Inside
A8 Valentines Gala benefits local nonprofits
Powhatan, Virginia
B1 Indians comeback falls short, season ends
Vol. XXXI No. 35
February 28, 2018
Supervisors take closer look at housing With decision on new apartments looming, board looks to county’s current comp plan By Laura McFarland News Editor
POWHATAN – The question of allowing a proposed
apartment complex to be built in the county was front and center again last week as the Powhatan County Board of Supervisors looked at the larger issue of housing. The board met on Tuesday, Feb. 20 for the latest in a series of workshops to review the Powhatan County 2017 LongRange Comprehensive Plan. This meeting, which was one of two comprehensive plan
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workshops the board held last week, was dedicated to reviewing Chapter 5 of the plan, which deals with housing. As with other board meetings recently, a significant
number of people attended the workshop and used their time during the public comment period to talk about their reasons for or against the apartment complex as well as the overall state of housing in the county. The issue of the apartments has been building for weeks and was set to come to a head at the meeting on Monday, Feb. 26 , when the board was scheduled to hear KCG Devel-
opment LLC’s application to rezone a 26 -acre property so it could build up to 204 multifamily dwellings. This meeting happened after press time. Well over 130 people had attended the planning commission’s meeting on Feb. 6 , at which time the four members present agreed with a staff recommendation and voted unanimously against KCG’s applicasee HOUSING, pg. 3 }
“Pocahontas High School was a small school in stature and had few students overall, but we had caring and loving teachers who encouraged us to do the best with what we had and what we attempted to do.” Jerretta Hatcher, Class of 1969
PHOTO BY LAURA MCFARLAND
Dr. Delmar Wright speaks to students during a Black History Month assembly at Pocahontas Middle School.
Wright sets challenge for students to bring change By Laura McFarland News Editor
see HISTORY, pg. 5 }
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POWHATAN – When invited to come and speak to Pocahontas Middle School students in recognition of Black History Month, special guest speaker Dr. Delmar P. Wright said he had any number of topics from which he could choose. He could have chosen to talk about black men and women who broke ground in various fields, such as Dr. Charles Drew, a pioneer in blood storage techniques who helped increase the shelf life of blood for blood transfusions, or Dr. Daniel
Hale Williams, one of the first physicians to perform open-heart surgery in the United States. He could have talked about Garrett Morgan, who invented the first automatic three-way traffic signal system, or Madame C.J. Walker, who was orphaned at 6 , married at 14, widowed at 20 with a 2-year-old daughter and making $ 1.50 a day as a laundress but went on to become the first female selfmade millionaire in the United States because of a system of hair care products she created for black women. In education, he could have talked about Mary McCleod Bethune, one of 17 children of former slaves, who started the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls, which later became BethuneCookman College. Any one of those major achievers in black history would have made for excellent lessons for to-
PHOTO BY LAURA MCFARLAND
Four alumnae of Pocahontas High School, now a middle school, standing in front of their former school are Jerretta Funn Hatcher, from left, Gayzelle Taylor, Geraldine Funn Woodson and LaVerne Goode.
Across the generations, honoring school’s history By Laura McFarland News Editor
T
he 80-year history of Pocahontas Middle School is being celebrated this spring with a video project involving both alumni and the students who will be the last ones to attend school there. The students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades that are currently attending Pocahontas Middle will be the last students to do so before the scheduled opening this fall of Powhatan
Middle School. The school district is still working out what to do with the building once it is no longer a school. Before that transition happens, faculty and staff
wanted to celebrate and preserve some of the building’s rich history in the community through both the voices of those who see POCAHONTAS, pg. 4 }
County farm gets turn in ‘Homeland’ spotlight By Laura McFarland News Editor
POWHATAN – For Powhatan fans of the television show Homeland who have been watching trying to spot familiar places in Richmond where the seventh season was being filmed, there is one location that is closer to home than many will realize. A Powhatan farm that served as the set for a conservative pundit and talk show host hiding out from the U.S. government could already be spotted in the early episodes of the season. For almost the entire month of October 2017, Landon and Kendall Graham and their children turned their house and a good portion of their farm over to the production team for filming of Homeland, which airs on Showtime. Landon Graham said he was approached in September 2017 about using his rural property to serve as the location for the hideout, which in the show is supposed to be somewhere in West Virginia. “They wanted something that looked like West Virginia because that is where the scene was supposed to be. But getting to West Virginia is a nightmare so it’s better to be near Richmond,” he said.
PHOTO: ANTONY PLATT/SHOWTIME
A scene from Showtime’s Homeland featuring Jake Weber as Brett O’Keefe was filmed at a Powhatan County farm.
In the show, after an attempted military coup against the administration of U.S. President Elizabeth Keane (played by Elizabeth Marvel) and a crackdown of government personnel and media, right-wing media personality Brett O’Keefe (Jake Weber) is on the run. In the season premiere, which aired Feb. 11, O’Keefe’s number seemed to be up
when he was captured, but in actuality, he was taken to a safe house where he could continue to broadcast his tirades against the president. The production crew used the house and area immediately around it, the long gravel driveway leading up to it and some of the forest land on the propsee HOMELAND, pg. 6 }