THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610220464
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 174 lines
WHEN PORTSMOUTH native Marine Lt. Larry Parker Jr. and fiancee Kathy Bugg sought the perfect site for their wedding, the goal was a place of beauty and tradition.
Like dozens of other couples in the last few years, they found perfection in the center of Virginia, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in a place called Oak Ridge.
A 4,800-acre estate that dates to a British Crown land grant in 1738, Oak Ridge has a history of making dreams become reality. John C. Holland Jr., and his wife, Rhonda, Oak Ridge's owner/residents, are the latest in a long line of dreamers and doers who have fallen under the estate's spell.
``Oak Ridge is not a place anybody owns; it owns you,'' Rhonda Holland said.
The Hollands are former Hampton Roads residents. They still maintain a home in Suffolk, where Holland's landfill and salvage business, John C. Holland Enterprises, is based.
Into their sixth year of restoration on the previously neglected Nelson County estate, the Hollands are host to a variety of events, large and not-so-large, year round. Weddings and concerts, huge festivals and Civil War re-enactments help support the restoration and promote Oak Ridge.
Oak Ridge's success has benefited other local businesses. Four years ago, the county government reviewed its assets - abundant natural beauty and outdoor recreational opportunities, Wintergreen Resort, Walton's Mountain Museum and Oak Ridge - and decided to push tourism. The county hired Frankee Love, formerly with Portsmouth Parks and Recreation, as director of economic development and tourism and saw tourism become its primary industry.
Nelson County, with a population of 13,000, now has 10 bed and breakfasts, three vineyards and dozens of shops and attractions.
She credits the Hollands and Oak Ridge with helping make it all happen. ``In an informal survey among retailers in a 10-mile radius, we found that they averaged a 50 percent increase in business when something was happening at Oak Ridge,'' Love said.
On a recent weekend, John Holland mentioned that he was considering a proposal for a three-day bluegrass festival that could draw 80,000 visitors. ``Can I? Can I?'' he playfully coaxed his wife, who rolled her eyes and smiled.
``What I am wondering now is how I can get around to everyone and make sure 80,000 people are having a good time,'' she answered.
It is the Hollands' unpretentious personal touch that warms the hospitality of the elegant, 23,000-square-foot mansion, where a stray soccer ball is wedged onto a back roof corner and the family cats make a bee line for any party.
``This is not a museum but a home,'' Rhonda Holland said. ``This is where people lived, yelled, and children slid down the bannister.''
When Kathy Bugg, who lived in nearby Lynchburg, made her decision to be married at Oak Ridge, ``The gardens and Rhonda were what did it,'' she said.
A personality that blends a kindergarten teacher and a drill sergeant emerges when Rhonda Holland takes over as mistress of ceremonies at an Oak Ridge wedding. ``The couples become part of the house's history and part of its ownership,'' she said.
Commitment, enthusiasm and a hands-on approach are parts of what has made the Hollands' restoration efforts work. Substantial financial investment and John Holland's skill as a master recycler take care of the rest.
``John is a born salvage man,'' Rhonda Holland said. ``Nothing is trash that can be recycled.''
The house has been insulated with government insulation leftovers, a barn has been roofed with the skin of an airport hangar, the horse barn under restoration will have thick rubber mats underfoot that are scrap from the aircraft carrier America, and a cupola that sits over an estate well formerly graced a Hampton Roads 7-Eleven.
``My dad taught me well,'' said John Holland of his father, John C. Holland Sr. ``I was raised in demolition and with him. I guess we tore down about 2,000 buildings and houses in Portsmouth and Norfolk.''
Anything that looked usable was squirreled away for the house that John and Rhonda planned to build one day. Since their move to Oak Ridge, Holland continuously taps into that stash. ``I still go down to the landfill every day I can just to see what has come in,'' he said.
Large wooden acorn finials that top a fence behind the mansion were rescued from the ceiling of a razed Portsmouth church.
Parker and Bugg chose to be married in the terraced Italian gardens behind the mansion, a setting that was a jungle until four years ago.
In 1990, the Hollands could not see much but overgrown boxwoods from the back door. Mark Treakle, a Chesapeake carpenter who has spent months working on the estate, remembers inching along on his hands and knees, following long-forgotten gravel paths beneath 15 feet of shrubbery.
Only when the crawling men knocked their heads on something solid were they able to find the statues that had been hidden and preserved for 30 years by the overgrown vegetation.
Removing 600 trees and taming the wild shrubbery revealed a terraced garden with marble benches, statues, a fountain and a waterfall.
One day Rhonda Holland's mother looked out over the restored gardens and asked her daughter, ``Did you ever think that you would be living in a place like this?''
She responded, ``I never knew there were places like this.''
The first mansion at Oak Ridge was built in 1801 by Robert Rives, a planter, merchant and Revolutionary War veteran. His descendants lived at the estate after Rives' death, but by the end of the Civil War, the estate had fallen into decline.
Oak Ridge languished until 1901, when Thomas Fortune Ryan became its owner. Raised as an impoverished orphan in Nelson County, Ryan, a self-made entrepreneur, became one of the country's 10 wealthiest men. A seventh generation Virginian, Ryan was lured by the stability and roots Oak Ridge symbolized and bought the estate for $15,000.
Ryan preserved the Rives' home as the centerpiece of his mansion and added two enormous wings and a third floor, enlarging the home to more than 50 rooms. In Rives' time the house had been distinctive; in Ryans's era it became magnificent.
The dining room was paneled in mahogany, and the arched-roof breakfast room was decorated with hand-painted murals. Oak beams and cabinetry graced the library while the ballroom glowed with light from walls of French doors.
Striving to create a private, self-sufficient retirement retreat, the middle-aged millionaire enhanced the estate to include a racetrack and training barn; a railroad station; a 90,000-gallon swimming pool filled weekly from his reservoir; greenhouses; a chapel; a dairy complex; pig, chicken, and cattle operations; and his own golf course with a herd of sheep to keep it clipped.
Often compared to a small village, Oak Ridge carried 314 employees on its 1909 payroll, many of whom lived on the Oak Ridge grounds. Ryan built a commissary and schools for his employees and their families.
After Ryan's death in 1977, the estate passed through his heirs, few of whom had the resources to adequately maintain the property.
Ultimately a great-nephew put the estate on the market with a $7 million asking price.
John Holland Jr. learned of Oak Ridge from a feature story in The Virginian-Pilot in 1987 that referred to the estate as pieces of faded dreams. For years Holland and his father had been plantation shopping, trying to fulfill Holland Sr.'s dream of owning such a place.
Two months later Holland Jr. stopped by the estate and was thrown off the property by a vigilant caretaker. After establishing credibility with the owners, the Hollands returned and, without Holland Sr. ever seeing the inside of the mansion, bought the estate.
After John Holland Sr.'s death in October 1992, the property passed to his widow, daughters, and his only son who remains Oak Ridge's resident manager and visionary.
Holland has plans to rebuild the Oak Ridge racetrack complex to offer pari-mutuel racing, to refurbish the railroad station and perhaps re-establish passenger rail service to the county, and to one day turn the abandoned stone barns of the dairy farm into a convention center.
Then there are the plans for an 18-hole golf course, a project that had to be somewhat relocated from Ryan's original course so Holland would not displace the Civil War re-enactors from their occasional camp site on Oak Ridge's lawn.
Massive projects, but they all seem to be as much fun as work to the Hollands, who get a charge out of seeing dreams come true.
``I walk out on the veranda in the evening with a drink in my hand, look out over the gardens, and I remember that I was raised with trucks in the back yard and scrap metal stacked around,'' John Holland said. ``For me to have a yard this beautiful is something I never dreamed.'' ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY KATHERINE PLUNKET VERSLUYS
ABOVE: John and Rhonda Holland began restoring Oak Ridge six years
ago.
BELOW: The 4,800-acre estate in Nelson County proves the perfect
wedding setting for Marine Lt. Larry Parker Jr. and his bride, Kathy
Bugg.
Photo
The mansion was built in 1801 by Robert Rives and greatly expanded
in 1901 by Thomas Fortune Ryan.
Map
OAK RIDGE ESTATE
The Virginian-Pilot
Graphic
WANT TO GO?
For information on Oak Ridge's public and private events, contact
Lee Marmon, 2300 Oak Ridge Road, Arrington, VA 22922 or call (804)
263-8676 weekdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. by CNB