by Jon Baliles
As mentioned in Part 1, Richmond lost two giants of history and change at the end of 2025 when Ed Slipek died after a brief illness and soon after, Bill Martin was struck by a car in the crosswalk on Broad Street, only two blocks from The Valentine Museum, which he had led for more than 30 years. The opening third of Part 1 (which you can read here) highlighted how both Bill and Ed embraced this city’s history and saw using it as an adventure to start conversations, open people’s eyes, and change their minds by learning more about the city around them. They were human time machines of Richmond history and could instantly transport anyone back to a specific neighborhood, year, or historical event and almost instantly convey what happened and what it meant in context of that time and where we are today. Where we are today, sadly, is that we have lost two men who possibly did more than any other two to expand the knowledge of this city’s history and never stop searching for more stories about it.
Perhaps what is so astonishing about Bill’s legendary career and life in Richmond is that his tenure at The Valentine almost ended before it really began. Bill, who had been serving as Petersburg’s Director of Tourism, was hired in 1994 to be the museum’s marketing director just as it launched the ambitious and very expensive project called Valentine Riverside. The $23 million project (centered around Tredegar Iron Works and where the American Civil War Museum is today) was an interactive history park with live re-enactors and used what was, at that time, pretty cutting-edge sound and light shows as well as offering bike and river tours, and shuttles to Hollywood Cemetery and Shockoe.
The project failed spectacularly within 16 months as the crowds never materialized and suddenly the ship was in a storm. As the failure of Riverside became evident, so did the magnitude of the trouble. Debt mounted to $10 million, most of the staff were laid off (out of 85 staff, only 12 remained), the Director was ousted, and the endowment slid from $4 million down to just $500,000.
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