Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 9 · column 2 of 4 · from the scan, no model involved
By JAMES J. KILPATRICK
Grandson Douglas Stone Kilpatrick was graduated from Rappahannock County High School on June 15. Let me mark the occasion with apologies to high school graduates everywhere. My own generation has left them a legacy for which we ought to be ashamed.
No one said much about the legacy Saturday morning. Let met get back to it in a moment. You should know that Rappahannock County (pop. 6,093) is located in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, up in the northwest part of the commonwealth. My wife and I lived there for 24 years before we moved to Charleston, S.C., a year ago.
Maybe one has to live in Rappahannock County to love it, for many of the amenities of civilization are missing. No shopping malls, no cable TV, no traffic lights, no air pollution, no crime to speak of, no serious problem with drugs. The mountain streams run clean and clear.
The county is still divided along the lines of the natives and the outlanders. Native Rappahannockers tend to raise cattle and to look after orchards; many of them work in Culpeper. Outlanders and weekenders are mostly retired couples from Washington, D.C. It’s a quiet life.
Saturday’s graduating class of 74 included a dozen young people with familiar names: Atkins, Aylor, Baldwin, Dodson, Estes, Hitt, Jenkins — they have been here for generations. At the stroke of 10 o’clock they filed into the gymnasium, self-conscious in their flapping black gowns, their mortar boards at precarious angles.
92.9%