Doug Doughty

January 31, 2021 marked the end of an over 45 year long career but, I wasn't finished telling stories.

Father's recovery adds to London's joy at William and Mary

As he takes a five-game winning streak into his team's football game Saturday against Villanova, William and Mary football coach Mike London has an even better victory to savor.

His father, who had been near death, is still with him.

"This issue with my father has brought me back to why we do things, to be thankful and grateful and all that stuff,” London said.

"My dad fell and broke his hip. He's 85 years old. He goes to the hospital and he's got a heart issue as well. The surgeon said we could bring him home for maybe four to six weeks and he could be around and die at home.”

"Being the way my mom is and my brother and sister are, we decided, if it's less than 50-50, then let's go ahead and get the operation. So, Wednesday [before last], we get the operation and, you know what, he might not come out.”

"So later that evening, the doctor comes out, I'm staring at him and he gives me a thumbs-up. So, I run at him and kiss him. Twenty-four hours earlier, my dad wasn't going to come home. It was 50-50 that he'd come off the table and we'd watch him die.

"So life is more important. Family is more important with all the stuff that's going on right now. And, I'm going to celebrate life. I’m going to celebrate opportunities that I’ve had in Richmond, UVa and all these other places.

"My dad is living and I'm going to put my eyeballs on him right now. This situation redefines who we are. All these experiences that I've had -- forgive, forget, release, let go , embrace -- that's just the crazy profession I'm in.”

Like his gridiron victories, this one won't last forever, but London couldn't be more thankful.

On the field, the biggest on-field victory this season might have been a 41-24 triumph at Charlotte, a member of the Football Bowl Subdivision, which is one rung above William and Mary, a Football Championship Subdivision participant.

"We'd been winning close games, winning tough games on the road," London noted in a phone interview earlier this week. "That's been pretty special. I didn't know when it was that we'd started 5-0.

William and Mary didn't start 5-0 but won its first five road games in getting to 5-1 in conference.

"It's been fun," London said. "I've been close to home. All of the things that have taken place in the last 72 hours have put another perspective on life and coaching."

Many of the coaches on William and Mary's staff have a background from the days when London was the head coach at Virginia from 2010-2015.

The former Virginia players include associate head coach Vincent Brown, quarterbacks coach Matt Johns, defensive end Darryl Blackstock, defensive lineman Keenan Carter, defensive backs coach Ras-I Dowling and wide receivers coach Mike London Jr., the head coach's son.

"I've sat in their living rooms; I know their parents," Mike London said. "I know their stories and there's something to be said about knowing people. When I was at Virginia with coach [Al] Groh, he made me the camp director and then the recruiting coordinator and the defensive coordinator.

"With these guys who have been with me for a while, it's important that I give back. When I was with the [Houston] Texans, Al Golden was leaving to go to Temple and coach [Al] Groh called me and told me, 'I want you to come back as defensive coordinator.' "

London wasn't sure about Virginia's 3-4 defense but Groh told him, "I won't let you fail."

After Groh's 2-9 season in 2009, he was replaced by London, who went 4-8 in his first season but took the Cavaliers to an 8-5 season and a Chick-fil-A Bowl spot in 2010. Four consecutive losing seasons after that led to the hiring of Bronco Mendenhall to replace him.

London took a position as assistant head coach at Maryland for the 2016 season, then moved nearby to Howard, where he was the head coach for two seasons before taking over at William and Mary in 2019.

After a so-so start, he's seen the Tribe go 14-6 over the past two seasons.

"This issue with my father has brought me back to why we do things, to be thankful and grateful and all that stuff,” London said.

David Braine laments the conference shake-ups and the commercialization of college athletics.

As the athletic director at Virginia Tech from 1988-97, David Braine was instrumental in helping the Hokies join the long sought-after Atlantic Coast Conference.

Who would think, some 25 years later, that the thrill would be gone, not necessarily for the ACC but for the college athletic landscape in general.

“I was shocked when I heard it,” Braine said of the announcement that Southern Cal and UCLA would be leaving the Pac-10 Conference to join the Big Ten.”Who would think that the Big-10 would go all the way to California?

“My feeling is that the face of college football has changed so much. We will never see college football again like we knew it back in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.

“It’s not going to be that way any more. Kids are getting paid now and coaches are making two and three and five and seven million dollars and it’s all about the money, period.”

So, how did it happen?

“It got out of hand and it only takes one or two schools to change that landscape. You try to keep up with the Joneses. It would be very interesting to know how many schools involved in all of these changes are really making money.

“I don’t know how they’re affording everything that they’re doing. I know the conference payouts are a whole lot more than they used to be. I go back to the time when, heck, I had to swallow hard when we started paying coaches a million dollars a year.

“That’s nothing. The coordinators are making that and more.”

On top of that, players can now make money through the NIL, which refers to an athletes’ ability to profit from use of their name, image or likeness.

“The portal came first,” said Braine, referring to the ease with which players changed schools. “Once the portal happened, kids had the opportunity to go where they wanted to go and without any penalty the first time.

“Now, with the NIL, they’re getting paid — at some schools more than others and it’s not like you and I used to know. It’s professional football in college.”

Is there a way to make it better?

“Not at all,” Braine said. “Maybe for the public, it might be better because what they do on the field might be better than it used to be. Still, these are kids. They still have to go to class. They’re there to get an education.

“There’s more pressure. They’re getting paid, so obviously a lot more is going to be demanded of then. To me, where I feel they suffer the most is the education. Colleges and universities were not built for football. It seems like that’s what it’s all about now.”

Basketball is no different. Braine heard Tech men’s basketball coach Mike Young speak Tuesday, when he said he will have eight new players this year.

Young, whose Hokies won the ACC championship this past winter, was quick to establish a bond with Braine, also an athletic director at Georgia Tech from 1996-2007, who lives in Blacksburg.

“It’s so easy, especially in basketball, to build a team overnight,” Braine said. “You don’t even have to recruit. You just go straight to the portal and get those kids.”

Braine, who turned 80 earlier in the month, follows the Tech programs intently.”That was my life for 22 years; he said. “You just don’t walk away. I’m following from afar. I’m just like any other guy out there now. I read the newspaper and listen to talk radio.”

Braine, originally from Grove City, Pa., played football at North Carolina and was an assistant coach at VMI, Richmond, Georgia Tech and UVa.

His first AD’s job was at Marshall from 1985-87 but he was a quick study at Tech.

“I stayed out of everybody’s hair,” he said. “When [Justin] Fuente was here as football coach, I wasn’t allowed to go to practice. So, for five years, I never went to football practice, but now that Brent [Pry] is here, I’ll start going back to practice.

“Mike Young, obviously, is a good friend. We’ve been good friends for a long time. I’ve really enjoyed watching how the program has gone.

” I think [athletic director] Whit Babcock has done a good job of hiring people. This past year probably has to be the best year in the history of Tech athletics.”

The Hokies won the ACC championship in men’s basketball, had standout seasons in softball, baseball, track and field, and wrestling and made numerous NCAA postseason appearances.

“I’m afraid it’s all going to change now,” Braine said. “God only knows how the Virginia Techs and schools like the Wake Forests and N.C. States are going to survive. I really don’t.”

Virginia Tech spent years trying to get into the ACC and, when it happened, it went smoothly in 2004. It was nothing like the current schools and athletes making changes around the clock.

Braine says two of the biggest things to happen to Virginia Tech were its selection to join in the Big East for all sports but football in 1987 and the performance of football star Michael Vick.

“Now that I’ve had a chance to think about it is, Notre Dame, obviously, is the next big stumbling block,” Braine said. “My feeling is, now that they’ve gone to California, what’s going to stop them from going to Florida. And, what’s going to stop them from going to North Carolina?

“Not that it’s going to stop ’em, but you take North Carolina and Miami and Florida State and Clemson into the Big Ten. Those schools are supposedly getting, if what you read is true, something around $100 million per year in TV revenue.”

“A hundred million dollars!”

“I thought [ACC commissioner] John Swofford was a genius when he tied up everybody through 2035, but if you joined the Big Ten and got a $100 million per year, you could buy your way out of any contract.”

Asked how he felt by a startled reporter, Braine seemed worried.

“Well, I am!” Braine said. “It isn’t finished. Whether Notre Dame will do anything or not, there’s money people out there a lot smarter than I am that are going to tell these schools, ‘Hey! If the Big Ten wants you, you’re going to be able to survive it. You’re going to be able to pay the $500 million because you’re going to get $100 million per year.’ “

“The alumni has got to come up with the money for the first five years, but, after that, you’re home free. But the whole deal is, the Big Ten now is on the West Coast. They cover the country now. Who are thy competing against? The SEC.

Do you want to get in their market? You’re going to have to go to get to Florida, Georgia, South Carolina in order to compete with them. I feel sorry for the schools like Virginia Tech and Virginia that have worked so hard to get where they are right now

“Through no fault of their own and nothing they can control, there’s a chance they could be left out in the cold and be a have-not again and they’re right back as a struggling entity. That might not happen and I hope it doesn’t happen.

“I hope people don’t read this and say ‘what the hell do you know,’ and so forth. But there’s so many schools out there. You think of Syracuse and Pitt, Iowa State, schools like that. Good schools academically. Good schools athletically. What are they going to do?”

It’s not the best of times.

“I wouldn’t want to be the commissioner of the ACC,” Braine said. “I don’t know Jim Phillips. Everything I hear about him is great. People say he’s smart and has an ace up his sleeve. I have no idea what the man can do to stop whatever is happening.”

That is, unless the ACC can wrap up Notre Dame for football.

“If they get Notre Dame, they’ve got it made,” Braine said. “Will they ever come to the ACC full-time? Hopefully, that would happen. I don’t know if it can or not. Just as an outsider, I don’t see how that can happen but stranger things have happened.

“That was a shock with UCLA and USC. I would have never bet on that. With that happening, other things could happen, too.”

DEBBIE RYAN'S THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF UVA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL

Debbie Ryan was around for the emergence of Virginia women's basketball and she'd be more than happy to witness its resurgence under newly named head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton.

Ryan was the Cavaliers' head coach from 1977 until 2011, at which point she had won 739 games, still good enough for 17th on the all-time Division I list.

On top of that, Virginia had won 11 regular-season ACC championships, with Ryan chosen as the ACC coach of the year on seven occasions.

Starting in 1989, the UVa women reached the Final Four in three straight seasons, getting as far as the championship game before falling to Stanford in overtime, 66-65, in 1992.

That team finished 32-2 and was on a 19-game winning streak prior to the title game.

Ryan would continue as UVa's coach until the 2010-11 season, when it was announced that she had retired and would be succeeded by Joanne Boyle, a former Duke player who had played abroad before serving as the head coach at Richmond and California.

Boyle resigned as UVa coach after the 2017-18 season in order to devote more time to her adopted daughter Ngoty. By that time, Carla Williams had succeeded Craig Littlepage as athletic director and landed one of the elite players in women's history, Tina Thompson, as the Cavaliers' new coach.

Thompson, previously an assistant at Texas, had four losing seasons at UVa -- one shuttered by Covid 19 -- and it was announced March 3 that she would be relieved of her duties. She was 42-66 over four years, going 5-22 this past season.

Meanwhile, the best women's basketball coach in program history was watching from a distance.

"There always were conversations back and forth but I was not a part of the search per se," said Ryan, who had a 34-year record of 739-324 and was named to the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 2012.

. "Carla and I have a great relationship, so we talk periodically about different things. I knew that she was talking to a broad range of people. She knew what she wanted and off she went. She moved pretty quickly."

Ryan attends or watches games on TV when her work for UVa health systems allows.

"It's been really fun for me because I meet or kind of know a lot of the people," she said in a recent interview. "I can really make a difference for a lot of people, including the investigators who need funding to continue their research."

So, basketball is on her back-burner? Not really.

""What I can't see [in real time] on either on TV or the Internet, I go back on the Internet and watch later," she said. " I've seen every single [UVa] game. I could coach the team.”

"That's not going to happen."

Ryan, who turns 70 in November, stays in touch with a group of former UVa players who have succeeded as college coaches -- Dawn Staley at South Carolina, Tammi Reiss at Rhode Island and Jenny Boucek, who coached the Seattle Storm of the WNBA and is an assistant to former UVa men's player Rick Carlisle with the Indiana Pacers.

"Dawn knew Amaka," Ryan said. "Dawn's really good with her relationships with other coaches, so she knows everybody. Dawn and I talked early on but we didn't talk about this particular selection.”

"Now that the Zoom generation has been born, we can Zoom and we can talk. We had a Zoom one night that lasted hours with players than went to three final fours. And that was just a hilarious.”

"I think Amaka will be welcomed and she will find out that our alumni will help her in any way she needs to be helped."

In her final season as UVa's coach, Ryan went 19-16 in 2010-11 and she left enough talented players that successor Boyle was 25-11 the next year.

Littlepage was the UVa athletic director at the time, with Jon Oliver as his top aide.

"I didn't really retire," Ryan said. "I just stopped coaching and I don't want to talk about that publically. I could write a book and I haven't started.”

"Craig was the one I dealt with. Jon was probably behind everything. I just don't know. I don't know how they operated. Especially in terms of me, I don't know."

A lengthy interview session would indicate that Ryan has moved past that. She's excited about the possibility of UVa women's basketball returning to its former heights.

"With Amaka, what I like about her is, she's humble," Ryan said. "She's not walking in and thinking, 'I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that.

" I think she's surveying the landscape and asking for help. All of us have to help her. We can't even imagine not helping her."

DOUGHTY ON SWIMMING

There was something unusual about the college swim meet conducted last week at the Christiansburg Aquatic Center, home to the Virginia Tech swim program.

It was the second year in a row that the Colonial Athletic Association, known as the CAA, has held its championship at the CAC.

William and Mary was the only team from Virginia in the meet.

It says a lot for the facilities in Christiansburg, where the Roanoke Valley Aquatic Association holds its summer championships.

One of those former RVAA swimmers, Patrick Henry High School graduate Brooke Knisely, is a sophomore at North Carolina-Wilmington.

She won the 500-yard freestyle on Wednesday night, then came back two days later to win the 1,650.

Her times in the 500 and 1,650 were UNCW records.

Other swimmers from southwestern Virginia include former Blacksburg High School teammates Julie Anderson, both swimming for William and Mary.

Cave Spring graduate Mills Harris is a sophomore on the William and Mary men's team. Micah Lowe, a William and Mary freshman, is a graduate of Faith Christian in Roanoke.

William and Mary won the women's meet and North Carolina-Wilmington took the men's title.

James Madison did not compete in the CAA swimming and diving championships this year because it is joining the Sun Belt Conference. The Dukes did participate in a November tri-meet in Wilmington, N.C., in which it defeated William and Mary, UNCW and Delaware, and William and Mary.

There was an eight-point spread between JMU and UNCW. Mills Harris' sister, Suzanne, swims for the Dukes.

MORE SWIMMING

Both the Washington and Lee men and women won the Old Dominion Athletic Conference championships by wide margins. The W&L women put up 957 points, compared to 544 for runner-up Randolph-Macon and the men outscored Roanoke College 933.5 to 743.5 for second-place.

The Generals have a commitment from one of the top girls' swimmers in the Roanoke Valley, Morgan Smith from Patrick Henry.

The defending National Champion, Virginia women’s swim team earned its third straight Atlantic Coast Conference Championship and 18th in program history toping NC State’s women 1418.5 to 1347. NC State’s men’s program won for the seventh time in eight years.

Freeman comes home

Not unlike the coaching trees that sprung from the likes of Virginia basketball coach Terry Holland and football coach George Welsh, there has been a succession of radio broadcasters with whom Cavalier fans quickly became comfortable.

For the past 13 years, Dave Koehn had served as the voice of the Cavaliers and it was something of a surprise when it was announced that he had taken a position as radio voice of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Within weeks, Virginia had come up with a successor, John Freeman, and while listeners might not have been familiar with him, Freeman knew all about UVa, having grown up in nearby Crozet.

"My parents were both alums," he said. "I went to UVa soccer, I went to UVa women's basketball, I went to UVa football games during the Anthony Poindexter era. I've been around it pretty much my whole life, other than a six-year sabbatical to Nashville to learn about broadcasting."

He had graduated from UVa in 2009 and interned with Dave Koehn. Before that, Freeman had interned with Mac McDonald while he was in high school.

"I started interning with Mac the second I could essentially drive," Freeman said. "I would cut his audio for the morning show and, for the games, I would go and sit behind him. When Dave [Koehn] came along, I certainly knew Dave and worked with him a lot."

Freeman left behind a number of UVa sports he covered in Charlottesville to join his wife, who was a nurse anesthetist.

"I didn't have a certain gig, to be honest," Freeman said.

He worked his way up in Nashville to the point where he called major-league soccer, two years of Tennessee State basketball and was close to landing the Belmont University basketball job.

"I got hired [by UVa] in the heart of the busiest season there is," said Freeman, whose wife, also a UVa graduate, will remain in Nashville until they can take a break. "I will be calling seven games in 11 days."

Not that he's complaining.

"I don't know how much [people] know about these jobs," Freeman said, "but they're pretty rare. Dave was here for 14 years and Mac [McDonald] was here for 20 something. Some guys are just now retiring at other schools and they've been there 45 years.”

"I was aware, if I didn't get this job -- and this was my dream since I was a kid -- I probably never would. By the time it opened up again, I didn't know if I would even be in broadcasting or if I would have been out of my prime."

He returned to Charlottesville twice for interviews.

"I was incredibly nervous," Freeman, who is in his early 30s, said. "I never felt like the front-runner. I don't know how many people are getting hired at 50. I didn't want to miss the opportunity. I've wanted it forever."

He remained in contact with McDonald, one of his mentors, throughout the process.

"He spent a couple of seasons [at Virginia] as my stat guy in the booth," McDonald said. "That's where he started. He's so good at everything he does. I told him, 'I'm going to turn you loose but give me something we don't have.'

"Somewhere, we started to work on play by play and we needed a back-up because we were diving heavier into spring sports. I took him to the ACC Tournament a couple of times and I let him do a game there, maybe one of the late games."

After Koehn's departure, Freeman had to take over UVa football on radio this year.

"He was just a natural and got really good," McDonald said. “When he had to fill in for four football games [following Koehn's departure], I couldn't believe how far he had come as a broadcaster."

McDonald teaches in Winter Park, Fla., where he is a instructor at the Dan Patrick School of Sportscasting.

"I work hard with these kids in understanding fundamentals," McDonald said. "John [Freeman] is just so far advanced. The game comes to him. I contacted a couple of people up there in Charlottesville and just said, 'Hey, you're not going to find anybody better, plus the fact that he is a Virginia guy.'

"He had to literally audition four consecutive weeks because they were in a bind and they needed somebody to do their football and, let me tell you, he was flawless."

Bowden's Legacy with the Cavaliers

Long before Florida State joined the ACC in 1990, then-Seminoles football coach Bobby Bowden had become aware of one of his future conference rivals.

Decades earlier, Bowden was the football coach at West Virginia when the Mountaineers played Virginia in 1972

Bowden, who died earlier this week at 91, was the Seminoles' head coach from 1976-2009.

Surprisingly, he was named ACC coach of the year only twice despite such accomplishments as opening conference play with 29 straight wins, posting a record 173 conference victories, winning or sharing twelve ACC championships and national championships in 1993 and 1999.

Four separate Virginia head coaches -- George Welsh, Al Groh, Mike London and Bronco Mendenhall -- have beaten Florida State once in ACC play. Nobody from UVa has done it twice.

Most would say UVa's biggest win in the series was in 1995, when a Cavaliers team led by George Welsh upset then-No. 2 Florida State 33-28 in Charlottesville.

As a coach Groh's only victory over FSU was in 2005 in Charlottesville.

"It was the same year that they had the anniversary of the '95 game," Groh said in a phone interview this week. "It was kind of ironic that both those wins in Charlottesville occurred with that same team in place, one time as participants and another time as honorees."

Groh's son, Mike, was the UVa quarterback in the 1995 game UVa-FSU game.

Groh, who watched the 1995 game on television still remembers Bowden’s response to his son’s play. "Coach Bowden, in his usual manner, was very gracious at midfield, talking about it and what a fantastic game he played.

"Then, he said, 'We've had quarterbacks play as well against us as your quarterback did but never for a whole game before."

---

In early 1970, after Groh had spent two years at West Point, coaching the Plebe team as a second lieutenant, he was looking for a civilian job. There was an opening at West Virginia as a freshman coach. although freshmen were not eligible at the time.

There was no opening and Groh did not have any communication with Bowden until the ACC meetings in 2001, Groh's first year as UVa coach.

"He immediately came up to me and said, 'You're here because I made a mistake,'" Groh recalls. "He said, 'If I had hired you back then, you probably wouldn't be here coaching against me.

"From that point on, although we had never really spoken in great depth, that created a little bit of a connection."

---

What about Bowden struck Groh the most?

"His graciousness," Groh said. "Whether it was his players, opposing coaches or whatever, everybody appreciated his integrity and honesty the most."

Alaskan grandma faces the Appalachians

Nothing could have been more breathtaking than the view of Sharp Top and Round Top on a recent April morning.

It was worth a stop on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where a story was unfolding that easily could have been missed.

Willing to share her tale was Elizabeth Pearch, a 56-year-old grandmother from Eagle River, Alaska who was hiking the Appalachian Trail.

She had taken a break to adjust her equipment at the Taylor Mountain overlook, where the elevation on the east side is 2,340 feet, high enough to view the Peaks of Otter to the east in nearby Bedford County.

Her trek had started in the fall, when she flew across the country from Alaska to Raleigh, N.C., where her daughter, Josie, lives.

Josie subsequently joined her mom and they hope to arrive in Waynesboro in the near future.

After that, mom Elizabeth has plans to hike the remainder of the way to Maine.

"Southern Virginia is no joke," said Elizabeth, whose voice was muffled by Taylor Mountain's whirling wind during an impromptu interview. "There are a lot of 4,000-[foot] peaks there. It's kind of nice being in central Virginia."

She had started out in March at Massie Gap in Grayson County.

"When I first started out, I was lucky to go four miles a day," continued Pearch, who says she was 100 pounds overweight when she started her journey and subsequently has lost 20 pounds. "Now, I can do between eight and 11 miles [a day]. I'm really progressing well."

Her biggest challenge was Sinking Creek Mountain in Craig County.

"I was on the ledges of the eastern Continental Divide," she said. "It was just rocks on a 45-degree angle".

The temperature was 85.

" It was so hot ," she said, "and I was thinking, 'Why am I doing this?' I'm a grandmother. I have children and grandchildren. Why am I risking my life? I have no business being here.'

"And then, coming down the back side of Dragon's Tooth, I thought, 'Surely, this is where they're going to find my body … at the bottom of these rocks.' "

Dragon's Tooth is a 4.1-mile trail near Catawba in Virginia's Craig County.

"Coming off of Dragon's Tooth is the hardest thing -- beside childbirth -- that I've ever done physically,"Pearch said. "It's surprising how really hard that it is,"

There were comparable challenges ahead in Three Ridges and Priest, two peaks listed at 4,000 feet or more in Nelson County to the east of Waynesboro.

"Three Ridges was pretty hard, really hard actually," she said. "When you get to Chimney Rock, which is sort of a landmark on the way up, it's sort of a 30-foot, hand-over-fist rock scramble."

That was a surprise?:

On a typical day, Pearch starts hiking between 7:30 and 9 a.m. and finishes between 5-6 p.m. to set up camp and relax before going to sleep around 8 p.m.

Somewhat unexpectedly, she returned to family in Raleigh at one point but it wasn't long before she was back on the trail and is expected to reach Waynesboro any day now.

Elizabeth had hiked 340 miles to this point, with the goal of losing a total of 100 pounds by the time she reaches Maine. Her hopes are to get to Maine by mid-August.

"My [mission] is to be an example of what is possible," she said.

Her husband, Bill, has not been physically involved in the hikes but has found a way to furnish his wife with 50 some made-to-order meals.

"He is very much a champion," said Elizabeth, who has hiked with her husband in Alaska.

Elizabeth Pearch, has 500 subscribers on her YouTube site and describes herself as "an adventurer, life coach, manual therapist, competition shooter, grandmommy, and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I teach people how to figure out what's holding them back from getting everything they want."

"I'm not sure who I'm going to be at the end of this," continued Pearch, whose trail name is Spun Candy. "There's the fun of it, but I'll certainly be someone different. I'll be totally remade. I'm really going to know who I am.

"I've met tons of people, great people like trail angels who would cover my pack six miles down a mountain. I fell on my face a couple of times and almost cracked my head open, so there's a lot of drama. I think they appreciate a women who's not some fitness superstar and gives them hope."

Botetourt native recalls trek on the Appalachian Trail, now ‘mushing’ for fun in Alaska

When word started circulating about an Alaskan grandmother who was hiking the Appalachian Trail, Melissa DeVaughn was flooded with memories.

DeVaughn. who grew up in Virginia, now lives in Eagle River, Alaska in the same Anchorage suburb as 56-year-old Elizabeth Pearch.

Pearch has been treading the same path that DeVaughn took in 1993, when she took a leave of absence from the Roanoke Times and subsequently wrote a six-part series on her Appalachian Trail experience.

DeVaughn, who was born in Baltimore, moved to Botetourt County when she was five.

"We moved there in 1973," she said. "My dad had fallen in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains and always wanted to live in Virginia. My mom still lives in the house where we grew up in Rainbow Forest.

""I went to Colonial Elementary, where my mom also taught second and then fourth grade. When I got to middle school at Botetourt Intermediate, it felt like the school was on the other end of the earth."

DeVaughn, who lived in Montgomery County as an adult, graduated from Lord Botetourt High School before heading to Virginia Tech, where she was an English major and 1990 graduate.

She subsequently took a job at the Roanoke Times' New River Valley Bureau, where one of her bosses was Michael Stowe, with whom she recently reconnected.

It was Stowe who had heard about the tale of Pearch's plans to hike to Maine and thought that DeVaughn might be interested in the story.

DeVaughn remembers that she began the Appalachian Trail on March 18, 1993 in Georgia, not long after the "blizzard of the century," as she recalls it.

"I got a horrible flu and was literally delirious in Hot Springs, N.C." said DeVaughn, who has few memories of those two days spent recovering other than losing one of her toenails.

Her sojourn, on which she was accompanied by her dog, Ruby, ended atop Mount Katahdin in Maine, on Sept. 11, 1993. Maine was a particularly beautiful section filled with meandering, rolling hills that passed numerous kettle ponds. It was there she finally hiked her first “30,” a 34-miles dayin a section of trail called the Hundred Mile Wilderness.

"Our trail names were Chaos and Order," DeVaughn said. " I was Chaos and Ruby was Order (and appropriately so)."

In April 1994, Ruby was killed when she was struck by a car in Christiansburg.

"I was just sort of shattered," DeVaughn writes. "I was young, and my dog was my kid. I have better perspective now, but at the time, it was devastating after experiencing the AT together.."

Although she had never been to Alaska, she was drawn to that part of the country.

"My dad had been stationed in Thule, Greenland, when he was in the Air Force, and had shared photos of all the snow and remoteness of that wild place," DeVaughn recently wrote. "It stuck with me and that’s when I started thinking about Alaska.

"I'm not sure what made me go through with it but I decided to see if I could get a job in Alaska, earn some money then go down to the California/Mexico border and start the PCT [Pacific Crest Trail] a few years later. I figured, once I was done, I'd return back to Virginia and figure it out from there."

So much for that. She pursued jobs at smaller papers in the Anchorage area and settled for the Peninsula Clarion, a publiication in Kenai, three hours south of near Anchorage.

"I loved the job at the Clarion and was always busy," said Melissa, who lived in a 400-square-foot cabin on a bluff overlooking the ocean.

Not long after that, she met a fellow journalist, Andy Hall, a native Alaskan who previously had been the editor of the newspaper in Kodiak, Alaska. When he took an editor's job at the Clarion, their desks faced each others.

They were married 1 year and four months four months later in Floyd County before Andy took over as editor and then publisher of Alaska Magazine. Their son, Roan, was born in 1998. A daughter, Reilly, followed in 2001.

Mom and dad eventually turned to the salmon fishing business and have been out of the newspaper business for more than a decade. In her days at Lord Botetourt, Melissa thrived as an athlete, running track and playing volleyball for coaches whose names she can quickly reel off to this day

Now, she is in her 10th year as head coach of track and field at Chugiak High School, where she also coaches cross country. Her athletes refer to her as coach Hall.

Hardly to anyone's surprise, she also managed a dog sled team.

"Ha ha," she writes. "I was what we call a recreational musher (there are many of us!) as opposed to professional mushers who do things like running the Iditarod. I like to run dogs for the joy of it, not to race or anything."

In her world, there's always another mountain to climb.

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