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Winners of 2002 Tucker Contest Announced
November 6, 2002
Katie Molinaro, a senior at Norfolk's Maury High School, won first place in the Norfolk Historical Society's 2002 George Holbert Tucker Essay Contest.
Second place went to Dylan Rogers, a Maury student currently spending his junior year abroad in Italy. Third place went to Loc Tran, a senior at Kecoughtan High School in Hampton.
The Norfolk Historical Society established the Tucker Contest in 2001 in honor of one of the region's foremost historians and a long-time member of the society. Tucker, who at age 93 continues to write a weekly history column for The Virginian-Pilot, attended the awards ceremony held Nov. 6 at the Virginia Club.
"We are honored and privileged to have Mr. Tucker here with us this evening," said Helen Sonner, Vice President of the Norfolk Historical Society. "He has done so much to advance the study of our region's history. Directly and indirectly, his influence can be seen in all the essays submitted to this year's contest."
The 2002 contest posed the following questions: If you could go back in time and interview an important figure in the history of Hampton Roads and Norfolk, which person would you interview? What questions would you ask? The contest was judged by a committee of history professors from Tidewater Community College. The judges were not aware of the identity of the authors until after the winning essays were selected.
Katie Molinaro, the first place winner, chose Ann Plume Behan Herron. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1855, Herron turned down an offer for a lifesaving trip to Europe, choosing to stay in Norfolk and care for the sick. It cost her her life, but many of those cared for survived, and the hospital she founded, now known as DePaul Medical Center, is still saving lives today.
The second place winner, Dylan Rogers, selected a figure who looms large over Norfolk's early history: John Murray, Lord Dunmore, the last Royal Governor of Virginia. Dunmore's bombardment of Norfolk on January 1, 1776, accelerated the American Revolution in Virginia.
John Ericsson, designer of the USS Monitor, was the subject of Loc Tran's third-place essay. The USS Monitor was the world's first ironclad, turreted warship. Although the 1862 Civil War battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia in Hampton Roads was inconclusive from a military perspective, one outcome was clear: the age of wooden military ships was over.
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The 2002 George Holbert Tucker Contest asked students to consider
which person from Norfolk's history they would like to have the
chance to interview. 
