Newport News

The Peninsula Fine Arts Center is an art center located in Newport News, Virginia and is associated with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It is... located at 101 Museum Drive on the grounds of the park surrounding the Mariners' Museum and is accredited with the American Association of Museums . It was formed in 1962 as the Peninsula Arts Association by a group of Hampton Roads art supporters. The first official exhibit, staged in 1962, was a visit from a Virginia Museum Artmobile. It has moved and grown in size over the course of its 50 years to become one of the premier arts advocates in the area. It's one of only 20 non-collecting art centers accredited by the AAM. In addition to changing gallery space, the Peninsula Fine Arts Center maintains a permanent "Hands On For Kids" gallery designed for children and families to interact in what the Center describes as "a fun, educational environment that encourages participation with art materials and concepts." The PAA was originally housed in downtown Newport News in the former John W. Daniel School Building. The first official exhibit was staged in 1962.
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The U.S. Army Transportation Museum is a United States Army museum of vehicles and other transportation-related equipment and memorabilia. It is... located on the grounds of Fort Eustis, Virginia, in Newport News, on the Virginia Peninsula. The museum was established in 1959, in a warehouse using items initially collected for a recruiting exhibit, and got a main building in 1976. An open-air pavilion for aviation exhibits opened in 1987. The buildings, built at a total cost of US$765,000, and other capital improvements are funded by the Army Transportation Museum Foundation . Since the foundation is prohibited by law from obtaining state or federal grants, private donations are the only funding source. The museum reflects the history of the Army, especially of the United States Army Transportation Corps, and includes close to 100 military vehicles such as land vehicles, watercraft and rolling stock, including stock from the Fort Eustis Military Railroad. It is officially dedicated to General Frank S. Besson, Jr., who was the first four-star general to lead the transportation command, and extends over 6 acres of land, air and sea vehicles and indoor exhibits.
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The Virginia Living Museum is an open air museum located in Newport News, Virginia that has many living exhibits of Virginia's indigenous species.... The exhibits include aspects of an aquarium, science center, aviary, botanical preserve and planetarium. The first incarnation of what is now the Virginia Living Museum was the Junior Nature Museum and Planetarium, opened in 1966 under Virginia Governor Mills E. Godwin, Jr. and cofounded by the Junior League of Hampton Roads and the Warwick Rotary Club. In 1976, the facility was expanded and a new focus on physical and applied sciences was added to the existing natural sciences; at this time it was renamed the Peninsula Nature and Science Center. The museum began its transformation to a "living museum", incorporating living exhibits and preservation land together with traditional exhibits, in 1983, following the example of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It reopened as the Virginia Living Museum in 1987 under Virginia governor Gerald L. Baliles. The museum expanded throughout the 1990s, opening the Coastal Plain Aviary in 2001 and a 62,000-square-foot museum building in 2004.
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William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work. For much of his career, Styron was best... known for his novels, including: Styron's influence deepened and his readership expanded with the publication of Darkness Visible in 1990. This memoir, originally intended as a magazine article, chronicled the author's descent into depression and his near-fatal night of "despair beyond despair." William Styron was born in the Hilton Village historic district of Newport News, Virginia. He grew up in the South and was steeped in its history. His birthplace was less than a hundred miles from the site of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion, later the source for Styron's most famous and controversial novel. Although Styron’s paternal grandparents had been slave owners, his Northern mother and liberal Southern father gave him a broad perspective on race relations. Styron’s childhood was a difficult one: his father, a shipyard engineer, suffered from clinical depression, which Styron himself would later experience.
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John L. "Johnny" Gilbert III is an American show business personality who has worked mainly on television game shows. Originally a nightclub singer... and entertainer, he has hosted and announced a number of game shows from various eras, dating as far back as the 1950s. He has become known primarily for his work as the announcer and audience host for the syndicated version of the quiz show Jeopardy! since its debut in 1984. Gilbert was born in Newport News, Virginia. While he was still in high school, he began his career as the regular vocalist for a dance band that toured the Virginia area. Upon graduation, he became the master of ceremonies for the Sky Way club in Jacksonville, Florida. From there, he went on to perform full-time at various nightclubs throughout the United States. Gilbert also joined the United States Army's Seventh Army Special Services, where he was cast as the lead in the military musical comedy Xanadu: The Marco Polo Musical. Upon returning to the United States, he continued to sing and entertain at nightclubs, until he received his first television assignment as a singer and emcee on WDSU in New Orleans.
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Joyce Bulifant is an American television actress, notable for her sunny "little girl"-like Southern lilt of a voice. She was a frequent panelist on... the television game show Match Game and Chain Reaction, in which she more often than not gave bizarre answers that seldom matched the contestants on the former. Bulifant was born in Newport News, Virginia. In the 1960s, after appearing on Broadway, she guest starred in numerous television programs, including ABC's Channing, The Virginian, in addition to portraying an intended murder victim in an episode of Thriller in 1961: "An Attractive Family", and also as the innocent young blonde defendant "Nancy Banks", in Perry Mason 1963 episode 197: "The Case of the Ice-Cold Hands", the second of her two appearances in the series. Bulifant, who has been described as "naturally funny", was the original choice for the role of Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch, but the part ultimately went to Florence Henderson. After losing that role, Bulifant accepted the role of Marsha Patterson in the half-hour NBC television series The Bill Cosby Show .
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Austin Roberts is an American singer and songwriter. His most successful recording was 1975's "Rocky"; a transatlantic Top 40 hit single. A... guitarist since the age of thirteen, Roberts began his musical aspirations in a number of local bands, mainly playing as part of the local beach music scene. Wanting to expand beyond a genre which had little interest outside of Virginia and the Carolinas, Roberts began making summer trips to relatives in New York City, hanging around the music districts and trying to get attention from publishers. Eventually these efforts were rewarded when record producer Terry Phillips recorded a 1967 single for ABC Records as The Virginia Wolves, with fellow Virginia native Johnny Reese filling out the group. "I Can't Believe that You're In Love With Me" b/w "Rose Petals Everywhere She Goes", the latter song penned by Roberts under his birth name, was cited as a Top 60 pick by Billboard magazine. Roberts joined the United States Marine Corps shortly before the single was released, and the record died from lack of promotion.
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William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work. For much of his career, Styron was best... known for his novels, including: Styron's influence deepened and his readership expanded with the publication of Darkness Visible in 1990. This memoir, originally intended as a magazine article, chronicled the author's descent into depression and his near-fatal night of "despair beyond despair." William Styron was born in the Hilton Village historic district of Newport News, Virginia. He grew up in the South and was steeped in its history. His birthplace was less than a hundred miles from the site of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion, later the source for Styron's most famous and controversial novel. Although Styron’s paternal grandparents had been slave owners, his Northern mother and liberal Southern father gave him a broad perspective on race relations. Styron’s childhood was a difficult one: his father, a shipyard engineer, suffered from clinical depression, which Styron himself would later experience.
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John L. "Johnny" Gilbert III is an American show business personality who has worked mainly on television game shows. Originally a nightclub singer... and entertainer, he has hosted and announced a number of game shows from various eras, dating as far back as the 1950s. He has become known primarily for his work as the announcer and audience host for the syndicated version of the quiz show Jeopardy! since its debut in 1984. Gilbert was born in Newport News, Virginia. While he was still in high school, he began his career as the regular vocalist for a dance band that toured the Virginia area. Upon graduation, he became the master of ceremonies for the Sky Way club in Jacksonville, Florida. From there, he went on to perform full-time at various nightclubs throughout the United States. Gilbert also joined the United States Army's Seventh Army Special Services, where he was cast as the lead in the military musical comedy Xanadu: The Marco Polo Musical. Upon returning to the United States, he continued to sing and entertain at nightclubs, until he received his first television assignment as a singer and emcee on WDSU in New Orleans.
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Sonja Sohn is an American actress and community activist. She is best known for her role as Detective Kima Greggs on the HBO drama The Wire, which... has led to her current work as the leader of the Baltimore community initiative ReWired for Change. She is currently starring as Detective Samantha Baker on the ABC drama series Body of Proof. Sohn was born in Newport News, Virgina. Her father, an African-American soldier in the United States Army, met her Korean mother when he was stationed in South Korea after the Korean War. After Sohn's older brother was born, her mother decided to move to the United States as she felt that a child of mixed Korean and African-American parentage would be discriminated against in Korea. Sohn had a difficult childhood; she was often teased for her mixed heritage, her schizophrenic father physically abused her mother and her older brother was killed when she was a teenager. She struggled with an addiction to cocaine and pills throughout her teens and twenties. Before she was an actress, Sohn was a slam poet. While performing her work on stage, she was spotted by Marc Levin who offered her the role in his film Slam.
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James Richard Kelly is an American film director and writer, best known for writing and directing the cult classic Donnie Darko in 2001. Kelly was... born James Richard Kelly in Newport News, Virginia, the son of Lane Kelly and Ennis Kelly. He grew up in Midlothian, Virginia where he attended Midlothian High School and graduated in 1993. When he was a child, his father worked for NASA on the Mars Viking Lander program. He won a scholarship to the University of Southern California to study at the USC School of Cinema-Television where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He made two short films at USC, The Goodbye Place and Visceral Matter, before graduating in 1997. Donnie Darko was given a budget of just $4.5 million. This was his first feature and was nominated for 21 small awards, winning 11 of them, including a nomination for a Saturn Award. The film later ended up #2 on Empire magazine's list of 50 greatest independent films of all time, behind Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. He has written numerous scripts that have not been produced, most famous of which are the adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Louis Sachar's Holes.
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Martha Madison is an American actress. Madison was born in Newport News, Virginia. She was raised in Houston, Texas, attended Cypress Creek High... School, and graduated from Texas A&M University in 1999 with a degree in psychology where she was also the Captain of the Texas A&M Dance Team. In 1999, she moved to New York City to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. After a lifetime of dance training, she had hoped to land in the musical world of Broadway. She danced with the Peyari Dance Project for two years. However, after several injuries, she was forced to retire from dance. In 2003, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film/television. She became famous for portraying Belle Black on the soap opera Days of our Lives from 2004 to 2008. Madison was the third adult actress to portray Belle on the daytime drama, which was portrayed by Kirsten Storms from 1999 to 2004, then briefly by Charity Rahmer in 2004 before Madison took the role. She previously appeared on the daytime drama Passions and had a role in the film Kate and Leopold.
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Joyce Bulifant is an American television actress, notable for her sunny "little girl"-like Southern lilt of a voice. She was a frequent panelist on... the television game show Match Game and Chain Reaction, in which she more often than not gave bizarre answers that seldom matched the contestants on the former. Bulifant was born in Newport News, Virginia. In the 1960s, after appearing on Broadway, she guest starred in numerous television programs, including ABC's Channing, The Virginian, in addition to portraying an intended murder victim in an episode of Thriller in 1961: "An Attractive Family", and also as the innocent young blonde defendant "Nancy Banks", in Perry Mason 1963 episode 197: "The Case of the Ice-Cold Hands", the second of her two appearances in the series. Bulifant, who has been described as "naturally funny", was the original choice for the role of Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch, but the part ultimately went to Florence Henderson. After losing that role, Bulifant accepted the role of Marsha Patterson in the half-hour NBC television series The Bill Cosby Show .
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