Claire Marshall Watkins, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Fredericksburg Free Press
Link Wray marker to be unveiled and dedicated Nov. 21
By Adele Uphaus 11/7/2026
On Sept. 28, 2024, Chris Williams, assistant director of the University of Mary Washington’s James Farmer Multicultural Center, made a promise to Beth Wray Webb, the eldest daughter of musician Link Wray.
“We’re going to get this marker for your dad,” Williams told Webb.
Exactly two years later, after months of research, seeking and receiving approval from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources — and a last-minute road-bump that almost delayed the process further — Williams was able to tell Webb that it was really going to happen.
Oliver worth the wait for Caroline congregation
By Taft Coghill Jr. 11/7/2026
The Rev. Samuel Oliver Jr. spoke to many friends and mentors in ministry when he was a candidate to become the next pastor of First Baptist Church in the Woodford area of Caroline County.
The 134-year-old First Baptist Church had been without a senior pastor since the Rev. Carl Bentley retired in 2021 and was named pastor emeritus.
Guest speakers mostly filled the pulpit, except for about a year and a half when the Rev. Morris Oliver served as interim pastor.
The Free Lance-Star
UMW men’s basketball sweeps Hilton Scranton Invitational (paywalled)
By Alex Murphy 11/8/2026
The University of Mary Washington men’s basketball program took care of business over the weekend at the Hilton Scranton Invitational, hosted by the University of Scranton, sweeping a pair of games to begin the 2026-27 season.
The reigning Division III national champions opened the new campaign Friday evening against Marywood, taking down the Pacers, 90-68, behind 30 points from preseason first team All-American Kye Robinson.
Robinson ended up averaging 28.5 points per game across both games in Pennsylvania, putting together the best individual performance of the weekend for No. 1 UMW.
Is Thornburg ready for looming Kalahari water park traffic? (paywalled)
By Scott Shenk 11/8/2026
Traffic impacts were a concern for residents who spoke up during public hearings when the Kalahari Resort & Conventions water park was going through the approval process four years ago.
County officials weren’t concerned then, and they aren’t now as the opening of the resort nears.
The African-themed water park, one of five owned by Kalahari, will include more than 1.38 million square feet of commercial space, a 267,429-square-foot indoor water park, a 10-acre outdoor water park, a 900-room hotel and a 156,278-square-foot convention center.
Pigs pigging out on donated pumpkins at Earth’s Echo Farm (paywalled)
By Pilar Davis 11/8/2026
The tricks and treats of Halloween may have come and gone, but leftover Halloween pumpkins and jack-o’-lanterns can still be a yummy treat for pigs at Earth’s Echo Farm in Fredericksburg.
The farm has teamed up with Downtown Greens, a local conservation nonprofit, to collect the pumpkins residents are done using. They will then be fed to the cute, coily-tailed snorters at Earth’s Echo Farm for the third year in a row.
Earth’s Echo Farm co-owner Robert Greenlaw said the pumpkins are natural dewormers, and although their cattle enjoy them too, their pigs get first dibs.
ADVANCE READS
Drew Gallagher, Claire Marshall Watkins, Steve Rabson
Every Deer Path and Swamp Trail (and Clothesline and Cop Car)
Drew Gallagher, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
(This is Part II of a two-part column. Part I, “Raiding in Reading,” ran in The Advance last Sunday, and you can read it HERE.)
In the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot, there is a scene in which Gibson’s character asks that his son, played by Heath Ledger, be assigned to Mel’s command because the son knows “every deer path and swamp trail” in the area. That is how we would have thought of ourselves when we went out raiding in our Pennside neighborhood at Halloween—savvy patriots able to outwit the brilliant General Cornwallis—had the film come out in 1982 instead of 2000.
We knew which backyards to cut through, which houses had motions sensors, and where the muskrat holes were when we had to jump across the creek that meandered behind our backyards and glowed in the October moonlight.
Love and Attention
Claire Marshall Watkins, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
I remember being 12, sitting on the swing set in my friend Alison’s backyard, and when she asked how I felt about Fredericksburg telling her that I couldn’t wait to get out as soon as I could. I did it, too. I left at 18 to attend a small, historically women’s college (even though it was six months into the Covid-19 pandemic) and I stayed for three years, except for a semester abroad in London.
At 21, nearly a decade after that middle-school conversation with Alison, I found myself back in Fredericksburg after a health scare. I transferred to the university where my dad had once taught, and where my mother and grandmother both graduated. Even after my best effort to get away, I found myself as a third-generation University of Mary Washington alumna.
The War of My Childhood
Steve Rabson, GUEST COLUMNIST
I was in first grade when the Korean War started. It was June 1950 and my family was on summer vacation, staying at a rented cottage on Lake Ontario in upstate New York. My father and uncle were around 30 years old and both had served in World War II. When we heard the news about the war on the radio, they wondered if they would be drafted. My grandmother was particularly worried because her first son, my uncle John, died in April 1945 when his plane crashed in Mindanao province of the southern Philippines. All the wreckage had burned, leaving only the crew’s dog tags, so it was never known whether the crash was caused by enemy fire or engine trouble.
After World War II, my father finished graduate school at the University of Michigan. He was teaching mathematics at Purdue during the Korean War. In order to circumvent the Constitutional requirement that only Congress could declare America.at war, President Truman called U.S. intervention in Korea a “police action.” After we returned home from that summer vacation, my parents listened to the morning news by Cecil Brown every day on the radio. He reported from Korea on short-wave broadcasts, so the sound echoed with background noise, and his voice sounded growly, like he had laryngitis.
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