From the files of the Sun Gazette, we bring you some of the big (or just plain interesting) stories of the year.
SEPTEMBER:
•• Del. Mark Keam’s 13 years in the General Assembly came to an unexpected halt Sept. 6 after he resigned to accept a federal-government post.
Democrat Holly Seibold and Republican Monique Baroudi will compete in a Jan. 10, 2023, special election to fill Keam’s unexpired term.
•• Satisfied with design improvements added after a June 12 presentation, the Vienna Town Council agreed unanimously Sept. 12 to continue moving ahead on a joint venture with Fairfax County to build a new Patrick Henry Library with a parking structure.
•• Fairfax County supervisors on Sept. 13 voted 9-1 to ask the Commonwealth Transportation Board to rename the county’s sections of Lee Highway and Lee-Jackson Memorial Highway as Routes 29 and 50, their existing respective route numbers. The majority of supervisors sought to remove the roadways’ associations with Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
•• The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors honored the McLean Project for the Arts on Sept. 13 with a resolution commemorating the group’s six-decade-long history.
•• The Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce on Sept. 13 presented veteran, businessman and community stalwart W. Glenn Yarborough Jr. with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
•• Stephen Kennedy, a senior at the private Flint Hill School in Oakton, learned in September that he had received a perfect 1600 score on the SAT he took at the school in late August.
•• Fairfax County and Fairfax city officials gathered at George C. Marshall High School Sept. 22 to celebrate the Free Student Bus Pass + Metrobus program’s expansion to that school, its Davis Center and Annandale and Falls Church high schools.
•• Fairfax County police announced Sept. 26 that cold-case detectives had identified the remains of a woman found near a drainage ditch in Tysons 21 years ago as those of Patricia Agnes Gildawie.
OCTOBER:
•• According to data made available in October, Fairfax County Public Schools kicked off the fall semester with 180,109 students, which was up 1,514 from the 178,595 who began classes in September 2021 but still down about 9,000 from pre-pandemic times.
•• The Fairfax County Branch of the NAACP gave NOVA Parks executive director Paul Gilbert a Freedom Fund Community Advocate Award, the parks agency announced Oct. 4.
•• State and local officials joined Korean dignitaries Oct. 7 in planting a Korean pine tree at the Korean Bell Garden at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in the Vienna area to celebrate the site’s 10th anniversary.
•• Fairfax County supervisors on Oct. 11 unanimously approved a rezoning to permit construction of “Somos at Tysons LLC,” a 460-unit project that will consist almost entirely of affordable dwellings.
•• The Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed Oct. 11 that starting Oct. 31 the Fairfax County Department of Land Development Services for 18 months would exempt charging facilities for electric vehicles from electrical, building-permit and sign-permit fees.
•• Community tips led to the identification and Oct. 18 arrest of a 30-year-old District of Columbia resident Patrick Craig Locke in connection with the Oct. 1 armed rape of a woman in Tysons hotel room. Metro Transit Police arrested Locke at Metro Center station in Washington, D.C.
•• The Vienna Town Council on Oct. 24 unanimously approved Historic Vienna Inc.’s plan to hire a contractor to dig for archaeological treasures on the Freeman Store & Museum’s grounds.