Monthly Archives: July 2018

Mike Pugh – In Defense of a Meadow

Mike and Sian Pugh in the Meadow he’s defending – an echo of American Gothic?

Mike and Sian Pugh in the Meadow he’s defending – an echo of American Gothic?

Mike Pugh is from Kansas where, as a young man, he worked a fair amount of his time haying.

Despite his work in the fields, he didn’t consciously consider how he might be forming a partnership with nature that would stay with him.

This connection with the land became clear when he came to Western Loudoun County where many are struggling to preserve the land’s rural character.

Mike didn’t expect he’d become a combatant in a debate to preserve what he found. Continue reading

GEORGES MILL – a waltz through history

The Main House on Georges Mill Road – the Millview House

The Main House on Georges Mill Road – the Millview House

The ever-present multi-generational George family and the Wire family have a history bound together with an old mill and the parcel’s Main House on Georges Mill Road, just West of Lovettsville.

The fabric of these long family trees is woven together, beginning with John George in about 1750.

 

Fred George and Fran Wire

Fred George and Fran Wire

Fred George, President of the Lovettsville Historical Society, wrapped his arm around Fran Wire, and said, “Fran is the hardest working 90 year old I ever got to know.”

Fran said, with a chuckle, “Thank you Fred for mentioning my age.”

In the 1750s, John George signed a lease obligating him to maintain the land. Continue reading

Migrant Artist – Kevin Delandtsheer

What makes Kevin Delandtsheer run?

What makes Kevin Delandtsheer run?

Kevin Delandtsheer, when 6 years of age, lived around the corner from the Dutch Sint Baf Gothic Cathedral, named after Saint Bavo, consecrated 942, in Ghent, Belgium.

Kevin said, “In that church is the ‘Mystic Lamb’ by Jan vanEyck.”  This work is considered one of the most important works of the early Northern Renaissance, and one of the greatest masterpieces in all of Belgium.

But Kevin’s early love of art didn’t come from that masterpiece, nor an art class at school, at Sint Amandus. Continue reading

Stanley Caulkins – No Ordinary Shopkeep

Stanley Caulkins (l) and former Mayor Frank Raflo (r)  at the 1963 groundbreaking of Godfrey Field

Stanley Caulkins (l) and former Mayor Frank Raflo (r)
at the 1963 groundbreaking of Godfrey Field

The measure of a hero is found among the doings in a day to day life, when the exceptional act or word appears more regularly, so that it becomes “expected,” and reveals the character of a person as “a hero.”

Stanley Caulkins was such a person.

Stanley was a World War II B-17 radio operator, an airman, and his love of flight and aircraft, discovered in the armed forces, carried over into his private life back home in Loudoun County, where he became a moving force in organizing the Leesburg Airport Commission in 1962.

Stanley was at the groundbreaking for the first local airport in 1963 with former Leesburg Mayor Frank Raflo, an effort made largely possible by the then famed entertainer, Arthur Godfrey, who lived in the area, and preferred to fly to NY to air his show.

Stanley was in the thick of it again at the celebration of a second airport, the one off Sycolin Road.

After the war, Stanley learned watchmaking and, by fits and starts, established his own jewelry store on King Street.  He worked in that shop for 60 years until a fire forced him to close in 2015. Continue reading

The Story of Flight From Central America

Young Dylan Keefe at the DC March to bring families together

Young Dylan Keefe at the DC March to bring families together

Our neighbors from Lovettsville, and across Loudoun County, traveled as best they could this past Saturday from their homes here to Washington, DC.

They made the journey despite the harsh 90 degree summer heat, by car, bus, train, and on foot, to protest the separation by our government of young Central American and Mexican Children from their parents.

Most of these migrants insisted, through interpreters, that this was a story of flight from the dangers that they had to leave behind, from what had been their home.

They fled the abuse and danger they suffered there, to find asylum and safety in these United States, as had the many who came before them to find peace and a new life.

Migrants who anticipated that this Administration might resist their asylum petitions said they had no alternative. Continue reading