Anthony Dementi
(1891-1980) b. Richmond
One of the city’s best-known photographers, Anthony Dementi captured nearly 60 years of Richmond history on film. In 1930, Dementi made photographic history by field-testing the first flashbulbs for General Electric.
In addition to running his own photo studio, Dementi was the official photographer of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad and a staff photographer for the Richmond News Leader from 1924 to 1940.
During his career Dementi photographed such notables as King Albert of Belgium, Sir Winston Churchill and Lord and Lady Astor.
Calvin Lucy
(1891-1980) b. Baltimore, Md.
Calvin Lucy was a man of action. The first general manager for Larus & Brother tobacco, Lucy was asked by his employer if he had ever seen or heard a radio. His reply: No. But the Larus Brothers had as much faith in Lucy as they did this new thing called radio. “He plunged in from ground zero,” says Calvin Lucy Jr. And with the birth of WRVA in 1926, Richmond radio was forever changed. Lucy manned the helm of WRVA for 49 years and six months. And when he retired, he was asked to start a grassroots campaign for an educational television station. He worked free from a room in his garage, raising the needed funds, handling citations and licensing, even hiring a station manager. The result: public television WCVE Channel 23. Lucy was also instrumental in the founding of the Virginia Association of Broadcasters.
Thomas C. Boushall
(1894-1992) b. Raleigh, N.C.
Boushall was a banking pioneer who established the Morris Plan here, extending for the first time commercial bank credit to consumers. He was chairman of the Bank of Virginia (later Signet and now incorporated into First Union). He was a founder of Blue Cross Blue Shield and served on the Richmond School Board and the Virginia Board of Education.
Wilbur Havens
(1895-1979) b. Richmond
and John Shand
(1917- ) b. Darien, Conn.
Before there was television, John Shand and Wilbur Havens ran one of Richmond’s three radio stations. Havens had a hunch about picture technology and urged Shand to help him start the South’s first television station, WTVR. They put a transmitting tower behind the Broad Street studio and signed on in 1948. The city’s first televised newscasts were 15-minute challenges; pictures fell from easels and cameras broke, but Shand’s vaudeville and theater background led to a long stint as Richmond’s most familiar on-air talent.
Roy Park came on the scene in 1968, purchasing the station and raising its profile along with the company’s multistate broadcast holdings. By then, competition was increasing and newer cable, satellite and digital capacities launched an industry far removed from those first broadcasts.
Mary Wingfield Scott
(1895-1983) b. Richmond
She railed against what she termed “the bulldozing brotherhood,” city forces that destroyed hundreds of old and historic homes and neighborhoods in the name of progress. What made Mary Wingfield Scott’s crusades effective was her knowledge: She earned both a master’s and Ph.D. in architectural history from the University of Chicago. She wrote prolifically – newspaper articles and two books that are scholarly classics, “Old Richmond Neighborhoods” and “Houses of Old Richmond.” A founder of the William Byrd Chapter of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, she often bought what she couldn’t save through other channels. She owned most of Linden Row and property on Oregon Hill and Church Hill.
Dr. Theodore F. Adams
(1898-1980) b. Palmyra, N.Y.
and Dr. Peter James Flamming
(1934- ) b. Burlington, Colo.
First trained as a chiropractor, Dr. Theodore Adams found his calling as a minister and led First Baptist Church in Richmond for 32 years. His daily messages on local radio and TV reached well beyond the 4,000 people in his congregation; and he made the cover of Time magazine as an internationally recognized theologian and missionary. He led the board of trustees at Virginia Union University, helped found Richmond Memorial Hospital, and was vital to several Baptist seminaries and missions.
Senior minister at First Baptist since 1983, Dr. Peter James Flamming writes, preaches on radio, and works with nonprofit groups to develop leadership skills among employees. The church’s ministry to deaf persons is the city’s first, attracting worshipers each week. Every summer he and his wife participate in mission causes around the world.
Floyd Dewey Gottwald
(1898-1982) b. Richmond
Floyd Dewey Gottwald rose from an Albemarle Paper Manufacturing Company office clerk in 1918 to become president in 1941. His vision and financial acumen drove Albemarle’s 1962 acquisition of the vastly larger Ethyl Corporation, a feat that observers at the time compared to Jonah swallowing the whale. Gottwald led Ethyl in a pattern of growth and expansion that built the ambitious former paper company into a Fortune 500 conglomerate that had annual sales in excess of $1 billion at the time of his death.
Theresa Pollak
(1899- ) b. Richmond
In 1928, Theresa Pollak founded Virginia Commonwealth University’s school of the arts with an art class for 20 students. With dogged determination and unwavering professionalism, Pollak built this modest program into one of the country’s top art schools.
A talented artist in her own right, Pollak devoted herself to sharing her knowledge and love of art with others rather than working to advance her own career. In her 40 years as a professor at VCU, Pollak taught many students who would go on to influence Richmond’s art scene, as artists or as VCU art professors. Upon her retirement in 1968, VCU named its art building in her honor.
Pollak has lived at Westminster Canterbury since 1990.
Elisabeth Scott Bocock
(1901-1985) b. Richmond;
Louise Fontaine Cadot Catterall
(1900-1986) b. Richmond
and Mary Ross Scott Reed
(1907- 1991) b. Afton
An ardent preservationist, Elisabeth Bocock’s imprint upon Richmond extends from the carriage collection at Maymont to historic houses in Church Hill, Jackson Ward, VCU and the Fan. She founded the Hand Workshop and the Maggie Walker Foundation, and led the charge to return trolley cars to downtown. A lifelong student and activist, she used her considerable influence with politicians to serve the less fortunate and protect the city from wholesale demolition and redevelopment.
Many significant buildings and trees in greater Richmond are the legacy of Mary Ross Scott Reed, Bocock’s sister. She saved structures from the wrecking ball by restoring them and selling them interest-free to pioneer couples in historic Church Hill and other neighborhoods. Through the same process, the Kent-Valentine house became headquarters for the Garden Club of Virginia and the Mayo-Carter house for the Junior League. Scotchtown, Old City Hall and other buildings stand because of her leadership, for which she received highest honors from the Historic Richmond Foundation.
As an invaluable resource for writers researching Richmond, Louise Fontaine Cadot Catterall led the Valentine Museum in collecting and archiving historical materials about the city. She lobbied City Council to begin historic district designations and helped preserve many important buildings, including Old City Hall and Monumental Episcopal Church. She was one of five founders of Historic Richmond Foundation and was most remembered for her encyclopedic knowledge of the city, its buildings and history.
Virginius Dabney
(1901-1995) b. Charlottesville
Editorial page editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch from 1934 to 1969, in 1947 Virginius Dabney won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Throughout his career at the Times-Dispatch, he took firm stands against the conservative positions and politics of the Virginia Byrd Machine and was known nationally as the leading moderate voice in a racially charged South. He also wrote numerous and popular Richmond and Virginia histories. Dabney served as the first rector of Virginia Commonwealth University when it was established by the merger of Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia in
