DOWN MEMORY LANE
Jan. 3, 1974
Mutt Atkins first drove a Rappahannock County school bus back in 1929, when “the mud in wintertime — let alone the snow — was so deep the bus had to have chains to get through.” Last year, Mutt drove his route all season without even snow tires. This year he’s not driving at all. Mutt is 65, and though his eyesight is “100-percent perfect” and he just passed his driving test, state law prevents him from operating either a motorcycle or a school bus. On the first day of 1974, the first in 44 years that he won’t be “hauling kids twice a day,” Mutt reflected on his time as a school bus driver and his two terms as supervisor of transportation. In the process, he related something of a history of getting kids to and from school in a rural mountain county.
Celebrating Christmas at the home of his daughter near Amissville was octogenarian John Clark Lee. Mr. Lee, who was 98 in August, is spending four months with Mr. and Mrs. Price Wyatt. He was a landscape gardener and retired from Fruit Growers Railroad Express. He is a native of Stafford County, born there on Aug. 18, 1875. He is physically sound and his only medication is an “occasional aspirin.” He spends four months with each of his children.
Rappahannock citizens and supervisors pondered flood plains, soil capabilities and nonconforming structures at the first of several “clarification” hearings on the new county zoning ordinance, held Dec. 26. The ordinance, adopted last summer, is in a “trial period.” When they passed it, the supervisors stipulated that public hearings would be held later to clarify any confusing aspects of the ordinance for administrative purposes, or suggest amendments and revisions. John R. Debergh asked that the planning commission reconsider the formula for determining flood plains. A “sizable” portion of his farm along the Rush River is zoned in that category, he said. According to Debergh, there is no floodplain designated a half-mile upstream. “It’s inconceivable to me that in less than a mile the floodplain could grow from nothing to a half-mile wide.”
Oct. 21, 1982
Members of area rescue squads and the Rappahannock County Sheriff’s Office came to last Wednesday’s Washington town council meeting to hear council members discuss plans for the tower to be erected near the jail for the new dispatching station. At the October supervisor’s meeting, the board had asked supervisor Hubert Gilkey and Sheriff W.A. Buntin to locate the best place for the tower and arrange for its construction. They had also been reminded by zoning administrator David Konick that a special-use permit was needed for construction of the tower.
The Rappahannock County Garden Club has just completed a five-month long project with the senior citizens of five counties. Visiting each Nutrition Site in turn, members of the garden club first showed the participants how to make a good poster. The the club provided them with paper, glue, pencils, magic markers and scissors so that those who wanted to could make their own posters on an ecology theme, as part of the national Council of State Garden Clubs’ 1983 Environmental Poster contest.
Aug. 13, 1992
Two people were killed last weekend when their small homebuilt aircraft slammed into the side of North Marshall, about 100 yards below its summit in Shenandoah National Park, southwest of Chester Gap. Sandy Rives, the park’s public information officer, said Wednesday morning that the victims have been tentatively identified. Mr. Rives said the couple was last seen when they took off from Hanover County Municipal Airport at 10 a.m Saturday on a fight to Chambersburg, Penn. Rives said one of the National Transportation Safety Board investigators at the crash site Tuesday estimated that the crash happened late Saturday morning. On Tuesday, investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were at the crash site. A determination of the cause of the crash will be issued following their investigation. Mr. Rives estimated that final determination could take up to six months.
The high-tech computer industry is taking its place alongside the traditional agricultural base as computers become more obtainable and computer results more demanded by consumers, countywide, statewide and worldwide. The computer industry has lodged itself in Rappahannock economic backbone and continues to grow with demand. “This business just came and knocked on our door,” said Mary Carnahan of Small Fry Graphics. The five-year-old business, shared with Jensen Kvarnes, is run from Kvarnes’ home in Gid Brown Hollow and produces Macintosh-designed materials ranging from local newsletters to sales pamphlets and advertisements.