CLAIM TO FAME
MANY CELEBRITIES, FROM ATHLETES TO SINGERS TO FOUNDING FATHERS, HAVE CALLED THE 757 HOME
America has its roots here in southeastern Virginia, and any list of famous people with ties to the area inevitably dates back to names related to the earliest days of our nation. All the way back to Pocahontas. The Revolutionary and Civil wars were fought here, so we have any number of military figures who spent quality time in Hampton Roads.
The region isn’t exactly Hollywood or The Big Apple, but this region has produced its share of famous locals — lots of big-name athletes in recent years and plenty of entertainers.
And because of the concentration of forts and military bases here, you find the occasional celebrity who was born here while a parent was stationed in Virginia, even though that celebrity is strongly associated with another region.
A lot of big names once called this region home. Here are some of them.
People
Princess Pocahontas, Capt. John Smith
and Chief Powhatan were all in Jamestown and environs in 1607.
The pirate Blackbeard’s head was put on a pole in Hampton after he was killed in 1718 off the Atlantic Coast.
Thomas Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg before founding the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
George Washington’s victory at York
town, assisted by Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette, won the Revolutionary War and established him as the man who would go on to become our first president.
Ben Butler, the federal commander at Hampton’s Fort Monroe early in the Civil War, declared that runaway slaves could be kept as “contraband of war” (and, presumably, then be freed). His decision led the Union on its way to emancipation.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis was jailed at Fort Monroe after the Civil War. You can still visit the room where he was held at the Casemate Museum.
Booker T. Washington studied and later taught at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) before going on to lead Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University).
Robert R. Moton, who followed Booker T. Washington as head of Tuskegee, retired to a home on the banks of the York River in Gloucester, where his wife grew up.
Ella Fitzgerald and Pearl Bailey, two of the great American singers of the 20th century, were born in Newport News in 1917 and 1918.
William Styron, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, grew up in Newport News and used the area for some of his books’ locales.
Movie star Ava Gardner lived in Newport News in the 1930s.
Irene Morgan, a Gloucester African American, was arrested in Saluda for refusing to move to the back of a bus for a white couple in 1944, 11 years before Rosa Parks’ similar action in Montgomery, Ala. The Morgan case led to the first Supreme Court decision overturning a segregation law involving interstate transportation.
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson does his show “The 700 Club” from Virginia Beach, where he also operates Regent University.
Bruce Hornsby, the Grammy awardwinning musician, was born, raised and still lives in Williamsburg.
“Hidden Figures” author Margot Lee
Shetterly was born in Hampton and graduated from Phoebus High School. The subjects of her book and the Oscar-nominated movie, Katherine Johnson, Doro
thy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, all lived in Newport News or Hampton and worked at NASA Langley.
Wanda Sykes, the stand-up comedian and actress, was born in Portsmouth and graduated from Hampton University with a degree in marketing.
Glenn Close, theater and movie star, attended the College of William and Mary and starred in several productions there in the 1970s. Bill Lawrence, creator of the TV comedy “Scrubs” is a William and Mary graduate, too.
Jon Stewart, former host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” also is a College of William and Mary alum (and former soccer coach at Gloucester High School).
Jay Pharoah, a 2005 graduate of Indian River High School in Chesapeake, was a featured cast member on “Saturday Night Live.” Check out the sketches when he played the character of Principal Frye — that character is based on Indian River principal Jimmy Frye.
Hip-hop artist and producer Missy Elliott is from Portsmouth.
Musician Pharrell Williams, who made us all “Happy,” grew up in Virginia Beach. As a hip-hop producer, he teamed with another Virginia Beach friend, Chad Hugo, to form the Grammy-winning team known as The Neptunes, who were discovered and promoted by Virginia Beach-based producer Teddy Riley. Another hip-hop producer, Timbaland, also grew up there.
Chris Brown, the pop-R&B singer famous for numerous hits as well as his ever-increasing arrest record, grew up in Tappahannock.
NFL quarterback Michael Vick grew up in Newport News. His cousin (and fellow
Newport News native) Aaron Brooks also was a star quarterback in the NFL. L.A. Chargers quarterback Tyrod Taylor hails from Hampton.
Norfolk native and former Williamsburg resident Curtis Strange won two U.S. Opens and is enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Several active Major League Baseball players played high school ball in Hampton Roads, including Jharel Cotton (A’s), Ryan
Zimmerman (Nationals), and Justin Up
ton (Angels). Justin Verlander, the Houston Astros pitcher who has won MVP and Cy Young Awards, played at Old Dominion University in Norfolk.
Mike Tomlin, a graduate of Denbigh High School in Newport News and the College of William and Mary, became the youngest coach in NFL history to win a Super Bowl when he led the Pittsburgh Steelers to the championship in 2009 in just his second season as head coach.
Allen Iverson starred on the basketball court and the football field for Bethel High School in Hampton before joining the NBA. In his NBA career, mostly with the Philadelphia 76ers, he averaged 26.6 points per game, one of the top 10 averages in league history. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in September 2016.
Hampton University graduate Ruth Carter finally won her Academy Award for costume design, for her work on “Black Panther” (2018). She had previously been nominated for Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” and Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad.”
Actor Mark Ruffalo, who has played many dramatic roles and stars as “The Hulk,” is from Virginia Beach. Other local actors, such as Newport News’ Gary Hudson and Smithfield’s Antonio Charity, turn up regularly in TV roles.
Places
Jamestown: Founded in 1607, Jamestown was America’s first permanent English colony.
Williamsburg: Home of the College of William and Mary and the capital of Virginia from 1699 to 1780, Williamsburg was restored beginning in 1926. Notable visitors to Williamsburg include many U.S. presidents, Queen Elizabeth II and heads of state.
Yorktown: The site of the siege that won the American Revolution. On Oct. 19, 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrendered after being defeated by an American and French force led by Gen. George Washington.
Chesapeake Bay: The largest estuary in the United States, the bay stretches about 200 miles from Havre de Grace, Md., to Norfolk and includes two of the five major North Atlantic ports in the United States.
Virginia Beach: One of the most popular tourist attractions in the United States, Virginia Beach was where English colonists first stepped ashore before sailing on to found Jamestown.
Things
Have some ham. Little Smithfield is home to Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor and hog producer. The Isle of Wight County Museum has the world’s oldest ham on display.
Lots of beer is brewed at Anheuser-Busch in James City County, as well as at smaller breweries around the region, such as Tradition in Newport News, the Vanguard, Bull Island, Capstan, St. George and Oozlefinch in Hampton, the Virginia Beer Company, Brass Cannon and Alewerks in the Williamsburg area.
Tobacco turned 17th-century Jamestown into a financial success. Small towns like Urbanna and Yorktown were once the ports where casks of tobacco were rolled to waiting ships.
Oysters, crabs and fish still play a role in our economy, culture and cuisine.
Gloucester holds a festival honoring daffodils every year because the perennials used to be a major cash crop on the Middle Peninsula.
Ships have been launched since 1898 at the shipyard in Newport News, where they are now most notably the Navy’s sole supplier of nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines.