meeting of the Rockfish Gap Commission, appointed in 1818 by Virginia Gov. James P. Preston to identify a site for the newly approved University of Virginia. Jefferson, who was advocating for the school to be located at Central College, which he was already building in Charlottesville, feared he would be a lightning rod for his opponents. Besides, Jefferson had already written the 21-member commission’s final report before the meeting took place at the Mountaintop Inn. He had stacked the commission with delegates, such as judges and local farmers, who were favorable to his position. He knew the outcome. Former President James Madison and state Sen. Joseph C. Cabell, Jefferson’s point man for promoting the University, convinced Jefferson to attend.

The commission had to choose among Central College, Washington College in Lexington or the College of William & Mary, which was willing to move to Richmond. Jefferson, who argued that Central College was more centrally located for the state, knew who to lobby and how to get people to stand for various items in the legislature. He was also able to cajole Cabell to continue working on the project. The ground for Central College had been broken the year before; two former presidents, Jefferson and Madison, and the sitting president, James Monroe, were present at the laying of the cornerstone. Despite the prestige attached by a trio of presidents, there was extensive opposition to Jefferson’s plan, from some politicians based on cost and from some religious denominations based on the school’s lack of religious focus or ties. Jefferson had been branded an atheist during the 1800 campaign and this accusation was bolstered by his insistence that there be no chapel and no department of theology at the University. But his opponents did get a concession. The cost of the University project was hundreds of thousands of dollars – and Jefferson was prone to give very optimistic estimates as to what things would cost. Cabell advised Jefferson to modify his Rotunda construction estimate by $10,000 to $60,000.

Jefferson’s vision for a college extended back to the American Revolution and his belief that the country needed to have an educated citizenry in a system of government by consent, plus a pool of natural leaders. In Jefferson’s vision, these leaders needed virtue, to put aside their own interests and put forward the interests of the public. While Jefferson had been working on this for a while, it became more urgent as he aged. He feared the South was losing ground to the North; while Virginia had produced four of the first five U.S. presidents, the North had produced Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities. One of the more remarkable aspects of the story is that from the age of 71 to 83, Jefferson was working on this project in every detail. He was designing the curriculum, the political management of getting it through, drafting the legislation, and he obviously did the architectural plans. The building was going on during the Rockfish Gap Commission; the University was already there in parts. Several of the pavilions were built, and he tried to really accelerate the plan of building, so that something very substantial had emerged by the time the commission met. Aside from selecting a site, the commission was tasked with determining what subjects would be taught and the selection of faculty. The University had the first department of economics in the country and the second real medical school. Jefferson even wanted to have tradesmen on site who would be teaching them very practical skills. It wouldn’t be part of the degree course, but he wanted some carpenters and others so they could learn very practical skills in addition to the possibility of having vocational training. But then things started changing. Among other things, a chapel was built on Grounds. What was distinctive was gradually eliminated within the University. Part of the Rockfish Gap report was this system of having no university hierarchy, no university president. By the end of the 19th century, they had reverted to a much more traditional structure, with a university president.

Stay tuned for more fun on our adventures!