Supervisors are for Constitution, against ‘cancel culture’
The members of the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors, which met Monday in two public sessions, spent the better part of ve hours listening. Its actions were sparse and not much related to the usual business of local governance — ordinance amendments, budgeting, planning and the like.
“We’ve certainly had much busier business agendas,” said County Administrator Garrey W. Curry Jr., who spent the day on Tuesday preparing a scal-year 2021 budget proposal for the supervisors’ March 10 work session.
The board’s few actions on Monday included the unanimous adoption of a motion, at the very end of their long day, to rea rm the supervisors’ “commitment to the Constitution of the United States and the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
The motion, adapted by Piedmont Supervisor Christine Smith from a measure passed by James City County supervisors, was a carryover from the board’s February session.
Though he was not among the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol, Jackson District Supervisor Ron Frazier had been criticized in letters and on social media by some county residents for attending the pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. A few asked Frazier to resign.
In response, many citizens came to the longest-serving supervisor’s defense at the board’s February meeting, invoking his constitutional rights. His colleagues stated they’d personally reassured Frazier last month that his right to freedom of speech was intact (and that they planned no censure or resignation demands), but citizens demanded the supervisors pass a resolution to that e ect.
Responding to a question on Monday night from a county resident about why such a measure was necessary, Frazier said: “You are correct, sir, that the board does take an oath of o ce. That was our a rmation; this is a rea rmation. We had people, I guess in the last two months, very few people in the community, that were asking this board to do something basically in violation of the Constitution and this is just I guess a statement that says we’re not going to violate our oath, we’re not going to violate the Constitution. Hopefully that will put those types of requests to bed and we won’t have to see any more of those.”
Before voting, Hampton Supervisor Keir Whitson asked that the resolution be slightly amended to specify that it was the supervisors themselves a rming their commitment to the Constitution, not the county at large, to which Smith and the others agreed.
IN DEFENSE OF LORD FAIRFAX
Earlier in the day, the board voted unanimously to send a letter to the appropriate state authorities expressing its disapproval of Lord Fairfax Community College’s plan to rename the regional adult- and higher-education institution.
This action followed a presentation by LFCC President Kim Blosser, who spent more than half an hour at the microphone describing the state college board’s initial decision to seek a “rebranding” of LFCC in part because its students, and potential future students, had very little in common with Lord Fairfax, the man.
Similar points were made last week in a commentary in this newspaper by Mike Wenger, Rappahannock County’s appointee to the local college board, which advises and supports LFCC.
Many of those who spoke during a 45-minute public com
ment period following Blosser’s presentation took issue with Wenger — saying he’d let down the supervisors who appointed him and should be replaced or reprimanded — and with “cancel culture” in general, as it relates to Virginia’s historical figures such as Lord Fairfax and others.
Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, was a contemporary and friend of George Washington who had vast land holdings in this part of Virginia and remained loyal, unlike his friend, to the British crown during the Revolutionary War. He was also, like Washington, a slaveholder.
The pandemic has dramatically changed higher education, Blosser pointed out. And additionally, the need to seek students online from a vastly larger pool than exists within the boundaries of Northern Virginia was also a consideration for the rebranding study.
Thanks to half a dozen others standing during the public-comment session and saying: “I yield my five minutes to Ron Maxwell,” the supervisors were treated to a stirring portrait and defense of Lord Fairfax in the form of an 18-minute, dramatically delivered soliloquy by Hollywood filmmaker and major-league American history buff Ron Maxwell, a longtime county resident.
“One doesn’t have to be woke to undertand how vile and abhorrent slavery was,” he said, pointing out that in the 18th century, people in every country of the world were engaging in it in some form. “Can we not see people how they once were, in their full humanity?
“We cannot turn back the clock, even if we wanted to,” said Maxwell, whose Civil War epic films include “Gettysburg” and “Gods and Generals.”
“It’s called history. Our history. The history of humanity. To try to dial it back here, or dial it back there, to perch on high as inquisitors … is an obnoxious and futile attempt. The fact of the matter is that we … are the embodiment of all who came before us. They are all our ancestors. It’s who we are.
“I say this with sadness. I don’t know Mr. Wenger, I have no personal axe to grind with him. But his actions on the LFCC board have brought neither harmony nor peace to this community,” Maxwell said.
The supervisors, after taking care of several budget- and zoning-related items, ended the afternoon meeting by going into a closed-door session at which it would, as the official motion put it, discuss “board appointees.” Supposedly this included Wenger, but upon its return to public session at 7 p.m., the board took no actions on any appointees.
“As I said during the meeting,” Stonewall District Supervisor Chris Parrish said on Tuesday, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to chastise volunteers. This county relies on volunteers.”