#hampton virginia

[popculturelib]

Haunted States of America: Virginia

Hampton's Haunted Houses & How to Feed A Ghost (1998) by Jane Keane Polonsky and Joan McFarland Drum

Hampton is a historic town on the eastern coast of Virginia and is one of the oldest European settlements in the United States. This short volume is part history, part ghost stories, and part recipes. Mixed in with tales of ghostly dentists, haunted hotels, and a visit by Blackbeard the pirate are recipes for dishes such as:

Heavenly Hash Candy for Ghost Hunting

Spoonbread

Chicken Salad and Sweet Potato Custard Pie (a favorite of a ghostly visitor at a building on Wine Street)

Spirit Punch, which comes with the notes: "Hearty consumption of the following spirit punch is certain to assist in raising the netherworld" and "Don't bother using quality liquor because it does not matter in this punch."

What do you like to eat and drink when you go hunting for ghosts?

Virginia is the second-most represented state in our collection, with 32 books about ghosts and hauntings. Take a look at these other books:

The Mystery of Ghostly Vera And Other Haunting Tales of Southwest Virginia (1993) by Charles Edwin Price; introduction by Sharyn McCrumb; cover art by David Dixon

Virginia's Ghosts: Haunted Historic House Tours (1995) by L.B. Taylor, Jr.

The Hauntings of Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown (1998) by Jackie Eileen Behrend

The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.  Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.

#bgsu #libraries on tumblr #haunted states of america #books #ghosts #virginia #hampton virginia #recipes

[saleintothe90s]

462. Daily Press, July 1, 1992

I'm trying to remember, I think this became a Proffit's department store by the next Summer.

Back when Wal*Mart was simpler times.

Wait. Hold up. WalMart would close at 9:30 back in 1992?! AND AT SIX PM ON SUNDAYS. I thought by the time we got this Walmart in the early 90s in Hampton, Walmart was running 24/7.

Phar-Mor was trying so hard to be lil Kmart or lil WalMart back then. They had so much drama with the way the place was ran I need to get into it soon. Here's just a quick summary from Tedium. Our store was near the mall, so mom never ventured over there, citing that area as "too busy".

I remember OW! I mean, we never went in there because I was 9, but I remember driving by it. The sign always made me uncomfortable because it was just a giant O and a giant W. Like the word "ow!" OW did not last long. It was a spinoff of the HQ hardware stores which I've mentioned before.

I found their logo! From an April 16, 1990 newspaper .

Four days later, there was this advertisment about the remaning stores becoming Office Max:

Here was our cell phone technology in 1992.

I didn't know we got the cardinal and mountain plates so early! I thought they were more from 1995.

Wait, is the "expandable free jug" the burp jug?!

Back in the Summer of 2008, I was about five seconds to a complete nervous breakdown. Well, this was around the time that my mom would watch American Justice every morning, I think they're the ones that Bill Kurtis would do the voiceovers for. So you know, that was absolutely GREAT for my messed up brain. The episode about the kidnapping of Exxon executive Sidney Reso really messed me up. After being shot and kidnapped from his driveway in April of 1992, he was locked in a small box in a storage unit. He died five days later and his body was dumped in a park. Irene received a 20 year sentence while her husband Arthur received a 90 year sentence. Hearing their disguised voices will send shivers down your spine.

Of all the cars to seal in Hampton, why an Isuzu I-Mark. For reference, this is an I-Mark, my mom drove it's copycat, the Chevrolet Spectrum at this time:

wikimedia commons

three.hundred.dollar.rollerblades, I mean Bauers.

I'm with S.M, I'd be mad as hell if I didn't have my Cathy. I've actually begun re-reading the strip again recently.

via GIPHY

OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING. The fist time jump in Funky Winkerbean history.

So, finally in the early Summer of 1992, the kids at Westview High finally graduate, and the strip jumps four years later to see them as straight out of college adults -- thus making them graduate in 1988 instead of 1992. Got that?

Too Legit to Quit? Really? How do you do, fellow kids?

This was part of some strange celebrity news insert I guess Daily Press did back then. This was here too:

welp, here's a kid playing with cockroaches with Ross Perot's face on it.

Facebook | Etsy | Retail History Blog | Twitter | YouTube Playlist | Random Post | Ko-fi donation | instagram @thelastvcr​ | tik tok @ saleintothe90s

#daily press #old newspapers #ross perot #cockroaches #children's palace #hampton virginia #funky winkerbean #isuzu #sidney reso #bill kurtis #little ceasars #pizza pizza #phar mor #walmart

[reasoningdaily]

USA TODAY: DNA tests, black history: Tucker family ties to 1619 Virginia slaves

HAMPTON, Va. – As Walter Jones walks his family’s ancient cemetery, shovel in hand, he wonders about those who rest there. 

The gravestones date back as far as the 1800s. Some bear the names of folks Walter knew; some have faded to illegibility; some are in pieces. And, under the brush he’s cleared away and the ground he’s leveled, there are burial sites unmarked by any stone.

The cemetery means so much to Walter because his extended family – the Tuckers of Tidewater, Virginia – believe they are as much an American founding family as any from the Mayflower.

They have a widely recognized but possibly unprovable claim: that they are directly descended from the first identified African American people born on the mainland of English America, an infant baptized “William” around 1624.

It’s been 400 years this August since William’s parents arrived in the Virginia colony. The Tuckers, like many African Americans, struggle to trace their roots. They have no genealogical or DNA evidence linking them to those first Africans, but they have oral history and family lore.

And they have the cemetery, a repository of what unites them and what baffles them.

This graveyard, Walter says, is “the only thing you can actually put your hands on, put your eyes on.’’ 

He’s thinking of that July day two years ago. He was leveling earth when the blade of his shovel hit something solid.

He looked down. A round, gray object seemed to have emerged from the dirt. He dug under it a little and lifted it up. It looked like a section of a bowl.

He moved more dirt and spotted something else round and gray. He brushed it off and held it against the first object to see if they fit together.

He didn’t realize it at first, but he was holding a human skull.

Researchers would conclude that it belonged to an African American woman who was about 60 when she died – roughly Walter's age. But they couldn’t say when.

The Tuckers want to know their story because our stories help define us. Especially those that explain where we came from.

Many Americans can find out from a Norddeutscher Lloyd Line manifest or an Ellis Island log or a parish registry in Cork, Palermo or Cornwall. For African Americans, it’s not so easy. Their story, often as not, was stripped from them.

This is a story about one family’s search for its story. It’s about a storyteller who loved that story maybe too much; the searchers following in her path; and the mysterious old cemetery that, some feel, holds the key.

The Tuckers believe their American story started in 1619. According to a letter by the tobacco planter John Rolfe, the widower of Pocahontas, a ship landed in England’s 12-year-old Jamestown settlement and “brought not anything but 20, and odd, Negroes, which the Governor and the Cape Merchant bought for victuals’’ – provisions.

The “20 and odd’’ already had been through hell. 

They were taken prisoner of war in what is now Angola by African mercenaries working with the Portuguese; marched to the Atlantic coast, where they were branded, penned, forcibly baptized; and finally chained head-to-foot below deck on a Spanish ship headed for Mexico and a life of slavery.  

Virginia had no law to permit or ban slavery. But the Africans became slaves in fact, if not law. In 1624, two of them, identified as Anthony and Isabella, were listed in the household of Capt. William Tucker, a military commander and settler.

The following year, the two appear again in a census, this time along with “William theire Child Baptised.’’ Another African child, unnamed, also appears for the first time in the same 1625 census. But William is the first identified by name.

The Tuckers believe that he is their founding father; that William was surnamed Tucker, after Capt. Tucker; and that their ancestors lived on or near Bluebird Gap Farm, site of Capt.Tucker’s plantation, in what is today the city of Hampton.

But the Tuckers have so far been unable to prove their claims to the satisfaction of most historians and genealogists.

An African Ancestry DNA test for a family elder, Floyd Tucker, showed that his DNA coincided with that found in a tribe in what is today Ghana – not Angola, from where William’s parents came.

It’s unclear how far William’s line goes forward, and how far the Tuckers’ goes back. A professional historian hired by the family has yet to find anything to narrow the gap.  

One problem is that England’s American colonists kept poor records; settlers were more concerned about making it through winter or fighting Indians. Often, what records were kept subsequently were destroyed, by everything from fire to worms.

Today, experts say that any family – white or black – is hard-pressed to establish genealogical connections before 1800 unless their ancestors were rich, famous or criminals.

Just because the Tuckers can’t document their connection doesn’t mean they don’t have one, said Beth Austin of the Hampton History Museum. “But it’s really still just a theory. That’s all we can go on.”

Did William survive infancy in the precarious colony? Did he have children? Did his children have children? Regardless, he was the symbolic beginning of so much in American life – of the hands that picked the cotton that financed the Industrial Revolution; of jazz and gospel and hip-hop; of Ellison and Baldwin and Morrison; of King and Malcolm and Fannie Lou Hamer; of the Afro, the high-five and the dunk shot.

And yet, after he was baptized – on a date and in a place unknown – history’s first identified African American simply vanished.

None of the Tuckers loved the story like Thelma Williams.

As a child she’d listen for hours to her grandmother, who’d been born sometime in the last quarter of the 19th century. The old woman told of family recipes and remedies, about slave uprisings and Indian wars. While other children played or did their chores, Thelma listened, rapt.

Of all these stories, her grandmother told her, there was one she had to remember: We were on the first slave ship to come to America, and we are descended from the first black child born here. 

Although the idea that the Tuckers went back to the first Africans in America had circulated in the family for years, it was slowly dying until Thelma grew up and got her hands on it.

She spent days in courthouses and libraries across eastern Virginia, checking birth records and deeds. She tracked down family elders, usually leaving the visit with a photograph or two. She went to Richmond. She went to Washington. She filled a spare bedroom in her small house in Hampton with her research, including stacks of handwritten notes.

Help us record black history and American history

Our family stories often define us. Especially stories that explain where we came from. Yet these stories were often stripped from African Americans. We want you to share your stories as part of the 1619 Voices Project. Call us at [phone] and tell us: What is an oral history that has been passed down in your family?

Her grandmother’s story was proving true. There had been a child of the first Africans who’d lived in the household of a white man named Tucker. Tucker had a plantation near what is today a public park in Hampton called Blueberry Gap Farm. And once, when an elderly Tucker was brought by his children to the farm, he blurted out, “This was our home.’’

Thelma came to understand, she told the AP, the importance of the Tuckers’ connection to that first African child: “It’s important that people know we didn’t just fall out of the sky.’’

The younger Tuckers began to pay attention, especially Thelma’s cousin Wanda. Wanda remembers the older woman’s excitement: “You won’t believe what I just found!’’

Thelma’s children sometimes resented their mother’s obsession. Her husband accused her of “living in the past.’’ She’d find a way to turn any conversation around to family history and genealogy. She’d accost acquaintances at the grocery store to fill them in on what she’d discovered. When she learned your last name, she’d tell you what plantation your people lived on.

One of her daughters laughs at the memory: “Nobody liked it!’’

Searching for answers: Wanda Tucker's spiritual journey to where the slave trade began

Angola was barely mentioned in the history of the slave trade. USA TODAY invited Wanda Tucker there to search for her roots.

Jarrad Henderson, USA TODAY

Undaunted, Thelma handed out a synopsis of the Tucker story at family reunions. She spoke to community groups and anyone else who’d listen, including the mailman.

Her efforts were responsible, in 1994, for the family’s official recognition in the Jamestown Settlement history park’s reenactment of the 375th anniversary of the Africans’ arrival.

A replica of that first ship, the White Lion, sailed up the James River. Some of the Tuckers, in period dress, were on board, honored as founding Americans. Thelma stood on the riverbank in a purple dashiki, beaming.  

The event cemented the Tuckers’ status as “the first family.’’ The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk described the Tuckers flatly as “the descendants of the first Africans born in North America.’’

The Tuckers became the face of 1619. A group photo of them was featured on a National Park Service brochure for visitors to the spot where the first Africans landed.

She’d only tell relatives parts of the story, never the whole thing. Thelma believed that the story was a book, and she was the only one to write it. She compiled a manuscript, which never got published because she wouldn’t relinquish control.

Then she died, at 64, in 2006.

Her research went to her daughters and became caught up in a family rift over real estate, divorces and other issues.

Thelma’s daughter, Shree Green, says her mother’s research could shed light on the family tree. She says that she and her sister want to publish it, but they’re not ready. The other Tuckers say they’re mystified.

This June, Wanda stood by Thelma’s simple horizontal headstone in the family cemetery. She lamented what the loss of the research meant to the family story.

“It’s like she took it with her to her grave.’’

They couldn’t afford a gravestone. So sometimes, to mark a burial spot, the slaves would plant a seed. And the seed would become a tree, and the tree would grow higher, 2 feet a year.

The place where Thelma was laid to rest is dotted with oaks and pines 50 feet high. It almost certainly dates to the time of slavery. It feels like the nave of a cathedral.

The Tucker family cemetery lies seven miles from where the first Africans landed in 1619, and a mile from the site of Capt. Tucker’s plantation. It’s incongruously surrounded by squat 1950s tract houses and almost invisible from the street.

But after Thelma’s death, the cemetery was neglected. Neighbors used it as a dumping ground – for a couch, a refrigerator, a water heater. Snakes crawled through the vines, and the vines crawled up the tree trunks. Kids used it to play jungle. 

Then, on May 17, 2013, the Tuckers picked up their local newspaper, The Daily Press, and saw this headline: “HISTORIC CEMETERY DRAWS MAYOR'S EYE.’’

City officials said it had “languished for years under iffy ownership and infrequent maintenance.’’ The mayor said the graveyard apparently had been abandoned.

The story shocked and embarrassed Wanda, Walter and their relatives. They told the city the cemetery wasn’t abandoned. It was theirs – they had the 1896 deed. They galvanized to form the William Tucker 1624 Society and began meeting regularly to clean and prune it.  

The result amazed them. The cemetery contained more than 100 unmarked graves, as many as the number of marked ones. That’s when it hit Walter: “This could be where our earliest ancestors are buried.’’

The discoveries spread the cemetery’s fame and seemed to bolster the Tuckers’ claim to history.

The Tucker 1624 Society received a $100,000 grant from an environmental nonprofit for cemetery work. The legislature approved an easement to protect the cemetery from development and ensure public access. Gov. Ralph Northam visited the cemetery last August to sign the legislation.

“Cemeteries can be a way for us to retrace our history,’’ he said.

News reports often speculated – and sometimes stated as fact – that William actually was buried there. Northam himself referred to “William Tucker’s presence here …’’

Today, the family is divided on whether to explore the cemetery’s secrets. Walter and Wanda are willing to have graves opened and the remains exhumed to discover who was buried and when.  

Walter believes that since the cemetery was used by a relatively limited number of families, there might have been burials as infrequently as once every few years. If so, he reasons, its first burials might have occurred in the 1700s or even the 1600s – William’s time.

But Tucker elders think the dead should be left in peace.

For now, Walter concedes, they have a veto. But some day, “I’ll be the elder.’’

The Tuckers’ claim demands more research, historians say. Austin, the Hampton museum historian, sums up the Tuckers' dilemma: “We just don’t always have the information to tell the story we want to tell.’’

Their story faces a competing, if less-publicized, claim to a 1619 connection. A retired corporate executive named Shelton Tucker, also a Tidewater, Virginia, resident but not directly related to Wanda’s family, also says he’s descended from William.

There are tensions between these two Tucker clans – “a Hatfields and McCoys kind of thing,’’ says a local historian, Calvin Pearson.

Shelton Tucker resents the public focus on the other Tuckers’ claim. “The red carpet family,” he calls them. “We’re all Tuckers, but when the cameras show up, it’s always them. They’ll say anything to get in front of a camera.’’

Until someone proves otherwise, the Tuckers continue to celebrate their status as the “first family.” They’ve made the search a family affair.

 Walter’s sister, Carolita Jones-Cope, 60, handles calls from the media, which have been pouring in. She's planned a ceremony Friday at the family cemetery. Vincent Tucker, 57, leads the 1624 Society. Brandi Davis Melvin, 42, brings her three young daughters to the cemetery to spruce it up. 

Brenda Tucker Doswell, 77, speaks and sings at programs celebrating her family’s story. She’s picked out a long skirt made of African fabric to wear when she sings Friday at the cemetery. “This is 400 years,” she said. “That’s what we commemorate and celebrate.”

Verrandall Tucker personifies the family’s pride in its story. He shows newspaper clippings to customers at his men’s clothing shop. He’s screened a video of a TV news report about the family’s lineage at his church.

Sometimes he changes out of his dress clothes, closes his shop and leaves a sign: “Gone to cemetery.’’ 

Wanda Tucker has taken on what may be the most challenging task – the search for historical validation.

For hours last month she turned the pages of a huge ledger, squinting in the fluorescent glare at the faded cursive script, puzzling over archaic spellings. At 61, she's a practiced researcher – Ph.D., professor, department chair. But this is the search of her life.

Her family can trace its roots no further than the early 1800s; before that, the trail goes cold, leaving a 175-year gap in a genealogical chain to William.

Which is why she was poring through the 166-year-old Register of Birth at the courthouse in Isle of Wight County, Virginia. 

The link to William was only one story the Tuckers told about their history. They also believed that, in the long night of American slavery, they – unlike the vast majority of blacks – remained free. 

Last month she was searching for birth records for Thomas Tucker, her great-great grandfather, who she thought was born about five years before the Civil War. She wanted a specific date.

The records started in 1853, so she began there, scouring the ledger for a Thomas Tucker born to a woman named Millie. But there were none – not even any Thomases. So she started over, looking simply for a Tom born to a Millie.

And suddenly, after two hours of searching, there he was on page 21 – born Oct. 20, 1856.

She’d added another leaf to the family tree.

But then her eye drifted across the page. After the columns with newborns’ names, birth dates and mothers’ names, there were three other columns: White. Colored/free. Colored/slave.

And Wanda saw that, despite all she’d been told, the column checked was the last one. Slave.

If that story was not true, what about the most important one of all?

She’s had time to think about that question, and she still believes William was her ancestor: “Until somebody proves me wrong, it is the story I am holding onto, and the one I am going to keep telling.’’ 

That's what makes the cemetery so important. Whether or not the Tuckers can ever prove a connection with William, it shows that they have endured slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Klan, Jim Crow and separate but equal.

“We’ve survived,’’ she says. “We’re still here.’’

#The founding family you’ve never heard of: The black Tuckers of Hampton #Virginia #The Tuckers #hampton virginia #dna #DNA tests #black history: Tucker family ties to 1619 Virginia slaves #Black History Matters #2024 #Black History Month #First Black in Virginia #William Turner

[lonestarflight]

"The HL-20 was built at Langley in October 1990 and is a full-scale non-flying mockup. This mockup was used for engineering studies of maintainability of the vehicle, as testing crew positions, pilot visibility and other human factors considerations. The HL-20 was a direct derivative of the HL-10 vehicle tested in the 1960s and bears a very close resemblance to engineering drawings produced at that time. Although evaluated as a possible 'space taxi,' the HL-20, sometimes called the 'Personnel Launch System,' was never built."

Date: October 22, 1991

NASA ID: L-1991-14834

#HL-20 Personnel Launch System #HL-20 #Lifting Body #Space Taxi #Spaceplane #NASA #Langley Research Center #Hampton #Virginia #Mock-Up #Mock Up #Mockup #October #1991 #my post

[science70]

Aeronautical engineer Christine Darden, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, 1976.

#science #aeronautics #engineering #Christine Darden #NASA #Langley Research Center #Hampton #Virginia #USA #1976

[queenoffists]

Take me back to Hampton where the Mothership is. 👽🌌🚀☄️🛸

#me #girls who rave #fishnets #festivals #hippie #hampton #virginia #spacecamp #griz #aliens #wolf #wolf tattoo #girls with tattoos #galaxy #heavy bass #bass music #bass #ravestyle #rave scene #raver #concert #space ship #mothership #aliens and ufos #ufo #Spotify #selfie #golden hour

[carbone14]

Le cuirassé USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) - Hampton Roads – Virginie – 10 décembre 1916

©Naval History and Heritage Command - NH 63562

#WWI #WWII #avant-guerre #pre war #marine militaire #military navy #marine de guerre #navy #cuirassé #battleship #classe pennsylvania #pennsylvania-class #uss pennsylvania (bb-38) #uss pennsylvania #bb-38 #hampton roads #virginie #virginia #états-unis #usa #10/12/1916 #12/1916 #1916

[lonestarbattleship]

USS YORKTOWN (CV-5) anchored in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Date: October 29, 1937

Dencho Digital Respository: ddr-njpa-13-50

#USS YORKTOWN (CV-6) #USS YORKTOWN #Yorktown Class #Aircraft Carrier #Warship #Ship #United States Navy #U.S. Navy #US Navy #USN #Navy #Hampton Roads #Virginia #East Coast #October #1937 #interwar period #my post

[nocternalrandomness]

1st FW F-15 from Langley AFB over the Hampton Coliseum

#Virginia #1st FW #McDonnell Douglas #F-15 #Eagle #Air superiority #Fighter #Jet #Aircraft #Hampton Coliseum

[tricornonthecob]

I know I know I gotta do s2 of LK but I wanted to do this instead

Felicity Steals An Entire Fucking Horse: The Movie (2005)

pt1 pt2 pt3 pt4 pt5 pt6 pt7 pt8 pt9

Warner Brothers hittin' that renown TV-Movie quality with Microsoft Word 2003 typefaces

I don't think she stole this horse in particular, but they never explain its backstory, so I'd like to believe all the Merriman horses are lifted.

this is such a horsegirl movie, she says, as a horsegirl.

stfu Nan.

They sit astride local small business owners

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo pretty sure Rose is enslaved, are we ever gonna address the slavery in the room in this movie, orrrrrrrrr.......

The series of expressions this actress makes here are phenomenal also guess we're not gonna address the slavery in the room.

I meannnn.... are you the one doing all the work here, Mrs. Merriman??? Or just taking the credit.

The Notable Housewives of The Greater Hampton Roads Area

Nan, you fucking narc, don't you know the first rule of The Notable Housewives of The Greater Hampton Roads Area?? Snitches are bitches!

Grandpa Enslaver comin' in hot with the "IDGAF, Nan"

Mrs. Merriman is not impressed with her firstborn.

lookit all those living history actors just chatterin' away, I wonder if they got paid extra that day.

Ed Merriman, Walgreens manager.

What can you get at Ed's, you say? Well, come on down! We got:

fabric lifted straight from the Jo-Ann's off rte 321,

Various science experiments,

Unsorted wooden tools, ominously unlabeled tins, bike chain with a bazillion locks we can't cut off, definitely NOT acrylic vases, a concerning age gap for fanfic writers to overcome in some way, brushies, and HELLA sponges from the Jo-Anns off rte 321,

Whiskey of course,

two (2) hatchets in the Olde Timey candy aisle, aforementioned Olde Timey candy, someone's grandma's copper kettle, a concerning lack of stupid heartthrob curtain bangs, wooden spoons, ramekins that probably definitely did not come from Target, and tin jugs (more whiskey??,)

Tea,

And, of course, This Bitch.

Rude (but statistically probable)

This is some Jane Austen dialogue.

Felicity: "...Yes. Good, you can pay attention to things."

#tricorn on the cob watches Felicity and makes inane commentary #tricorn watches #The Notable Housewives of The Greater Hampton Roads Area #Felicity #Felicity Merriman #american girl dolls #amrev #american revolution #Mrs. Merriman is Unimpressed #Nan are you a cop you gotta say if you're a cop #Williamsburg #Virginia #colonial williamsburg #Felicity: An American Girl Adventure #Felicity Steals An Entire Fucking Horse

[crossxarrows]

#history #america #slavery #civil war #war #virginia #women #men #native americans #blm #miami #indiana #texas #richmond #newport news #hampton #757

[admiralnelsoniii]

The Battle of Hampton Roads. American Civil War. The famous showdown between the Ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia. Ultimately the two vessels pounded on each other for a while then went their separate ways, the outcome undecided. But it was a turning point for warship combat.

#civil war #american civil war #hampton roads #Monitor #Virginia #ironclads #history #naval history #military history #seabattle #warship #art #artwork #war art #military art

[saleintothe90s]

465. Daily Press, August 1, 1993

We all know that JTT was the only one who deserved hat raise.

Okay, so the person who wrote this letter about his Davey Allison NASCAR flag being stolen is the father of these two absolutely mean girls who I went to school with. Davey had died a few weeks earlier so I guess the thief thought that flag was going to be worth something.

Suffice to say, Kim did not make it to another Olympics. She tried a comeback in 1998, but it didn't work out. I didn't know that Phoebe Mills was also a diver! I can't find a clip.

So this was August 1st. Jurassic Park came out in the theaters on June 11th. You don't see ads in the papers for movies 2 months after it comes out anymore. Heck, unless it was a huge release, it's out on DVD nearly two months later these days.

I went to this!

Southwestern / Santa Fe was def a trend around this time. Does anybody remember the last couple seasons of Perfect Strangers when the gang moved into this huge house, and Balki's room was Southwestern/Mypos/Wayne Newton?

Daily Press held onto this Comics banner for years.

Oh my god. Does anybody remember when Bill's younger half brother, Roger was some sort of popculture sensation right after Bill became president? and he tried a singing career?

They didn't last.

Things that aged poorly.

Glamour Shots is something I did not like back then. They made everybody look 30 years older. Even as late as 2001 when I graduated from high school girls at my high school were getting their senior photos at glamour shots at the Coliseum Mall.

Okay, so for some reason this month there were no Sunday ads on the proquest edition for this paper. I had to grab these from the Ocala Star Banner from Florida. This Montgomery Ward salespaper was like, 70 pages. No wonder they went out of business a few years later.

These look absolutely to die for! Starburst fro yo?! The bars look like they would melt in three seconds, but the fro yo cups?!

Unfortunate placement in this drugstore salespaper.

OH. This is the beginning of striped shirt trend! Mom didn't like me wearing striped shirts because I was so fat.

This was the first "grown uppy" stuff I was allowed, about a year after this ad ran. I didn't know how to use it.

I remember seeing these at people's houses back in the day and thinking they were for the washing machine. No, they were for the dishwasher?!

I guess Goldfish Cookies were Pepperidge Farm's answer to Teddy Grahams?

Is that holographic school box a cat?!

Aw, I have memories about these pencils. I remember my dad buying them for me one time.

I miss these cardboard car shades. I hate those flimsy ones we have now.

So I left the big one for last, it was the main story that day. It was a giant investigation about a local businessman, David Merritt, and how he duped people in my hometown when he said that he would build a night club in the old Post Office in the downtown area. The night club, named after him (!) was only was fully functional for a few weeks, then it became special occasions only.

Highlights:

Another mistake, critics say, was Merritt's decision to dip into his limited personal resources to build his basement offices and a lavish, 1,700-square-foot apartment before the restaurant. That ate up more than half his money, while delaying the opening of the restaurant - and the revenue source that would return the money spent on construction.

"He reversed the deal," O'Neill says. "Now the restaurant not only had to carry itself, it had to carry the other two."

Says Merritt, "Looking back now, I wouldn't do the apartment and offices first."

But he offers no apologies for the amenities inside, which included a state-of-the-art stereo system, a tanning bed, a 50-inch TV, a $1,700 sofa and a weight room - the last so he could stay in shape.

[...]

Merritt unveiled a grandiose - and costly - vision for the place. It would feature an indoor gazebo, a 1931 Ford roadster, an old-fashioned jukebox and a bakery counter. But its opening date kept moving into the future: from late 1989 or early 1990 to May or June 1990 to sometime in 1991. It finally opened in August 1992.

[...]

Promising "casual gourmet dining at its best," Merritt's finally opened in mid-summer. Behind the scenes, its owner was staving off contractors and others who demanded that he pay his bills.

In December, Merritt's closed, except for private parties. In the coming months, it reopened sporadically, on weekends, marketed not as a restaurant but as a nightclub. Soon neighbors were complaining of gunfire and rowdy crowds on weekends.

It took years, but David got jail time. He was sentenced in 1998! :

NORFOLK — David J. Merritt turned and faced his family, friends and former contractors Wednesday, and apologized to the dozens of people he scammed in his failed Hampton restaurant project.

"I love all of y'all," Merritt told his relatives in the U.S. District courtroom. Then, with his voice cracking and his lips quivering, Merritt spoke to his brother in the first row: "Tell Mom and Dad I love them."

Minutes later, Judge Raymond A. Jackson dashed any hopes Merritt, 39, would see his elderly parents anytime soon.

Agreeing with a prosecution request to go above the recommended guidelines, Jackson sentenced Merritt to 140 months - almost 12 years - in federal prison on 82 counts, stemming from fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice convictions. Jackson also ordered Merritt to pay $717,672 in restitution.

The paper used to do a feature where they would do a phone in poll everyday. Although nobody should ever use the word "rape" in this way:

tSeptember 23, 1992

September 23, 1992

You know it's bad when the FOOD gets repoed.

This was the only photo I could find of the inside of it.

When David was released from prison, he became a trainer at the local YMCA in 2008. He later moved to Florida and resumed his publishing company.

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#the 1990s #1993 #hampton virginia #old newspapers #kim zmeskal #Roger clinton #goldfish

[puissantveil]

Amber Alert in VA Beach!

One Zuri Dorsey has gone missing in Virginia Beach, and my heart sank like a rock when I saw that little girl was Black. I still remember having just got off work when Keir Johnson and her daughter Chloe disappeared in Hampton. Six years later they're still missing.

I fear posting the alert will do more harm than good - not only do the police probably not give a crap, but calling the cops could be dangerous in its own right for a lot of people. Nonetheless, from the poster itself:

The Virginia State Police and the Virginia Missing Children Clearinghouse have issued an AMBER Alert on behalf of the Virginia Beach Police Department, for a child abduction that occurred on December 9, 2023 at 0715 hours.

The child is believed to be in extreme danger and was last seen at her residence at 1351 Sapphire Drive in Virginia Beach. Abducted is Zuri Dorsey, 2 years old, black female, brown hair, brown eyes, 2 feet tall, 34 pounds. Last seen wearing a pair of underwear.

The child is believed to have been abducted by Deandre Alante Dorsey, 27 years old, black, male, brown hair, black eyes, 5' 11", 160 pounds. Last seen wearing black jogger pants and a black hoodie. They may be in a red 2016 Honda Accord with North Carolina registration RAZ9972.

For further information contact the Virginia Beach Police Department at [phone] or visit vsp.virginia.gov/active-alerts

#serious #important #signal boost #amber alert #virginia beach #hampton roads #zuri dorsey #missing child alert

[lonestarflight]

"The HL-20 space taxi, Langley's candidate personnel launch system, is one of several designs being considered by NASA as a complement to the Space Shuttle. Human factors studies, using Langley volunteers as subjects, have been ongoing since March 1991 to verify crew seating arrangements, habitability, ingress and egress, equipment layout and maintenance and handling operations, and to determine visibility requirements during docking and landing operations. Langley volunteers, wearing flight suits and helmets, were put through a series of tests with the craft placed both vertically and horizontally to simulate launch and landing attitudes, The HL-20 would be launched into a low orbit by an expendable rocket and then use its own propulsion system to boost itself to the space station. Following exchange of crews or delivery of small payload, the HL-20 would return to Earth like the space shuttle, making a runway landing near the launch site, The full-scale engineering research model of the HL-20 design was constructed by students and faculty at North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T State University with the Mars Mission Research Center under a grant from NASA Langley."

Date: January 22, 1992

NASA ID: EL-1996-00163

#HL-20 Personnel Launch System #HL-20 #Lifting Body #Space Taxi #Spaceplane #NASA #Langley Research Center #Hampton #Virginia #Mock-Up #Mock Up #Mockup #January #1992 #my post

[skatejay]

my last life being a human

#east coast #virginia #virginia beach #richmond #757 #804 #dmv #richmond va #hampton roads #makeup #avantgarde #norfolk va #va #punk #mercury retrograde