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Link Linkous (left) and his son-in-law Steve Hall live in the same house and have a friendly rivalry over their favorite football teams: Linkous - |
On pretty afternoons, Link Linkous likes to watch people walk past his house, glance at the flag that flutters from his porch and do double-takes.
Yeah, they're seeing that right. Half the flag is orange and maroon, with the "VT" of the Virginia Tech Hokies. The other half is the orange and blue of the University of Virginia Cavaliers.
How the two state academic and athletic rivals could coexist--in one house, and on one flag--is a Prince Edward Street mystery.
With the football teams scheduled to meet at noon tomorrow in Blacksburg, it was as good a time as any to look into the phenomenon.
FORMING A TEAM
Link and Martha Linkous have lived in this Fredericksburg house for almost all their married life.
They met when Martha was still a girl in college, living in this home with her parents, who were renters.
Link lived next door in a rented room, a bachelor newly moved from his native Blacksburg to work for the Soil Conservation Service here.
He had a television, but his room was so hot he couldn't stand to sit in it and watch. So he offered to drive the set to his sister's apartment in Richmond.
He wanted company on the ride that summer day, so he asked the girl next door.
As they got home, he said, "We'll have to go out again sometime."
She said, "How about tomorrow?"
They married in 1961 and moved into an apartment building on the corner. Not long after that, they bought Martha's childhood home--the Prince Edward Street house Martha's parents rented--with the idea that the older couple would continue to live there.
Link Linkous turned the upstairs into an apartment for him, his wife and the baby on the way.
Many years later, that baby was a grown-up married woman, and she had a younger sister.
Anne Hamm introduced that sister, Page, to a single fellow she'd met through work.
Page Linkous and Steve Hall hit it off.
They didn't realize it till later, but they had a lot in common. They were born just hours apart at Mary Washington Hospital. They were in the same kindergarten class at Hugh Mercer Elementary--though neither remembered the other.
Five years after they met--or re-met--they got married. And they moved into that apartment upstairs.
There was just one little problem.
Page and all her Blacksburg-steeped family are die-hard Hokies.
And Steve Hall? He's a 'Hoo.
He has liked the Virginia Cavaliers--nicknamed the Wahoos or the 'Hoos--since he was a teenager. And marrying into a Virginia Tech family wasn't likely to change that.
LOVE AND LOYALTIES
This is not an ugly rivalry. Truth be told, there's a lot of love and respect in the shared household.
The Linkouses are retired now; he's 76 and she's 69.
The Halls, who are 38, work locally. He's in law enforcement, and she's a nurse.
The Hokie-'Hoo rivalry isn't the only divided sports loyalty in the house. Link and Martha Linkous and Steve Hall are Washington Redskins fans; Page Hall takes great joy in rooting for the Dallas Cowboys. Her mom had to pay her a buck two weeks ago after the Cowboys beat the 'Skins at Fedex Field.
There's sports memorabilia around for everybody--Redskins, Cowboys, Hokies and 'Hoos.
But Link Linkous didn't have much luck with his Virginia Tech flags. Two of them have been stolen off that front porch in recent years.
Page happened to be shopping in Williamsburg one day last year with her sister, and that's where she saw it: The perfect two-school flag--half orange and blue, half orange and maroon.
She bought it, took it home and wrapped it up for her dad as a Christmas present.
Steve Hall remembers watching his father-in-law open that gift.
"He opened it. He shook it out," Hall recalls. "He didn't say a word. He just put it back in the box."
But eventually he hung it out front, and that's where it has remained.
Let people stop and look. It's fun to have a mystery.
Laura Moyer: 540/374-5417
Email: lmoyer@freelancestar.com
