A2 Monday, January 7, 2019 • richMond TiMes-dispaTch

Richmond Oddities Shirt — Iron DogThe iron dog used to stand in front of a general store on Broad

Street. Every day, a little girl would walk by and hug the dog.The little girl died of scarlet fever and was buried at Hollywood

Cemetery. After her death, the iron dog was moved to her grave.Because there was an iron shortage during the Civil War, the ownersdidn’t want the dog to be melted down to make ammunition. Ever

since, stories have circulated that the dog protects the little girl andmoves around on the gravesite, that his eyes follow visitors, and that

wild barks are heard late at night.

$30 — Makes a great gift.More oddity designs available.

Shop today atRichmond.com/Oddities

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virginialotteriesSUNDAY, JAN. 6

Day Pick 3: 0-9-6

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Day Cash 5: 8-17-22-30-33

Night Pick 3: 7-2-1

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There was no jackpot-winning ticket in sat-urday’s $69 million multistate powerballdrawing. Wednesday’s estimated jackpot is$82 million.

LocaL PersPectivespersonalitiesWhen Anderson Cooper first met Sean Pennafter the 2010 earthquake in haiti, the cnn anchorwas initially skeptical of the actor’s intentions tohelp the recovery efforts in the ravaged country. intime, penn won cooper over.

“i’m not sure how sean got toport-au-prince, haiti. it cer-tainly was not easy. i’m notsure how much of a plan hehad when he got there. But hedidn’t just come by himself, hecame with a team,” cooper saidsaturday night at penn’s ninthannual benefit for the J/p hai-tian relief organization.

The fundraiser raised $3.5 million at the WilternTheater in Los angeles.

even though cooper was being honored, heheaped praise on penn and his nonprofit group.

“sean came with supplies, he stayed long aftermost of us had moved on,” cooper added. “seanstayed, listened and he learned.”

penn praised cooper’s “aggressiveness to tell thetruth in reporting the news.” The actor has hostedthe fundraiser for J/p hro on the eve of the GoldenGlobes since he established the charity in 2010.

Larry David, Casey Affleck, Sarah Silver-man, Jimmy Kimmel, Ben Stiller and GarcelleBeauvais were among the guests. Musical per-formances were by Macy Gray, Billie Eilish andYusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) as the headliner.

The event honored san Juan Mayor Carmen YulinCruz and ambassador Kenneth Merten. ThePoint Dume Bombers, who stayed up all night tohelp save their Malibu neighborhood from the wild-fires that scorched the area, were also recognized.

v v va $750 million defamation lawsuit filed againstcBs by the brother of JonBenet Ramsey hasbeen settled.

The daily camera reports court records show thata Michigan circuit court judge on Wednesdaydismissed the lawsuit filed by Burke Ramsey indecember 2016. The terms of the settlement havenot been disclosed.

The lawsuit said Burke ramsey’s reputation wasruined after a television series suggested he killedhis 6-year-old sister more than two decades ago.an attorney for cBs declined to comment.

The beauty pageant star was found dead in thebasement of her family’s home in Boulder, colo., indecember 1996. a prosecutor cleared her parentsand brother.

— The Associated Press

Cooper

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LAWRENCEVILLE — AsSaint Paul’s Collegestruggled financially and

seemed likely to cease opera-tions, Bobby Conner got tothinking: “What is going tohappen to the history of thecollege if it closed?”

Good question.Conner, a Brunswick

County resident who appreci-ates history, began talking tocollege officials in early 2012.As soon as the college shutdown in June 2013, he wentto Millard “Pete” Stith, theschool’s last president, anddiscussed gathering — beforeit was too late — important re-cords and other artifacts thatcould tell the story of the his-torically black college that formore than a century had beensuch a big part of the countyand the town of Lawrenceville.

No one else had volun-teered to take on the task— some people and institu-tions wanted bits and pieces,Stith said, but no one exceptConner was willing to col-lect everything. So Stith gotpermission from the school’sboard of trustees and toldConner to go for it.

Conner, who at the timewas helping to manage acountry store and workingpart time in the county’s tour-ism office, started making reg-ular trips to the campus in hisspare time, going from build-ing to building, office to of-fice, file cabinet to file cabinet,looking in closets and attics,retrieving papers and photo-graphs, ledger books and art-work, just about anything hethought might be of historicalsignificance: even a basketballbanner hanging in the gym’srafters.

He packed most everythingin his Dodge Neon and madenumerous trips — “lots oftrips,” he said — and stashedeverything above the county’stourism office.

“It just concerned me,”Conner said of the idea thatno one was archiving the col-lege’s history or the story of itsfounder, the Rev. James Solo-mon Russell, now a saint inthe Episcopal Church. “Youhave to go back to the his-tory of this man: born intoslavery, educated, became apriest, came here and starteda school in a white Southerntown, got along with every-body. When you pull all thattogether, it would have been ahuge loss to us to lose that.”

In 2015, when the collegewas taken over by Pension

Benefit Guaranty Corp. tocover unpaid pension obli-gations, Conner’s access tocampus buildings ended. Hisinitial effort was simply to geteverything of importance outof harm’s way, but then his at-tention turned to what to donext. The answer? A museum.

He pulled together ateam of community volun-teers, including Saint Paul’salumni, to form a nonprofitorganization. Cataloging ofthe artifacts began, and theBrunswick Board of Supervi-sors made available a vacantbank building on Main Streetin Lawrenceville. The JamesSolomon Russell-Saint Paul’sCollege Museum and Archivesopened its doors in the spring.A new website goes live thisweek.

The small museum con-tains several rooms of arti-facts, including pieces relatedto Russell, such as chairs anda lectern from his earliestchurch and a bust of Russellthat was a gift to the college bya class in the 1930s. But muchof what Conner rescued re-mains in boxes and storage,out of public view. So the mu-seum will be moving to largerquarters later this winter orspring, into the college’s for-mer student center that is nowthe Brunswick County Confer-ence Center.

“We’ve utilized all thisspace; it’s time for us to grow,”said James Grimstead, chair-man of the museum.

Charlette T. Woolridge, thecounty administrator, said themuseum’s move into the con-ference center is “a perfect fit.The museum is a major partof Brunswick County’s historyand will be a vital tourist at-traction for Saint Paul’s Col-lege alumni and visitors to theCounty.”

Stith said the preservationof the college’s story — andparticularly Russell’s role inits founding — is “very impor-tant.” He praised Conner fortaking the initiative.

“Bobby has really done ayeoman’s job,” Stith said. “Nomatter how the school turnsout in its next life, there will besome legacy there.”

The campus was sold in late2017 to Xinhua Education In-vestment Corp. A filing withthe State Corporation Com-mission lists David Z. Lu asits registered agent with anaddress in Vienna in FairfaxCounty. The company hasn’tsaid publicly what it intendsto do with the campus, and Ludid not respond to a requestfor comment.

Meantime, the museumpresses on.

Conner and Grimstead,along with fellow museumboard members Teya White-head, Regina Gordon and Syl-via Allen, led me on a tour ofthe museum and told me thestory of Russell, who led a re-markable life.

Russell was born into slav-ery in Mecklenburg County,four years before the begin-ning of the Civil War, living hisearly years with his mother.His parents were forced to liveand work on separate plan-tations. Education became acornerstone of his life early on.

Despite financial hardships,he established himself as ateacher in the black commu-nity even before attending hisdream school, Hampton In-stitute, and later became thefirst student at what would be-come Bishop Payne DivinitySchool in Petersburg, an Epis-copal seminary for blacks.

He began his ministry inLawrenceville, helped to es-tablish a series of churchesand schools in the region and,seeing a need for educationalopportunities for blacks be-yond one-room schoolhouses,founded Saint Paul Normaland Industrial School in 1888.

There, students studiedtraditional academic courses— the school supplied much-needed teachers to surround-ing areas — and also receivedhands-on training in trades.The school continued to ex-pand and by 1917 consisted ofstudents from 20 states as wellas from the Caribbean and Af-rica, according to Encyclope-dia Virginia, and was much indemand.

In his research through the

college archives, Conner cameacross letters from parentsbegging Russell to enroll theirchildren, as such opportuni-ties were rare for many blackfamilies.

“Some of them were heart-breaking,” Conner said. “Par-ents would write, ‘I don’t haveany money, but I’ll come workfor you.’ They knew what thisman was trying to do. It wasa chance for their children toget an education.”

The well-traveled Russellraised funds for the schoolfrom famous benefactors suchas J.P. Morgan, Julius Rosen-wald and John D. Rockefeller.Russell retired from the schoolin 1929, having groomed hisson to take over. Russell diedin 1935, and Saint Paul’s be-came an accredited four-yearcollege in the 1940s.

Despite his achievements,Russell is largely underap-preciated, said Grimstead, a1958 graduate of James Solo-mon Russell High, the schoolfor blacks during segregation,though he didn’t grasp thefull scope of Russell’s accom-plishments until years laterafter moving to New Jerseyand reading about him in anEpiscopal Church newsletter.He hopes the museum willhelp tell Russell’s story to newgenerations.

The museum also pro-vides a sort of home base foralumni, who have little else toconnect them to Lawrencev-ille now that the college isclosed.

“This is Saint Paul’s rightnow,” said Whitehead, secre-tary of the museum board anda 1998 graduate.”If we didn’thave this, [Russell’s] legacywould be gone. This museum— to the alumni, to the com-munity — is everything.”

Said Gordon — the board’streasurer and a Saint Paul’salumna with a degree in busi-ness administration whosefather and sister also gradu-ated from the college — “Peo-ple come in here and get veryemotional.”

wlohmann@timesdispatch.com(804) 649-6639

‘It’s time ... to grow’:Museum tells historyof Saint Paul’s College

Bill lohmAnn/Times-disPATch

Bobby Conner (left) and James Grimstead are on the board of theJames Solomon Russell-Saint Paul’s College Museum and Archives.

Bill Lohmannwlohmann@TimesDispatch.com

YOURRIGHTTO KNOWYOURRIGHTTO KNOW ! A tobacco store at 5200 Brook Road seeks

the authority to sell alcoholic beverages. E19! Henrico’s Board of Zoning Appeals has a

hearing scheduled for Jan. 24. B5

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E19-E20