Follow the stars…
Charlottesville, VA Area - Keswick - Cismont Celebrity SHORT LIST:
Screen: Sissy Spacek (Oscar-winning actress), Howie Long (Fox Sports football analyst, Radio Shack pitchman), Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (actor, former WWE wrestler) bought a house out in Orange County horse country in 2007, Sister, Sister star Tim Reid and his wife Daphne Maxwell Reid, who are movie producers now, but he'll never be forgotten as WKRP's Venus Flytrap.
Politics: Julian Bond (fiery NAACP chair), Lawrence Eagleburger (frequent Fox News commentator and Secretary of State for about five minutes during administration of Bush 41), Larry Sabato (television's favorite politico talking head), Nathaniel Howell (ambassador to Kuwait during the Gulf War), John Whitehead (religious/civil rights fighter who rose to national prominence by pressing the Paula Jones case against Bill Clinton), Philip Zelikow (historian, UVA professor, Pulitzer Prize winner for authoring The 9/11 Commission Report), Henry Hager (son-in-law of President George W. Bush and a student at the Darden School of Business).
Money: Patricia Kluge (billionaire's ex-wife turned businesswoman), Edgar Bronfman (heir to Seagram fortune and bison purveyor), Coran Capshaw (music mogul, manager of Dave Matthews Band)
Music: Chris Daughtry, Maxine Jones (member of Grammy-nominated '90s girl group En Vogue), Mary Chapin Carpenter (Batesville's resident folkie), Corey Harris (bayou blues), Carter Beauford, Stefan Lessard, LeRoi Moore, and Boyd Tinsley (Dave Matthews Band), Tom Peloso (Modest Mouse, formerly of local faves the Hackensaw Boys).
Literature: John Grisham (world's #3 novelist– topped only by Dan "Da Vinci Code" Brown and that clever Rowling lady), Jan Karon (Jessica Mitford series), John Casey (Spartina), Rita Mae Brown (from Rubyfruit Jungle to Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries), Ann Beattie and Deborah Eisenberg (darlings of MFA programs), Dahlia Lithwick (legal correspondent for Slate), Rita Dove (former U.S. Poet Laureate) Charles Wright, (Pulitzer Prize-winning poet).
Sports: Gene Corrigan (longtime ACC Commissioner, former NCAA president). Howie Long (Pro Football Hall-of-Famer, see "screen" above), Bob Rotella (renowned sports psychologist to pro athletes galore), Mike Cubbage (former Major League third-baseman, one-time Boston Red Sox manager), Billy Wagner (All-Star New York Mets relief pitcher resides on a farm near Crozet during the off-season), Bruce Arena (former UVA, D.C. United, and U.S. National soccer coach), Pete Gillen (former UVA men's basketball coach, analyst for CBS Sports).
Pop Culture: Peter Max (pop artist whose works look like the Yellow Submarine cover) owns land near Yogaville in Buckingham, Cathy Baker Purcell (the "That's all" girl from Hee-Haw) lives in Orange County, Julann Griffin, ex-wife of Merv, co-founder of Jeopardy!, and owns a farm in Fluvanna.
Moved away: Muhammed Ali ("The Greatest" owned Nelson County property in the mid-'80s), Tami Hoag (best selling author), Dave Matthews (rocker moved here from South Africa when he was 16, moved to Seattle in the early millennium), Tina Fey (30 Rock star, former SNL head writer and "Weekend Update" anchor went to UVA), Katie Couric (America's favorite news gal happens to be a UVA alumna), Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard (romantically linked for decades, this thespian couple owned an Albemarle farm until the mid-'90s, moved to Minnesota and now live in a co-op in New York), Lawrence Ferlenghetti (renowned poet and founder of San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore, he owned a home on Park Street from 1998 to 2002), John Kluge (once the richest man in the world, he's now ranked #52 by Forbes with a fortune of $9 billion), Antonin Scalia (Supreme Court justice was a professor at UVA Law in the late '60s and early '70s), Edward Kennedy (Massachusetts senator
attended UVA Law in the late '50s, left with a J.D. degree and convictions for reckless driving, evading police, and driving without a license).
Dead fraud: Anna "Anastasia" Manahan. Claimant to the Russian throne was determined by DNA in 1994 to be not a romantic, missing grand duchess but a delirious Polish peasant who later married a local eccentric.