VIRGINIA BEACH The stores and restaurants are great, but something has to be done about the roads.

NORFOLK The little girl in the picture is now grown up, with a poignant story to tell. Ruby Bridges, whose image was captured in a Norman Rockwell painting about the hate surrounding school integration, told an Old Dominion University audience Monday night that racism will stop only when adults stop teaching it.

PORTLOCK Inside Fire Station 2, clumps of hair piled on the floor as firefighter Heather Callahan ran a pair of clippers across her husband's head. "It's just hair!" someone in the crowd of newly bald firefighters yelled at the couple. Callahan smiled.

When Harriet King - or Ms. Harriet as she is known to most of her McDonald’s customers - sees her regulars pull into the College Drive parking lot, she immediately sets about preparing their orders.

VIRGINIA BEACH

Brian Hawkins can look at a piece of wood and envision the beautiful handcrafted guitar he can turn it into. “I don’t think I’d be as excited if I was making furniture,” Hawkins said. “This way people have something they can sit down with and make music with.”

Without his companion and business partner, Keith Large said, keeping the Oasis Cafe going just became too difficult.
On Jan. 27, less than four months after losing Richard Grether Jr. to lung cancer, Large closed the downtown breakfast and lunch restaurant. A few days later, the landlord locked the business.

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The Chamberlin, a landmark hotel on the Peninsula’s waterfront since 1928, was named for a real man about town – just not this town.

John F. Chamberlin is variously described as an entrepreneur, gaming magnate, hotel man and restaurateur, and The New York Times found many more words for his obituary in 1896:

In recognition of Black History Month, Portsmouth museums recently hosted programs honoring black heritage in the city.

Part of that history includes Portsmouth’s role in the Underground Railroad, a network of safe places from the South to the North that runaway slaves used to escape to freedom.

Claire Cucchiari-Loring's captivating voice and personal strength still ring clear in the memories of many. The 22-year-old Old Dominion University senior's life was cut short Dec. 8, 2006, when she was shot twice by her ex-boyfriend, who then shot and killed himself.