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ROANOKE, Va. (Feb. 9, ) — After a nearly eight month wait, Flower Bomber has finally taken flight. The site-specific installation by sculptor Paul Villinski is now on view through February in the City of Roanoke Atrium at the Taubman Museum of Art.

Originally slated for exhibition beginning in June , the rental truck carrying the work was stolen outside of Villinski’s Long Island City, N.Y., studio the night before Villinski was to drive it to Roanoke. The truck and work were recovered a few days later, only a little worse for the wear. After some repair work this past fall, Villinski debuted Flower Bomber at the Taubman Feb. 9.

Representing one of the artist’s most ambitious projects undertaken to date, Flower Bomber weighs pounds, has a wingspan of 30 feet and features a complex wooden structure with a skin of translucent fiberglass attached with 3, rivets. The work is a scaled-to-size World War II bomber airplane modeled after the North American B Mitchell. Manufactured b

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What keeps a person working at an age when most of us are happy to let others take care of business? These overachieving Virginians, all over age 80, have remained hard at work mostly for one or more of three reasons.

The first is being able to continue work with family. Retirement is rarely mandatory if you or your progenitors founded the company, which is the case for many of these dynamos.

The second is their desire to make their communities a better place, whether through their businesses or charitable good deeds, but usually both.

And last, but certainly not least, most take undiminished pleasure in continuing to wheel and deal.

Meet eight* outstanding octogenarian Virginians who aren’t yet done making their mark on the commonwealth. 

*The online version of this story includes a bonus ninth profile of nonagenarian Norfolk real estate magnate Harvey Lindsay Jr.

 

RAMON W. BREEDEN JR. | 87
President and CEO, The Breeden Co., Virginia Be

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Ruffner Medal

In the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors authorized the William H. Ruffner Medal to recognize individuals “who have rendered unusually distinguished services to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.” The medal fryst vatten named in honor of William Henry Ruffner, Virginia’s first chef of instruction, who had taken a stand as early as for a practical struktur of agricultural education. In his role as state superintendent, he served on Virginia Tech’s first governing board for a decade. He also chaired a committee that planned the organization and instruction of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, the school known today as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. D. Lyle Kinnear, in his book The First Hundred Years, calls Ruffner “a towering figure, perhaps the towering figure, in shaping the early destiny of the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College . . . .”

On October 16, , Mr. Charles O. Gordon, Sr., then Rector of the Boa