From the Editor: A Tip of the Hat and Farewell

Early on in my tenure here, Judy Le, our managing editor, asked me, goaded me really, to write some kind of ode to what makes UVA UVA. We needed it for our special bicentennial issue, something to lighten the weight of all the history we had compiled. She wanted something unabashedly celebratory.

The result was “A Hat Tip to UVA” (Winter 2018), an essay that used as its jumping off point the experience of wearing a UVA hat anywhere in the world. Invariably, you find yourself engaged in conversation with another Wahoo as if you’d known that person longer than your family members, the ones standing over there to the side rolling their eyes.

At the time, it had happened to me in Northern Michigan. Several weeks ago, on the hiking trails at Mount Rainier, it happened again. A fellow traveler called out to me. I was wearing the hat. Then, an hour later, it happened again.

It made for the perfect bookend to my eight-plus years as editor of Virginia Magazine. Before heading out on the trip I announced my retirement, effective with the close of this edition. My plan, a year in the making, is to see if I can take my writing in some new directions. It’s a thrilling and daunting prospect, and something I wouldn’t have had the inspiration to do without the extraordinary opportunity I’ve had in these pages.

Like the “Hat Tip” piece, this has been a dream assignment. You couldn’t ask for a better beat to cover—the life and history of the University of Virginia, in all its beauty, richness, personality, intrigue and complexity. It’s even better than that, because you get to tell that story, and practice the craft, in the most sublime medium of all, magazines.

Living and working in a college town holds a certain cachet. It’s almost cliché. That doesn’t make it any less true. Shortly after I moved here, someone offered an astute observation in the form of a greeting: “Welcome to Charlottesville, where everyone is overqualified.” I’ve encountered that throughout Alumni Hall, where I’ve gotten to work alongside people who aren’t just ridiculously credentialed but also exceedingly caring and dedicated.

Those traits run deep, by which I mean all the way down to the basement. That’s where you’ll find our small but mighty magazine team. I can’t begin to describe my daily awe in seeing the ambition, ethos and attention to detail my colleagues bring to every issue of Virginia Magazine. And they’re hilarious, disturbingly and scarily funny, which is basically a job requirement in our line of work.

This has been a dream assignment—covering the University of Virginia in all its beauty, richness, personality, intrigue and complexity.

The most important element of the enterprise is also the most gratifying, the readership. It goes back to the Virginia hat. I’m sure alumni from other places exchange high fives in their travels. They may even enjoy reading their alumni magazines when they get home. It’s just not with the same sense of shared experience, the same sense of place. We see it in the reader surveys you graciously return to us, in our online metrics, in your comments and letters, and in your embrace of the storytelling we’ve been able to do. Much of the dream assignment has been getting to write for a dream audience. You’re the best—fiercely devoted, intensely engaged and, goes without saying, impeccably well-educated.

Thank you for your steadfast support. Thank you for reading us. It has been an honor. As will be rejoining your ranks.

Richard Gard (Col class of ’81)
Vice President, Communications,
UVA Alumni Association