Virginia Beach, VA

Kathleen and I flew to the Commonwealth of Virginia to visit the Bede Family, who gave us buddy passes on Delta Airlines. Fun fact: The term “commonwealth” is legally identical to “state,” and is used mainly for stylistic purposes. Bonus Question 1: Four U.S. states use the commonwealth label—what are the other three? (answers at end of post). Named in honor of Queen Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen, Virginia has produced eight U.S. presidents, more than any other state (or commonwealth). Bonus Question 2: Can you name all eight? (answers at end of post).   

Wednesday, June 24: We flew standby, as is required with buddy passes, and not only got on the plane, but were given first-class seats on a direct flight to Norfolk. John met us in the terminal, and our trip was off to a great start. 

Thursday, June 25: Virginia Beach is the most populous city in the commonwealth, with about 460,000 people. The city wasn’t incorporated until 1952, and the economy today is dominated by tourism and defense. It is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the longest pleasure beach on earth, with 28 miles of continuous Atlantic Oceanfront connected to 10 miles along the Chesapeake Bay, the third largest estuary in the world. Virginia Beach was our home from July 1988 to December 1991, when Kathleen and I were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. On our sightseeing list was a visit to the townhome that we owned in the Kempsville neighborhood. The house looks exactly the same as it did 35 years ago. 

4915 Woods Edge Road

Virginia Beach was also home to the last known person to be convicted of witchcraft in Virginia. Known as the Witch of Pungo, Grace Sherwood was a farmer, healer and midwife, who was accused of witchcraft by her neighbors in 1697, 1698 and 1706; the charges included turning herself into a cat, damaging crops and causing the death of a bull. As was typical of the day, the courts ordered that her guilt or innocence be determined by throwing her in the water, called “ducking.” If she sank, she was innocent, if she didn’t, she was guilty. She survived the ducking, then spent eight years in prison before being released. Sherwood was able to recover her property and lived on her farm until the age of 80. The dirt road leading to the Lynnhaven River, where duckings took place, became known as Witchduck Road, which today is a major thoroughfare in Virginia Beach. On it stand a statue remembering Grace Sherwood, and the Bede Home. 

We spent the morning relaxing and catching up while daughters Grace and Phoebe were at swim practice. After John, Katy and Kathleen got home from the gym, Katy, Kathleen, Phoebe and I went to Chic’s Beach on Chesapeake Bay, then cooled off in the Bede’s swimming pool.  Later, John, Grace, Phoebe and I went out for ice cream (it was “bring your own banana” day) before dinner at home. 

Friday, June 26: The morning passed pretty much the same as yesterday, then John and I went to Cape Henry on Fort Story, at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and adjacent to First Landing State Park. The park is named after the three-ship flotilla of the Virginia Company commanded by Captain Christopher Newport that made landfall here in 1607 on their way to what would become Jamestown, the first permanent settlement in the New World. Newport named the point Cape Henry, after Henry Frederick, the popular Prince of Wales and heir to King James I of England. The opposite shore was named after Charles, Duke of York, the younger son of King James. When Henry died in 1612 of typhoid fever at the age of 18, his brother became the heir and eventually King Charles I. 

The other historical event memorialized at Cape Henry is the September 5, 1781 Battle of the Chesapeake, where French Admiral Comte de Grasse turned back the British fleet sent to reinforce (or evacuate) Lord Cornwallis’s troops at Yorktown, a critical event that helped win the American Revolution. 

First Landing Memorial at Cape Henry

John and I climbed to the top of the 90-foot, original Cape Henry Lighthouse, the first funded by the new United States Government in 1792. When the sandstone began to develop structural cracks, a second, taller lighthouse made of iron was erected in 1881. The new lighthouse is located on property controlled by the U.S. Coast Guard, while the original light is on the Fort Story military installation, which is not open to the general public. Fortunately, John is retired from the Naval Reserve, and his ID got us in. Map link: Cape Henry, VA. Back at the Bede abode, we ate lunch, swam, relaxed and watched World Cup soccer. 

Saturday, June 27:  The Bedes spent the day at Grace and Phoebe’s swim meet, so Kathleen and I borrowed a car and headed northwest via the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, a 3.5-mile section of Interstate 64 across the entrance to the James and Elizabeth Rivers. The use of underwater tunnels here, and at the nearby Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, was chosen over the less expensive all-bridge option, to ensure that these waterways remained open to the U.S. Atlantic Fleet at Norfolk in the event of a wartime attack or other disaster.

After an hour’s drive, we arrived at Yorktown National Battlefield, part of the Colonial National Historic Park, which also includes Historic Jamestown and Cape Henry. The Siege of Yorktown was the final land engagement of the American Revolution, where Cornwallis surrendered to forces led by George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Comte de Rochambeau. Final terms of the surrender were negotiated by senior staff officers at the Moore House overlooking the James River and were signed the following day by Cornwallis and Washington, on October 19, 1781. Map link: Yorktown Battlefield, VA

The Moore House

From Yorktown we drove to the capital of Richmond, population 225,000, and the fourth-largest city in Virginia. Our first stop was the Second White House of the Confederacy, located on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. Montgomery, AL, was originally the Confederate capital, but the larger and more industrial Virginia was chosen after it seceded a week after the attack on Fort Sumter, SC, in April 1861.

Virginia’s General Assembly met in Jamestown and Williamsburg for 160 years before the capital was moved to Richmond in 1780. The current capitol building was designed in part by Thomas Jefferson while serving as Ambassador to France. The cornerstone was laid in 1785 by Governor Patrick Henry (who uttered his famous quote “Give me liberty or give me death!” in nearby St. John’s Church in 1775), and the stucco-covered brick structure was completed in 1798.  The capitol’s Old House Chamber was the site of the 1807 treason trial of Aaron Burr, the 1861 vote for Virginia’s secession, and was where Robert E. Lee accepted command of Virginia’s military forces, after declining President Lincoln’s offer to lead the Union Army. Lincoln visited Richmond just two days after its capture in 1865 and ten days before he was assassinated. Much of the city was subsequently burned, but the capitol building and adjacent Governor’s Mansion were spared. Map link: Virginia Capitol

Old House Chamber 

We ate lunch at the Downtown Grill, enjoying huge portions of tasty Mediterranean food, then drove south to Petersburg National Battlefield, site of a key 1864 military campaign that led to the fall of the Confederacy and the end of the Civil War. After Union General Ulysses S. Grant failed to take the city of Petersburg by direct assault, he settled in for a siege. Petersburg was critical to the desperate southern cause—with five railroads and two key roads converging there, it was the last remaining supply line to Richmond and Lee’s army. Over nearly ten months, Grant tightened his grip, and occasionally conducted raids and attacks to weaken the Confederate defenses. One such event was the Battle of The Crater, where Union forces spent weeks digging a tunnel under the Confederate perimeter, loaded it with explosives and detonated them on July 30, 1864. The blast caught the Confederates by surprise and blew a hole in their lines, but the Union soldiers squandered the opportunity by milling about in confusion and then rushing straight into the crater, making themselves easy targets with no way out. The well-supplied Union Army kept on the offensive, however, and Lee finally abandoned both Petersburg and Richmond, retreating west with his dwindling army until his surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. Evidence of The Crater and some of the more than 70 miles of earthworks dug by both sides are still visible today, eerie foreshadowings of the grueling trench warfare that would occur fifty years later during World War I. Map link: Petersburg National Battlefield, VA

The Crater today

Sunday, June 28: After breakfast, John, Grace, Phoebe and I drove across the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel to Fort Monroe in the charming town of Phoebus, dating back to 1609. Protecting the entrance to Hampton Roads from the Chesapeake Bay was always a priority and defensive fortifications have been here for more than four centuries. A 24 year-old, newlywed Robert E. Lee was stationed here for three years after graduating from West Point and helped oversee the fort’s expansion. A month after the Civil War began, three escaped slaves showed up at Fort Monroe seeking protection. Although the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 mandated their return, the fort’s commander, Major General Benjamin Butler, a lawyer by trade, concluded that since Virginia had seceded, American laws no longer applied, and he classified the runaways as “contraband of war.” Soon hundreds of sanctuary seekers assembled in communities, called “contraband camps” around Fort Monroe, which remained in Union hands throughout the entire war. Known thereafter as “Freedom’s Fortress,” it was an active military base and training facility until 2011, when it was deactivated and became a national monument. Inside the fort’s Casemate Museum is the prison cell occupied by Confederate President Jefferson Davis following his arrest at the end of the Civil War. On the grounds is the historic Old Point Comfort Light, the oldest operating lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay and a familiar navigational aid that I fondly recall seeing when transiting these waters as a junior officer aboard the nuclear submarine USS JACKSONVILLE (SSN-699). Map link: Fort Monroe National Monument

Fort Monroe—Source: Wikipedia 

Jefferson Davis’ prison cell

Old Point Comfort Lighthouse

Back in Virginia Beach, we spent a rainy and humid afternoon indoors watching World Cup soccer, then had a small celebration in honor of my late-June and Katy’s early-July birthdays.

Monday, June 29:  Kathleen and I set our alarm for 5:15 AM, then John drove us to Norfolk Airport and graciously introduced us to our Delta gate agent. The one direct flight to Minneapolis was full and we just missed the cutoff for standby travel, but we got seats on a flight to Atlanta 30 minutes later. Then the fun began…

It was a busy travel day, and the huge Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was packed, but we were hopeful that we could get seats on one of the eight daily direct flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. We got on the list for the 9:55 AM flight, then tried again at 12:20, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, and 8:00 PM, all with no luck. Of course, each flight was at a different airport concourse, so we walked and rode trams, escalators, and moving walkways back and forth. We looked at other options connecting through New York, Detroit or Cincinnati, finally pinning our hopes on the last direct flight of the day. The 10:40 PM plane had 39 seats available; unfortunately, there were more than 40 standby passengers at boarding time, and our buddy pass status put us near the bottom of the priority list (I think we only outranked Delta retirees). We told the gate agent that we would split up if there was just one seat left, and Kathleen got it right before the doors closed, when a woman waiting for her sister opted to stay behind when the sister didn’t show. I was stranded, but Katy had mentioned a lodging option, called Minute Suites, inside the airport. I checked it out and they had room for me. Because it was inside the terminal, there was no ground transportation needed to and from a hotel, and no need to go through TSA security screening again in the morning. At 11:00 PM, this looked like a pretty good option to end a crappy day. While unwinding in my cozy room (with shared bathroom), I calculated from my step counter that we had walked more than five miles going back and forth between the terminals during the day. 

My Minute Suite

Tuesday, June 30: I slept for about four hours on a reasonably comfortable sofa bed before getting going. It was pretty slick to check out of my room 15 minutes before boarding began and get to the gate in plenty of time. There were 44 seats available on the 7:25 AM flight to MSP, and I felt pretty good about getting on it, until I looked at the standby list again and saw that I was passenger 51 of 52. Damn—this was getting discouraging and I began to check prices and schedules in case I had to buy a ticket home; I wasn’t going to spend another entire day and night in the airport. The next Delta flight had only 22 seats open, and I was number 21, but I made it onboard, and the MSP standby passenger list was finally cleared. After 23 hours inside the Atlanta Airport, I was on my way home!

Bonus Question 1 Answer: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky are the four U.S. commonwealths.

Bonus Question 2 Answer: The eight presidents born in Virginia are: George Washington (1), Thomas Jefferson (3), James Madison (4), James Monroe (5), William Henry Harrison (9), John Tyler (10), Zachary Taylor (12) and Woodrow Wilson (28).