Members of the Class of 1965 at a public high school in Hershey, Pennsylvania had such a good time at their 50th reunion that they extended it to Williamsburg the following year. Among them was my former colleague Ed Offley. We started out together at The Virginia Gazette, and he
The Monroe family from LaSalle, Illinois, took the afternoon off from touring historical sights to go sailing near Williamsburg. Ed is a dentist and Nanci is his office manager. “We were looking for something fun and different to do,” Nanci said. “This was a surprise to us.” Ed wanted to
Exactly a year ago I wrote about the confusion between the new Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia (right) and the new American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. The latter is likely to scoop the former by opening this year instead of next. This is from a news release May
While sailing the York River with his family, a retired Navy officer told me two stories about sailing with a Navy carrier. He stipulated they were not for attribution., “We were in the North Atlantic on the Navy carrier USS America in 1972. Along comes a 13-meter sailboat whose skipper
The term Ghost Fleet applies to three genres, maybe more. The first Ghost Fleet is well known to those living in Tidewater Virginia as the Ghost Fleet of US Navy and Merchant Marine ships anchored in the James River off Ft. Eustis. After World War II and for years afterward,
Jennifer and Curtis Miller took their family on a “glam camping” trip to the York River, and we wound up sailing to Afghanistan. They are active duty Air Force, so they drove from nearby Langley AFB to Cheatham Annex, east of Williamsburg. There the Navy has decked out the old
Then.People ask, “What’s with the pirates?” The Battle of the Capes was a classic sea battle. Not so the battles by pirates. George H. Patton’s “Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the American Revolution” presents another story. Here is the tale of America’s insurgency against the
Three couples with diverse backgrounds enjoyed a smooth day of sailing on the York River. And they drove a considerable way to do it. Gerald Napper brought his gal Renita Marshall from Ft. Lee, south of Richmond. He’s a First Sergeant with 24 years in, and she’s a dental administrator.
And A lovely couple from Annapolis went sailing near Williamsburg for their first anniversary. And it was a joy to go sailing with scholars. “This was a total surprise,” said Sara Crouser as she boarded the boat with her husband Mark. “He can never keep a secret, so this is
People ask, “Do you conduct burials at sea?” A funeral is hardly a fun thing to do on vacation, but it can be exciting. The Novy siblings gathered from all over the country to make the most of a melancholy situation as they buried their brother at sea. “This
