Charles McRaven: Renaissance man

Charles “Mac” McRaven sits in the basement of a house he built, flipping through a book he wrote about a trade he’s mastered. As the 78-year-old master craftsman describes his work in a smooth Arkansas drawl, he radiates energy, passion, and wisdom gained over a half-century in the field. Among the country’s preeminent stonemasons, builders, […]

Ryan DeRose: A beautiful mind

You can usually find Ryan DeRose, founder of the digital creative agency Vibethink, standing in front of one of the giant white boards in the company’s Downtown Mall office space, mapping ideas with a dry erase marker. The 27-year-old Western Albemarle High School graduate normally works 80-plus hours a week, all seven days. To say […]

Amy Sarah Marshall: Loud and proud

It’s not difficult to picture a 13-year-old Amy Sarah Marshall standing up at eighth grade graduation, telling her classmates to forego their catty middle school tendencies and learn to love and accept one another. As the president of Cville Pride, and organizer of the city’s first pride festival last summer, Marshall is no stranger to […]

Kai Rady: The big kid

When Kai Rady came to Charlottesville in 1974 with her growing family, her first real challenge wasn’t finding the right schools or dealing with a picky eater—it was a lack of toy stores. Rady said her first child was a very active and curious infant. “I was always looking for new things to stimulate him,” […]

Gloria Rockhold: Civic butterfly

Tango is the dance of passion: a gendered, structured improvisation of impossible closeness with fluid patternings that prioritize expression and intimacy, and the result of the collision of European and American cultures at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. Maybe it’s no surprise then, that Gloria Rockhold, co-founder of the Charlottesville Tango Society, […]

Carlos Pezua: Maestro

“I was working as a substitute teacher in an eighth grade science class while I was also taking my medical school prerequisites at UVA. There was no lesson plan for class one day, so I looked out the window to see if I could find a science project for us to do. And I said […]

Stephen Pollock: The guitar guy

The Beatles’ appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” is to blame for Stephen Pollock’s love of music. “I was nearly 14 and had no idea what I wanted to do with myself until February 9, 1964,” Pollock said. “That was the evening of the first Beatles “Ed Sullivan” appearance. I, like a million other boys […]