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THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 2008
Our view
Someone came into the Rappahannock News’
office yesterday and asked if there were going to
be a “sappy'’ editorial in this edition of the paper since it is the first one since Mary Ann Kuhn returned as editor.
They were expecting to see gushy remarks about why the editor returned and how much she missed being away. That is all very true but we want to take note in this space of something we found to be extraordinary.
Sappy or not, here goes.
This is about Mary Arthur, who has cooked for two governors and in her past life was the personal chef for the governor of Alaska.
When she came to Rappahannock, she started the culinary arts program at Rappahannock High School and begged and borrowed the equipment to set up a commercial kitchen for her students. She held a benefit dinner to get funds for the exhaust hood. Prior to that, she was a top chef at the Inn at Little Washington.
As much as we Rappahannockers love food, whether it is pigging out at a covered dish supper or dining on tiny morsels at our famous inn there was anmething quite remarkable about the dinner Arthur and her RCHS culinary students created, cooked and catered at the Emily Jane Hilscher Passion Award benefit over the weekend.
It was a stunning event and perfectly orchestrated. In addition to Chef Arthur, some 45 students and teachers worked the event including 15 former students, 14 current ones and 15 current and former faculty members. Imagine producing this event and plating a four-course dinner for 140 persons. It would take 560 plates, 280 wine glasses and 140 water glasses. The numbers are boggling.
The students prepped and cooked the food in the high school kitchen and brought it over to the old Washington School in warming trays.
The idea* for this dinner was Arthur’s. Why? She says she wanted to do something special for Emily Hilscher who was a friend and former student.
Arthur and her students and volunteers gave our community and the Hilscher family something that may help make some sense out of something senseless, the tragic loss of Emily Hilscher’s life in the Virginia Tech shootings last April.
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