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Study any painting or sculpture and you’ll find that understanding how the piece’s parts make a whole isn’t always easy to do. This is the challenge put to first-year medical students as part of Clinician’s Eye, a collaboration between the Fralin Museum of Art and the UVA School of Medicine that uses art to improve diagnostic skills.

“Observation, description, interpretation and communication of everything you’ve seen are really important skills for a physician,” says fourth-year medical student Grace Prince (Med ’15), who participated in the workshops. In one activity, a student will describe an object, and from that alone, another will try to draw it, leading to conversations about hearing and conveying information. “It’s important for patients,” says Prince. “In a lot of handoffs of care we have to be able to describe patients, what their illness is, what their treatment is.”

“My idea of a man sitting in a chair might be different from yours. If there’s a wineglass sitting in a room, what does your wineglass look like?” says Marcia Day Childress (Grad ’76, ’96), an associate professor of medical education who, along with the academic curator at the Fralin, Jordan Love, helped create the program, based on similar ones at Harvard and Yale. “Our goal is to school them in more mindful visual attention, how they describe, how they interpret,” says Childress. “There’s a tendency to go straight to, ‘I think I know what’s wrong,’ but that’s a matter of interpretation.”

Clinician’s Eye has been such a success that it’s now a required part of the medical school curriculum. For the Fralin, it’s a collaboration that represents the current spirit of the museum.

It hasn’t been a direct path to this point. The museum, which opened in the s, took a hiatus during Wor

ROANOKE, Va. (Feb. 9, ) — After a nearly eight month wait, Flower Bomber has finally taken flight. The site-specific installation by sculptor Paul Villinski is now on view through February in the City of Roanoke Atrium at the Taubman Museum of Art.

Originally slated for exhibition beginning in June , the rental truck carrying the work was stolen outside of Villinski’s Long Island City, N.Y., studio the night before Villinski was to drive it to Roanoke. The truck and work were recovered a few days later, only a little worse for the wear. After some repair work this past fall, Villinski debuted Flower Bomber at the Taubman Feb. 9.

Representing one of the artist’s most ambitious projects undertaken to date, Flower Bomber weighs pounds, has a wingspan of 30 feet and features a complex wooden structure with a skin of translucent fiberglass attached with 3, rivets. The work is a scaled-to-size World War II bomber airplane modeled after the North American B Mitchell. Manufactured by North American Aviation (NAA), it is named in honor of Major General William “Billy” Mitchell, a legend of U.S. military aviation.

Suspended in mid-flight, Flower Bomber delivers a payload of more than 3, aluminum flowers onto the atrium floor, where they accumulate into a large pile. The aluminum is from cans that were harvested by canners employed by Sure We Can, a non-profit recycling center in Brooklyn. Seven different flower species are represented, each laser-cut and shaped by hand in Villinski’s studio.

The sculpture transforms a weapon that was considered a symbol of violence into an emblem of beauty.

For the artist, Flower Bomber “connotes mankind’s desire to leave the world behind.” The son of an Air Force navigator, as a boy Villinski was fascinated with flight. In his 30s, he became an experienced pilot of sailplanes, paragliders and single-engine airplanes.

Villinski’s site-specific installation continues an ambitious and experimental atrium program establis

What keeps a person working at an age when most of us are happy to let others take care of business? These overachieving Virginians, all over age 80, have remained hard at work mostly for one or more of three reasons.

The first is being able to continue work with family. Retirement is rarely mandatory if you or your progenitors founded the company, which is the case for many of these dynamos.

The second is their desire to make their communities a better place, whether through their businesses or charitable good deeds, but usually both.

And last, but certainly not least, most take undiminished pleasure in continuing to wheel and deal.

Meet eight* outstanding octogenarian Virginians who aren’t yet done making their mark on the commonwealth. 

*The online version of this story includes a bonus ninth profile of nonagenarian Norfolk real estate magnate Harvey Lindsay Jr.

RAMON W. BREEDEN JR. | 87
President and CEO, The Breeden Co., Virginia Beach

“My hobby is really my business,” says Ramon W. Breeden Jr. “I’m thinking about it in the middle of the night.”

That level of intensity wouldn’t surprise anyone who has ever worked with the real estate magnate, who has been a go-getter from the get-go. The Richmond native grew up in modest circumstances and went to the University of Virginia on a baseball scholarship. When his parents couldn’t afford to keep him in school, Breeden wasn’t deterred, taking on odd jobs to finance his own education. He began his career as a math teacher but, desiring to be in charge of his own destiny, Breeden soon turned to real estate development and mortgage financing, founding The Breeden Co. in

In the 60 years since, The Breeden Co. has owned, managed or developed more than 15, apartments, 1, single-family homes and 2 million-plus square feet of retail and office space, mostly in Virginia. It now focuses on high-density, mixed-use projects, and its business continues to expand at a rate of 1

In the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors authorized the William H. Ruffner Medal to recognize individuals “who have rendered unusually distinguished services to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.” The medal is named in honor of William Henry Ruffner, Virginia’s first superintendent of instruction, who had taken a stand as early as for a practical system of agricultural education. In his role as state superintendent, he served on Virginia Tech’s first governing board for a decade. He also chaired a committee that planned the organization and instruction of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, the school known today as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. D. Lyle Kinnear, in his book The First Hundred Years, calls Ruffner “a towering figure, perhaps the towering figure, in shaping the early destiny of the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College . . . .”

On October 16, , Mr. Charles O. Gordon, Sr., then Rector of the Board of Visitors, appointed a committee representative of the faculty, administration, students, emeriti faculty, and alumni to consider individuals to whom the William H. Ruffner Medal might appropriately be presented. The committee was requested to make a recommendation each year to the Board, through the President, as to one or more such persons to whom the Board might wish to present such an award, if any were so identified.

Although the criteria were drawn purposely broad to provide the board with freedom in considering “notable and distinguished” service of a proposed recipient, examples of such service would include the following:

• Outstanding achievement in efforts devoted to the promotion, improvement, and development of the university’s mission as a land-grant university.
• Significant service on one or more of the official, informal, university-related, or otherwise designated advisory, counseling, volunteer, or action groups serving the university.
• Extraordinary interest in