Down Memory Lane

Jan. 13, 1999

The new chief executive o cer for Rappahannock National Bank, Michael T. Leake, is 16 years removed from his days as Rappahannock High School’s star basketball player, yet he radiates youthful energy.

“I guess you can see the excitement in my face,” he said, when interviewed during his second week on the job. De nitely.

The man is bursting with enthusiasm for his new job, which is this: to be in charge of the old Rappahannock National Bank under a new, better-funded umbrella.

Last year RNB was bought by Union Bankshares of Bowling Green, Va. This means that for the rst time since its founding in 1902 RNB is not locally owned.

“I would never have taken this position if I didn’t think there was tremendous opportunity,” he said.

When Union Bankshares rst appeared in Rappahannock, Leake was happily working at The Fauquier Bank in Warrenton as assistant vicepresident of the commercial banking division.

“I always wanted to come home and be in this area,” said Leake. “I don’t know why anyone would want to live anywhere else.”

Helen Dixon’s farm, Dixie Meadows in Viewtown, calls to mind an exotic Noah’s ark.

Her collection includes water bu alo, dromedaries, Red Brahmin and Simmental cattle, Nilgai antelopes, waterbuck, Anatolian shepherds, Miki dogs, goats, donkeys and 38-inch miniature cattle called Dexters.

She has peacocks, turkeys, geese, ducks, as well as the small birds attracted to her feeders.

There’s even an animal whose name isn’t in the dictionary — a zonkey, created by crossing a zebra and a donkey. Like popular images of Noah’s ark, most of Dixon’s animals are gentle, tamed by her animal-raising methods.

The camels, zebras, antelopes and water bucks are bottle fed when young. The water bu alo, cattle, donkeys and zonkeys are halter-broken at an early age. “Not an animal on the place isn’t halter-broken,” she says.

Even the ducks and geese are handraised, waddling fearlessly toward visitors.