Bill loves to garden and each season his gardens feature some spectacular pots and plantings. Perennials and bulbs are great--better to hack them back every year rather than to baby them.
Bill's "red-hot pokers" bloom in late April and early May and are really spectacular! |
Yorktown enjoys a long pleasant fall, and this picture of the Inn, taken in November shows the leaves still on the trees.
The leaves are not completely gone most years when Bill decorates this deciduous tree with 300 ornaments for Christmas!
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In honor of Virginia's 400th birthday, Bill put on an exhibit of his Pocahontas memorabilia to honor the young woman who, according to legend, saved the life of Captain John Smith.
Three chiefs of local tribes, various scholars of "First American" studies (the preferred name of some groups), and over 100 other interested people attended the opening at York Hall in Yorktown, and visited the exhibition over the next 6 weeks.
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Shown here are my cousins at a 2003 exhibit at the Virginia Historical Society---a exhibition which traveled around the state for three years. The exhibit was done in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of my father's birth.
The William W. Cole Collection contains many of the engravings of Virginia, produced from 1590 to the 1800s, that influenced European opinions of, and thus policies toward, the natives. If you would like to visit the on-line exhibition, just click here.
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Yorktown is so much more than the one important event that it is known for--so Bill organized a committee to prepare a self-guided walking tour of Yorktown to include some of the many other stories that visitors would be unlikely to learn about. Distribution and sale began on October 19, 2006, the 225th of the surrender of Cornwallis to George Washington here in Yorktown.
A copy of this is available in all the rooms at the York River Inn B&B. you can download a copy in advance of Your visit here.
From left: William Cole, booklet chairman, Bonnie Karwac, committee member, Walt Akers, chairman of the "Celebrate Yorktown" committee of the Yorktown Foundation; and Frank Edwards, former chairman of the committee. |
Asked to represent the tourism community in Hampton Roads (1.6 million people), Bill listed some of his favorite places for visitors in the April, 2008. issue of Hampton Roads Magazine.
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