During the holidays many will glance back on birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and other occasions that made 2023 unique. But also at New Year’s, bearded old Father Time (Cronus to ancient Greeks) reminds us of friends and relatives who died during the past 12 months.
Our broader family, however, the Richmond community, has also felt the loss of many impressive folks whose example and deeds will continue to affect us. Their primary marks may have been made recently, or perhaps decades ago, but the fruits of their work live on. You may have your own mental list of thank-you notes that it’s not too late to compose; here’s mine:
(Editor’s note: Capsule bios to those who died from June to December 2023 will be published next week)
A leading light at the Medical College of Virginia and VCU Health since 1983, Marc Philip Posner, M.D., passed away Jan. 11 at 73. Working with his esteemed colleague Dr. H. M. Lee, Posner established a trail-blazing kidney, liver and pancreas transplant program here. The New York City native, who was skilled in teaching, writing and delivering patient care, kicked back as a jazz pianist and scuba diver.
Joseph M. Ruffin Jr., a scion of the family that established Ruffin & Payne, a well-respected and legacy lumber and wood products business, died Jan. 23. The Roanoke native was 82. After Thomas Jefferson High School and Hampden-Sydney College, he joined the family business, long located near Highland Park, and worked his way from the bottom, as they say, to chairman. He was a staunch supporter of the Richmond Braves and Richmond “rockin” Robins ice hockey teams.
William L. Prentiss Jr. could – and did – strike up the band. Both locally and statewide, the Richmond native and Norfolk State University graduate directed and guided thousands of Richmond-area music students for 27 years. He died Jan. 27 at 58. He conducted the Meadowbrook and Huguenot High School bands, the latter of which was the first Richmond public school group to be named a Virginia Honor Band. He also made music at Virginia Union University as a band director and adjunct professor.
Karl E. Bren, a Lebanon, Tennessee, native and Virginia Tech graduate, died Feb. 11 at 78. He settled in Richmond in 1982 to work for Virginia Housing, a state development authority. For 37 years Bren was an invaluable leader and team player in numerous additional leading housing initiatives here. The Vietnam War veteran was a co-founder of the Better Housing Coalition, one of Richmond’s premiere housing and development management operations. Bren was nothing if not passionate that housing design and construction include and maintain environmental integrity.
Few may know that during the 1960s the stretch of Interstate 64 between Richmond and Charlottesville was completed years before the highway linked Richmond with Hampton Roads. Apparently state legislators wanted to zip to the University of Virginia more quickly for men’s basketball games. Few names at UVA are more affectionately associated with the sport than Terry Holland. He was head coach from 1974-1990 (and the winningest up to that time). The Clinton, North Carolina-born and Davidson College athlete and grad died Feb. 26 at age 80. His glorious run included recruiting Ralph Sampson, the nation’s top-ranked high school player, to the Cavaliers, and leading his team to two Final Four NCAA tournament appearances – in 1981 and 1984.
George N. Nan Jr. was one of the most influential photographers in our city’s history and a major contributor to the VCU School of the Arts’s rise to national renown. He died March 8 at 88. The Detroit-born and first-generation son of Romanian immigrants studied his craft at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Institute of Technology/Chicago Institute of Design. His mentors included Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, both renowned internationally for groundbreaking art photography. Nan arrived here in 1963 to teach at Richmond Professional Institute (now VCU) where he taught thousands of students over about a 30-year tenure. His own works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Suffolk-born Rev. Clifford B. Chambliss Jr. believed that the best social program was gainful employment. The pastor of Henrico County’s Springfield Baptist Church died March 9 at 81. He was a force in establishing the Richmond Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC). This leading regional employment assistance program bolstered many individuals into successful careers. A graduate of Shaw University and Virginia Union University, Chambliss also served as an adviser to three Virginia governors: A. Linwood Holton, Gerald L. Baliles and L. Douglas Wilder. And as a keen environmentalist, he regularly organized neighborhood cleanups.
Our town could use more leaders with the smarts, openness, foresight and spunk of Betty Ann Dillon. The Arkansas native and Westhampton College (University of Richmond) grad died March 11 at 93. And was she ever loyal to her alma mater? Dillon served in countless volunteer efforts that furthered the school’s programs. A psychologist by profession, Dillon worked in the corrections system for much of her career and for almost half a century volunteered at the Shepherd’s Center that offers lifelong learning programs to seniors. Her funeral was held in the Cannon Memorial Chapel at UR.
Richmond has too few records stores and book shops. But one that stood out for 18 years was BK Music in the Stratford Hills Shopping Center. William F. “Bill” Kennedy, who co-established the operation in 2001, died March 14 at 70. Bill, a Massachusetts-born, U.S. Army Vietnam veteran whose record retailing (alongside his wife, Gina Kennedy) extended until 2019, proved that small businesses are critical to the life and energy of a neighborhood and region.
Mary Lee Link Allen, a Richmond historian and preservationist, focused her considerable energies on Gunston Hall, the Fairfax County home of George Mason, a patriot and in 1775 the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Allen died at age 95 on March 18. A Charleston, West Virginia, native, her former husband was the last remaining founder of the venerable Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen law firm. During her long life she tackled a number of interesting jobs, such as being a cigarette taster for Philip Morris. After receiving an art history master’s degree from VCU, she was instrumental in saving from demolition the old First Baptist Church on East Broad Street (it is now Hunton Hall, a student center on the VCU medical campus). “She had a lifelong gift of entering a room and dazzling everyone,” is how she was eulogized.
A pioneer in local advertising and marketing, Ralph L. Dombrower died May 3 at 99. After Thomas Jefferson High School, the University of Virginia and serving in Air Force intelligence during World War II, he worked briefly as an inventor. Eventually, he took the reins of Dombrower Advertising, an operation his father had founded. This was one of the city’s first ad agencies to specialize in mail-order advertising. As a 1942 TeeJay alumnus, Dombrower created the Nostalgia Bowl. This annual football game was held at City Stadium for many years and pitted rival grads from TeeJay and John Marshall (for many years Richmond’s two white high schools).
The Richmond area takes considerable pride in one of its Fortune 500 companies, Owens & Minor, Inc., a healthcare supply business with 20,000 employees in 70 countries and revenue last year of $10.2 billion. Its chairman emeritus and a descendant of the man who founded the company in 1882, G. Gilmer Minor III, died May 4 at 82. He had retired from active duty at the company in 2013. In addition to building the business, Minor was a major player in educational- and health-related initiatives statewide as a member of the Virginia State Council of Higher Education, the Virginia Health Care Foundation, and the VCU Massey Cancer Center. The Virginia Military Institute graduate was a lifetime athlete since his days as a co-captain of his alma mater’s football and baseball teams (he also played rugby as a graduate student at UVa’s Darden School of Business).
Carol Androski Piersol, a giant in the annals of late 20th- and early 21st-century Richmond theater, and a human being with limitless kindness, imagination and generosity, died May 9 at 71. She was the founding artistic director of two contemporary companies, the Firehouse Theatre Project and the 5th Wall Theatre. Both continue to present productions of cutting-edge American work. Recently, the stage at the Firehouse theater on West Broad Street was named for her.
Brenton S. Halsey Sr. died May 28 at 96. The Newport News native and Richmond civic leader par excellence set an unrivaled high bar in combining intelligent and profitable corporate leadership with broad and imaginative community engagement. In 1969 the Korean War veteran co-founded the Richmond-based James River Corp. (its products would include Dixie Cups, Brawny paper towels and Quilted Northern bathroom tissue). Sales reached $5.8 billion during Halsey’s tenure. But equally impressive was his laserlike focus on the historic preservation and environmental reclamation of the city’s downtown riverfront. He has been justly dubbed “the father” of the James River Park system. The footbridge linking the end of South Fifth Street with Brown’s Island bears his name.
During the holidays many will glance back on birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and other occasions that made 2023 unique. But also at New Year’s, bearded old Father Time (Cronus to ancient Greeks) reminds us of friends and relatives who died during the past 12 months.
Our broader family, however, the Richmond community, has also felt the loss of many impressive folks whose example and deeds will continue to affect us. Their primary marks may have been made recently, or perhaps decades ago, but the fruits of their work live on. You may have your own mental list of thank-you notes that it’s not too late to compose; here’s mine:
(Editor’s note: Capsule bios to those who died from June to December 2023 will be published next week)
A leading light at the Medical College of Virginia and VCU Health since 1983, Marc Philip Posner, M.D., passed away Jan. 11 at 73. Working with his esteemed colleague Dr. H. M. Lee, Posner established a trail-blazing kidney, liver and pancreas transplant program here. The New York City native, who was skilled in teaching, writing and delivering patient care, kicked back as a jazz pianist and scuba diver.
Joseph M. Ruffin Jr., a scion of the family that established Ruffin & Payne, a well-respected and legacy lumber and wood products business, died Jan. 23. The Roanoke native was 82. After Thomas Jefferson High School and Hampden-Sydney College, he joined the family business, long located near Highland Park, and worked his way from the bottom, as they say, to chairman. He was a staunch supporter of the Richmond Braves and Richmond “rockin” Robins ice hockey teams.
William L. Prentiss Jr. could – and did – strike up the band. Both locally and statewide, the Richmond native and Norfolk State University graduate directed and guided thousands of Richmond-area music students for 27 years. He died Jan. 27 at 58. He conducted the Meadowbrook and Huguenot High School bands, the latter of which was the first Richmond public school group to be named a Virginia Honor Band. He also made music at Virginia Union University as a band director and adjunct professor.
Karl E. Bren, a Lebanon, Tennessee, native and Virginia Tech graduate, died Feb. 11 at 78. He settled in Richmond in 1982 to work for Virginia Housing, a state development authority. For 37 years Bren was an invaluable leader and team player in numerous additional leading housing initiatives here. The Vietnam War veteran was a co-founder of the Better Housing Coalition, one of Richmond’s premiere housing and development management operations. Bren was nothing if not passionate that housing design and construction include and maintain environmental integrity.
Few may know that during the 1960s the stretch of Interstate 64 between Richmond and Charlottesville was completed years before the highway linked Richmond with Hampton Roads. Apparently state legislators wanted to zip to the University of Virginia more quickly for men’s basketball games. Few names at UVA are more affectionately associated with the sport than Terry Holland. He was head coach from 1974-1990 (and the winningest up to that time). The Clinton, North Carolina-born and Davidson College athlete and grad died Feb. 26 at age 80. His glorious run included recruiting Ralph Sampson, the nation’s top-ranked high school player, to the Cavaliers, and leading his team to two Final Four NCAA tournament appearances – in 1981 and 1984.
George N. Nan Jr. was one of the most influential photographers in our city’s history and a major contributor to the VCU School of the Arts’s rise to national renown. He died March 8 at 88. The Detroit-born and first-generation son of Romanian immigrants studied his craft at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Institute of Technology/Chicago Institute of Design. His mentors included Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, both renowned internationally for groundbreaking art photography. Nan arrived here in 1963 to teach at Richmond Professional Institute (now VCU) where he taught thousands of students over about a 30-year tenure. His own works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Suffolk-born Rev. Clifford B. Chambliss Jr. believed that the best social program was gainful employment. The pastor of Henrico County’s Springfield Baptist Church died March 9 at 81. He was a force in establishing the Richmond Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC). This leading regional employment assistance program bolstered many individuals into successful careers. A graduate of Shaw University and Virginia Union University, Chambliss also served as an adviser to three Virginia governors: A. Linwood Holton, Gerald L. Baliles and L. Douglas Wilder. And as a keen environmentalist, he regularly organized neighborhood cleanups.
Our town could use more leaders with the smarts, openness, foresight and spunk of Betty Ann Dillon. The Arkansas native and Westhampton College (University of Richmond) grad died March 11 at 93. And was she ever loyal to her alma mater? Dillon served in countless volunteer efforts that furthered the school’s programs. A psychologist by profession, Dillon worked in the corrections system for much of her career and for almost half a century volunteered at the Shepherd’s Center that offers lifelong learning programs to seniors. Her funeral was held in the Cannon Memorial Chapel at UR.
Richmond has too few records stores and book shops. But one that stood out for 18 years was BK Music in the Stratford Hills Shopping Center. William F. “Bill” Kennedy, who co-established the operation in 2001, died March 14 at 70. Bill, a Massachusetts-born, U.S. Army Vietnam veteran whose record retailing (alongside his wife, Gina Kennedy) extended until 2019, proved that small businesses are critical to the life and energy of a neighborhood and region.
Mary Lee Link Allen, a Richmond historian and preservationist, focused her considerable energies on Gunston Hall, the Fairfax County home of George Mason, a patriot and in 1775 the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Allen died at age 95 on March 18. A Charleston, West Virginia, native, her former husband was the last remaining founder of the venerable Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen law firm. During her long life she tackled a number of interesting jobs, such as being a cigarette taster for Philip Morris. After receiving an art history master’s degree from VCU, she was instrumental in saving from demolition the old First Baptist Church on East Broad Street (it is now Hunton Hall, a student center on the VCU medical campus). “She had a lifelong gift of entering a room and dazzling everyone,” is how she was eulogized.
A pioneer in local advertising and marketing, Ralph L. Dombrower died May 3 at 99. After Thomas Jefferson High School, the University of Virginia and serving in Air Force intelligence during World War II, he worked briefly as an inventor. Eventually, he took the reins of Dombrower Advertising, an operation his father had founded. This was one of the city’s first ad agencies to specialize in mail-order advertising. As a 1942 TeeJay alumnus, Dombrower created the Nostalgia Bowl. This annual football game was held at City Stadium for many years and pitted rival grads from TeeJay and John Marshall (for many years Richmond’s two white high schools).
The Richmond area takes considerable pride in one of its Fortune 500 companies, Owens & Minor, Inc., a healthcare supply business with 20,000 employees in 70 countries and revenue last year of $10.2 billion. Its chairman emeritus and a descendant of the man who founded the company in 1882, G. Gilmer Minor III, died May 4 at 82. He had retired from active duty at the company in 2013. In addition to building the business, Minor was a major player in educational- and health-related initiatives statewide as a member of the Virginia State Council of Higher Education, the Virginia Health Care Foundation, and the VCU Massey Cancer Center. The Virginia Military Institute graduate was a lifetime athlete since his days as a co-captain of his alma mater’s football and baseball teams (he also played rugby as a graduate student at UVa’s Darden School of Business).
Carol Androski Piersol, a giant in the annals of late 20th- and early 21st-century Richmond theater, and a human being with limitless kindness, imagination and generosity, died May 9 at 71. She was the founding artistic director of two contemporary companies, the Firehouse Theatre Project and the 5th Wall Theatre. Both continue to present productions of cutting-edge American work. Recently, the stage at the Firehouse theater on West Broad Street was named for her.
Brenton S. Halsey Sr. died May 28 at 96. The Newport News native and Richmond civic leader par excellence set an unrivaled high bar in combining intelligent and profitable corporate leadership with broad and imaginative community engagement. In 1969 the Korean War veteran co-founded the Richmond-based James River Corp. (its products would include Dixie Cups, Brawny paper towels and Quilted Northern bathroom tissue). Sales reached $5.8 billion during Halsey’s tenure. But equally impressive was his laserlike focus on the historic preservation and environmental reclamation of the city’s downtown riverfront. He has been justly dubbed “the father” of the James River Park system. The footbridge linking the end of South Fifth Street with Brown’s Island bears his name.
That’s a nice tribute Ed. I somehow missed Carol Piersol’s passing while in Colorado. She was a terrific lady. Her husband, Marty, served the Governors School as their theatre director, I believe, and was (is?) a terrific actor.
Oops! Her husband is Morrie, not Marty!
Bruce, you forgot, Morrie worked at Harrison & Bates for a while.
I didn’t forget, but his short stint with us wasn’t relevant to his and Carol’s contributions to local theatre.
Karl Bren was one of the most generous and kind people I have ever known. He was a true leader in housing innovation. He understood that passion and compassion go together and one without the other doesn’t amount to a whole lot.