InsideNoVa/North Stafford, Community Guide, September 2018

SEPTEMBER 2018

PAUL ROY

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JROTC instructor, athletic director, head football, girls basketball and baseball coach at Quantico High School

Married, four kids, two grandkids Family: Married with two sons, a daughter and two granddaughters Education: Winslow High School (Maine); Thomas College (Maine) Favorite local places: Working at Quantico High School and watching sports on ESPN with his family

Multitask Master

Roy always at attention at Quantico High DAVID FAWCETT

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dfawcett@insidenova.com

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2 • PEOPLE OF STAFFORD • SEPTEMBER 2018

aul Roy loves to multitask; in his eyes, the more responsibility the better. It’s understandable then why Roy is in constant demand at Quantico High School.

When he arrived at Quantico in the fall of 2000, the retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel held two titles: head of the new JROTC program and head of the baseball team.

But over the years, Roy added other positions.

He became athletic director, assistant and now head football coach, and head boys and girls basketball coach.

All the different jobs are timeconsuming, but the 69-year-old embraces each one to the point that he keeps putting off retirement.

“I’ve thought about it, but I have no idea what I’d do,” Roy said. “My hobby is my work. I’m pretty boring.”

Although he was the Washington Redskins 2016 High School Football Coach of the Year after leading the Warriors to an 11-1 mark and their first state-title appearance since 1996, the Maine native takes pride in seeing students get better whether the team or individual wins. He feels the same way toward students who earn JROTC scholarships and get into the service academies.

“They are almost like my own kids,” Roy said.

At one point in his life, Roy wanted to become an athletic director and coach.

But he delayed that move following college graduation when he joined the Marine Corps. He served for 21 years before retiring in 1995 and seeking opportunities elsewhere.

He worked as the JROTC instructor at Highland Springs High School in Richmond for five years until one day in July of 2000 he stopped by Maj. Gen. Thomas Jones’ office at Quantico and asked him if he wanted to go – PAUL ROY for a run aboard the base. While jogging together, Jones told Roy that Quantico planned to start a JROTC program and needed an instructor.

They went to the high school and met with Quantico principal Coleman Starnes that same day. Starnes offered Roy the JROTC job and the baseball coach position. To Roy, it was the best of both worlds: the military and sports.

This school year, just over 50 percent of the 121-person student body is in JROTC, including many of his athletes.

“I look at it like any other coach,” Roy said. “I enjoy the kids.”

They are almost like my own kids.

Since before Garrisonville Road was paved

Music teacher, business owner watches North Stafford grow ALEKS DOLZENKO

MILTON SAMUEL CHRISTY

adolzenko@insidenova.com

W

ith a glint in his eyes, Milton Christy recalls his childhood in North Stafford, when the whole county only had two paved roads, and Garrisonville Road was not one of them. The paved ones were U.S. 1 and 17.

The octogenarian still runs a business tucked away in a cluster of upper-scale homes on what was once was his 200-acre farm in western Stafford County.

Garrisonville was just a dirt road that his family would take to get to their church.

There were no traffic lights or bumper-tobumper traffic.

But when the weather didn’t cooperate and the rains came, the low-lying sections would become mud and the route to church was impassible.

Yet, those were still good times. “Things were much simpler then,” he recalls.

He grew up on the family farm but after graduating from Falmouth High School, he went on to get a Bachelor of Music Education degree from what is now Virginia Commonwealth University in 1956.

Wasting no time, Christy put his degree to use as a music teacher, the first in Stafford County.

This was during the time of segregation,

Owner of Agri-Service LLC, Stafford

Family: Widower after 61 years for marriage, one daughter, Lydia, and son-in-law, Tony; granddaughters Lindsey and Jordan; great grandson Jack Education: Graduated from Falmouth High School in 1952 and from RPI (now VCU) with a Bachelor of Music Education degree in 1956 Favorite Place: Home in Stafford County

and there were separate schools for white and black students.

Christy taught around 180 white students at Stafford High, Stafford Elementary, Falmouth Elementary and King George High schools.

The black students went to school at what is now the Rowser Building, and Christy taught music to around 30 children one day a week.

He started a drum and bugle corp, and taught flutofone to the seventh-grade class.

Teaching in the black school was a great experience, and the respect between teacher and student was awesome, he said.

Also, at least five of his students went on to become music teachers.

After six years at the schools, he began having problems with his throat and a doctor suggested he stop teaching music.

He went into full-time farming after having throat issues and doctor suggested he stop teaching music.

Farming was the obvious option and he purchased a farm in 1962. He also rented

several farms.

In all, he farmed some 2,000 acres in Stafford and Fauquier counties.

Stafford was a major producer of corn, wheat, barley and soybeans, and he grew those along with hay and pumpkins.

The Junior Chamber of Commerce, now the Jaycees, voted him the Young Outstanding Farmer of the Year in Stafford County.

He was also the owner of Nature’s Best Farm Market on U.S. 17 for 19 years while also owning Agri-Service. It was his grandfather’s country store, and he was the third generation to run the business.

“So when it was finally sold, five generations had the privilege of working or being a part of that store,” his daughter said.

While working the family farm, Christy branched into the broadcast business with a gospel show. For 15 years he produced a show in Stafford County that went out to 15 stations in the country and abroad.

To produce the show, named “The Certain Sound,” Christy enlisted the help of local preachers, area singers and musicians.

The 30-minute program was recorded onto a reel of tape in a studio he built at his farm, he recalled. The master tape was then duplicated onto other reels and shipped to radio stations.

All the while since he was 15, farming has been in his blood, but this year he stopped major farming. He now devotes time to expanding his current business, to include greenhouses.

According to his daughter, Christy still puts in a 9-to-5 day, and finishes off the week with several hours at the store on Saturday.

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4 • PEOPLE OF STAFFORD • SEPTEMBER 2018

TIM DOYLE Area coordinator for Special Olympics

Community: Stafford Family: Wife: Rose Children: Theresa (with husband Adam) and Matthew; Grandson: Hendrix Work: Logistician for Marine Corps Systems Command at MCB Quantico; retired from U.S. Marine Corps Favorite Place in Stafford: “Any Special Olympics event where I’m around my Special Olympics family.”

Family of athletes, volunteers

Longtime work with Special Olympics rewarding for Doyle TRACY BELL

S

tbell@insidenova.com

tafford resident Tim Doyle, a longtime Special Olympics advocate, has come to think of the program’s athletes and volunteers as family.

Doyle, who has lived in Stafford for 22 years, is the Area 11 coordinator for Special Olympics. Area 11 includes Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline and King George counties, as well as the city of Fredericksburg.

For Doyle, the work has been immensely rewarding over the years.

“I often tell people that I have the best gig in town and that I consider Special Olympics — athletes, family members and volunteers — to be my family.”

Doyle’s own son, Matthew Doyle, 28, has Down syndrome. For years, he was an athlete for Special Olympics and later became an ambassador and adviser, giving speeches and telling audiences what the program means to him.

Tim Doyle had first volunteered with the Special Olympics while he served in the military. Schools on base would put on Special Olympics events from time to time, he said.

“I attended some of them and thought they were really heartwarming events,” Doyle explained, but his long-term interest stemmed from his son.

In 2005, five years after Doyle retired from the U.S. Marine Corps, he and his son took part in a school-based Special Olympics program through Stafford County Public Schools. The program started with track and field, and had only seven athletes at the time, he said.

At the first practice, as he helped the coordinator carry equipment to the track, Doyle was surprised when some of the athletes started calling him “coach.”

It wasn’t long before the schools coordinator asked Doyle to help coach the team.

“I was hooked after that,” he said.

When the schools coordinator left the next year to a new schools system, Doyle took over. In 2006, his group attended the local Special Olympics Council’s Area 11 meetings to advocate for the program Doyle had been working with.

There, he learned of a soon-to-be vacant area coordinator position, to which he was later elected.

He still holds the position.

Leading the entire area is a lot of work that is challenging at times but very rewarding, said Doyle, especially at events.

There, Doyle said he can see the joy on the faces of competing and training athletes as well as volunteers.

But one of his biggest challenges is sustainment, he said, which includes fundraising, recruiting volunteers and securing venues. The program is steadily growing, having tripled in size in the past 12 years with current figures at more than 450 athletes and several hundred volunteers.

The Fredericksburg area’s residents are both generous and accepting, Doyle said, but sustainment remains an ongoing challenge.

“Our local program is only funded by the generosity of the community and receives no funding from Special Olympics,” Doyle said. The athletes at local fundraising events support their program because Special Olympics is the athletes’ program, he explained, and the area’s leadership staff is just the steward of it.

Special Olympics encourages new volunteers on an ongoing basis and is happy to welcome new athletes, Doyle said.

For more, call Tim Doyle at 540-2193340 or email tpdva01@yahoo.com.

Preserving a landmark

NORMAN SCHOOLS

Stafford’s history’s a journey for Schools TRACY BELL

tbell@insidenova.com

N

orman Schools, who owns and resides at the Moncure Conway House in Famouth, has a lifelong love of history.

He and his wife, Lenetta Schools, purchased the house in August 1998 after seeing it listed in “Preservation,” the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “With only one look, we both said, ‘That’s the one!’” Schools recalled.

The Moncure Conway House, named for Moncure Daniel Conway, is currently being restored and Schools calls it truly “a labor of love.”

The desire to own an old house sprang from his love of history, his profession as a preservationist and an appreciation for fine architecture.

Moncure Daniel Conway, born in Falmouth in 1832, was an abolitionist, minister and author who died in 1907.

His boyhood home, now referred to as the Moncure Conway House, was built around 1807 and stands on King Street in Falmouth.

During the Civil War, it was used as a Union hospital. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a

state and national landmark.

Conway Elementary School in Stafford is named for Moncure Daniel Conway.

The home, which reflects Federal-style architecture, is associated with the Underground Railroad because Conway accompanied 30 enslaved blacks belonging to the Moncure family in their escape to Ohio, and ultimately, freedom.

Lenetta Schools, who died in 2016, shared her husband’s love of the Conway home, and its history. Norman Schools said his own “journey in history” was accompanied by a “loving and devoted wife” who was behind all of his “humble accomplishments.”

“I greatly miss her,” he said, noting that she fought a “heroic battle with cancer.”

Schools said that among his wife’s accomplishments in the community was the First Rappahannock Regional Juneteenth Celebration, which took place in 2006 at the Moncure Conway House.

Each year in September, the Moncure Conway House hosts the Civil War livinghistory event, Yankees in Falmouth!, on its grounds. The name is derived from an account by ex-slave John Washington who wrote of a Confederate cavalryman riding through the streets of Fredericks-

Voted Best Senior Assisted Living Facility in Stafford for 2018

Retired preservationist, author

Community: Falmouth Family: Wife, the late Lenetta Schools, daughter Christine Favorite Places in Stafford: D.P. Newton’s Civil War Museum and Amy’s Cafe

burg yelling, “Yankees in Falmouth!”

Stafford’s tourism department co-sponsors the event, which includes more than 120 historical re-enactors along with presentations drawing on the theme of reconciliation.

Free to the public, the event typically draws more than 1,200 visitors. Schools said that Abraham Lincoln, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Harriett Tubman are among those portrayed.

For Schools, his first great experience with history was when his parents took him and his sister to Jamestown and a Native American impressionist there knew his dad. “He had been away for years pursuing a career in the Navy, but when the Indians saw him, a happy reunion broke out,” Schools said, and it was a thrill to see.

Fast forward to years later and Schools’ love of history has never stopped.

He co-authored State Landmark and National Register nominations for Bethlehem Primitive Baptist Church in Staf-

ford, based on the role the church’s congregation played in the Civil Rights Movement. The church also received a Virginia state historical highway marker.

It’s the latest among several nominations Schools has authored for historic sites in Stafford. His book, “Virginia Shade, An African-American History of Falmouth, Virginia,” tells more about Conway.

Schools said that during his personal journey in Stafford he has encountered many wonderful people. Conway, too, described himself as being on a journey, Schools said.

In his spare time, Schools enjoys the rewards of research and great friendships.

He has a passion for ballroom dancing at Strictly Ballroom of Fredericksburg, especially his favorite dance, the Argentine Tango.

Most of all, the rich history of the Fredericksburg area, to include Stafford, “never ceases to amaze, with intrigue, excitement and discovery,” according to Schools.

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SEPTEMBER 2018 • PEOPLE OF PRINCE WILLIAM • 5

DAN CHICHESTER Retired commonwealth’s attorney for Stafford County

Residence: Born in Stafford and living in Falmouth Family: Married to Kathleen and have sons Daniel, John (Jay) and Philip Education: Undergraduate and law degrees from University of Virginia

Labor of love

Chichester led charge for military memorial ALEKS DOLZENKO

D

adolzenko@insidenova.com

an Chichester proved to be the right person to head the committee that raised funds to build the Stafford County Armed Forces Memorial. The Stafford native spent time in the military and attained the rank of captain in the U.S. Army.

His deployment in Vietnam and later into Cambodia ended in July 1970 when he came home to a country divided by the Vietnam War. Chichester recalls that upon his return he was “treated great.” He recalled that, “The people of this county have always been very good to me.”

Then 46 years later he was tasked to help raise funds for the memorial at the county’s government center along Courthouse Road.

“I was particularly motivated by the thought that this memorial represents a welcome home for veterans of the war in Vietnam,” Chichester said.

After a 40-year career as the county’s commonwealth’s attorney, Chichester seemed like the ideal candidate to head up a major project to collect enough money for the construction of the memorial. The Stafford County Board of Supervisors set up a commission to get the project underway, and the commission of retired Marine Lt. Gen. Ron Christmas, Del. Mark Dudenhefer and Supervisor Gary Snellings passed the ball to a working group of volunteers to raise funds for the memorial, which was expected to cost $675,000.

Chichester headed up the working group that included Mark Osborn, Billy Shelton, Edward Wallace, Elizabeth Davis, Sue Henderson, Frank White, Charlie Jett, James Brown and John Cox. “I asked several people to be a part of this group, including former Sheriff Charlie Jett and Frank White,” Chichester said. “Around Memorial Day of 2016 we started fundraising and shortly after Columbus Day we had reached that goal.”

The initial goal was for “a barebones structure,” Chichester pointed out.

So the group set a new goal at $838,000.

“I think by the beginning of 2017 we had raised that amount,” he said.

6 • PEOPLE OF STAFFORD • SEPTEMBER 2018

The additional money was used to enhance the safety and beauty of the memorial, Chichester noted.

“Raising this money was easier than we thought for several reasons,” he said.

Firstly, he credits the board of supervisors for backing the project with the initial funding.

“Secondly, we got large contributions from Larry Silver and the estate of Russell Sullivan,” Chichester said. Silver’s father served in World War ll and was a Purple Heart and Bronze Star recipient.

Also,his grandfather was in World War l.

Sullivan was a gunner on a dive bomber flying off an aircraft carrier in the Pacific during World War ll.

He also gave credit to the residents of Stafford County for their donations, including the purchase of personalized pavers in memory of personnel who served in the armed forces. Contributions were large and small, which demonstrates the generosity of people in Stafford and the surrounding area, he said.

Literature and pictures of the memorial were distributed and some of the committee members gave talks to various groups and made phone calls.

“Stafford County citizens have a long history of generosity dating back to post Civil War days,” he said.

The ground breaking for the memorial was held March 4, 2017 and the dedication was on July 10.

The idea for a memorial was sparked

by Donald Lamar, who asked Stafford County officials if his son, Marine Sgt. Donald Lamar II, a Stafford High School graduate who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010, could be recognized for his service.

Lamar, 23, left behind his wife, Stephanie, and a daughter, Madison.

The idea grew into a memorial to honor the fallen, those who have served and those who are currently serving.

“I am very proud that my county built this memorial to honor those who served in the military,” Chichester said.

“It is those men and women who put their lives in jeopardy to create and later guarantee the constitutional rights and freedoms that we enjoy each day.”

“For me working on this project was a labor of love.”

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8 • PEOPLE OF STAFFORD • SEPTEMBER 2018