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By: Times-Dispatch Staff
Published: November 19, 2011

Title: managing director, Have Site Will Travel Ltd.

Born: Richmond

Education: bachelor of science in accounting and finance, 1969, and international business certificate, 2009, Virginia Commonwealth University; professional designations of master of corporate real estate, 1986, and real property administrator, 1994

Career: General Services Administration real estate specialist, U.S. Department of Justice; real estate director, CB Richard Ellis-Corporate; real estate consultant, Dominion Telecom; managing director, Have Site Will Travel Ltd.

Where do you live: Henrico County

Claim to fame: VCU 1st Ultimate RAM!

Best business decision: "Leaving Richmond to move to Washington and joining the General Services Administration to work, learn and manage at a major, diverse project level."

Worst business decision: "Not knowing more about partners and associates and their understanding and tolerance of commercial real estate practices and risks."

Mistake you learned the most from: "Leaving the real estate business for another business venture, then not returning to real estate as quickly as I wanted."

First job after college: "Accounting with Markel Service and bookkeeper for Siegel's Super Markets. Always wanted to stay in sports broadcasting and administration, but the salaries were not there when I tried it, so I started in the real estate business."

If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently: "Stayed longer with a larger company to learn more about the business world from experienced leaders and expand my abilities."

Movie that inspired you the most: "The Godfather," the "Indiana Jones" series and anything with John Wayne.

Favorite/least favorite subject in school: Favorite was math; least favorite was the sciences.

VCU Library Exhibit Remembers 911 - Fri, 09/02

By: WESLEY P. HESTER | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: September 06, 2011

Walking through Virginia Commonwealth University's James Branch Cabell Library on Friday, student John Loan was stopped in his tracks by the images he saw being hung from the walls.

The prints — from artists Lili Réthi and Nicholas Solovioff — trace the construction of the World Trade Center towers in the late 1960s and early 1970s and serve as the centerpiece of an exhibit opening today about the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

"I looked at the prints, and they just floored me," said Loan, 55, a former acting coach who lived in a loft just blocks from the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. "I didn't realize I was still so affected by it still. I haven't talked about it in so many years."

Shortly after the first plane hit that morning, Loan scrambled to the roof of his building where he had an unobstructed view of the towers. Seeing the flames, he was struck with panic. He had friends who worked there, one of whom, Peter, would die that day.

"Then, the worst thing happened," Loan said, his voice quavering with emotion. "I saw the other plane coming. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was the only time in my life when I said, 'Am I dreaming this?' But I knew that I wasn't."

He said the plane seemed to scream as it hurtled into the building, exploding with deafening impact.

"That's when it hit me that it was not an accident. New York was under attack. But it wasn't just New York, it was my neighborhood — my home," Loan recalled tearfully. "I couldn't move. I just stared."

Then the towers collapsed, a plume of smoke, soot and ash washing over him.

"It was just unbelievable. Nothing you can even imagine," said Loan, who moved soon after the tragedy, trying to leave the emotions and memories of that day behind with the neighborhood, to which he hasn't returned.

Loan, who was born in Virginia, returned to Richmond and enrolled at VCU where he is working toward a double major in social work and women's studies.

He said seeing the prints awakened him to the fact that 9/11 will always be a part of him, no matter how far buried beneath the surface. That's why he plans to attend the exhibit. "I have to get through this," he said. "I can't stay in denial forever."

Earlier this year, with the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, VCU alumnus John Jay Schwartz came to the school with the limited-edition prints.

Schwartz, a real estate consultant who years ago had helped devise a rental strategy for the top floor of the World Trade Center, had received them as thanks from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which had commissioned them in the 1960s.

"There are lots of different perspectives on 9/11 and many folks are looking at the heroes and victims, the reaction of the country and the consequences," said university librarian John E. Ulmschneider. "With those prints, though, we saw an opportunity to take a different tack — to focus on the buildings."

As luck would have it, the school had the perfect complement on campus, courtesy of Stephen Vitiello, an associate professor in the department of kinetic imaging.

In 1999, Vitiello, an experimental musician and sound artist, was given a studio on the 91st floor of one of the towers for six months to record the sounds of the building and its surroundings.

Because the windows did not open, Vitiello mounted ultrasensitive microphones on the windows, capturing — especially in the wake of Hurricane Floyd — the vibrations of the building, its creaking and swaying, and the faint sound scape of New York City life.

The prints and Vitiello's recordings are the two main features of the university's 9/11 exhibit, which runs through Sept. 23 with an opening reception this Friday.

Just inside the library's entrance will be a "Wall of Memories," where patrons can post brief reflections on 9/11. On the fourth floor will be a series of three small exhibits, "Richmond and 9-11: 10 Years Ago," a collection of local media accounts, "Comic Artists Respond to September 11, 2001," and "Artists' Books Commemorate September 11."

Ulmschneider remembers the controversy over the construction of the towers, seen by some when he was growing up as "gigantic boxes that ruined the skyline."

But over time, he said, they "evolved into a core symbol of American preeminence and pride.

"They became such iconic buildings so important to what New York City thought of itself, what America thought of itself," he said.

Noting that many of VCU's incoming students were 8 when the towers fell, Ulmschneider said his greatest hope is that the exhibit will help them "understand why these buildings were so important, what they meant to us and what their loss meant to us."

By: Jeremy Slayton
Published: August 22, 2011

Suzanne Wolstenholme was not a very good secretary, and for that, appetites in the Richmond region are grateful.

The founder of the popular eatery and catering firm, Homemades by Suzanne, has been delighting customers' palates since she opened her first shop in Ashland nearly 30 years ago.

Originally conceived as a place for people, who have little time to cook, to pick up homemade dinners at the end of a busy workday, Homemades By Suzanne has evolved into a multi-division operation with locations in Ashland and downtown Richmond.

The company recently fulfilled one of Wolstenholme's dreams — Homemades by Suzanne handles the management, booking and catering of the two historically restored ballrooms at the Hotel John Marshall in downtown Richmond.

"It's like a dream come true," she said. "I always wished for a ballroom … and now I've got two."

A native of Richmond who now lives in Hanover County, Wolstenholme grew up in a family that would have a feast at the drop of the hat. That love of cooking stayed with her and helped plant the seed for the business she later founded.

It's a route she might not have taken had she not realized she was not cut out to be a secretary, a position she held in her early 20s, first at Reynolds Metals Co. and then at Kings Dominion.

By her own admission, she was not good at it.

"I never got fired, but I could always tell they were glad when I left," she recalled.

Even then she didn't launch herself into her company. She took a few years off work and learned chair caning at St. Joseph's Villa.

It was then that a friend suggested Wolstenholme go back to college and finish her degree, which she completed in business administration and management from Virginia Commonwealth University when she was in her early 30s.

Afterward, she couldn't immediately think of what she wanted to do with a career, so eventually she combined two things she loved — entertaining people and serving food.

* * * * *

Homemades by Suzanne is no longer just a place for people to pick up homemade dinners. It has evolved to include multiple divisions that provide boxed lunches, self-service catering, gift baskets and full-service catering.

She will continue to provide many of those services when her downtown Richmond operation moves in October from The Colony Club on East Franklin Street to the historic Hotel John Marshall, a 16-story former hotel at Fifth and Franklin streets that first opened in 1929 but closed in 1988.

It is being renovated into 238 apartments and 20,000 square feet of street-level retail space.

But the ballrooms will be Wolstenholme's domain, a place to cater weddings, serve lunch or reminiscence and share decades-old memories of the hotel's grand ballrooms.

"Almost everybody you meet in Richmond has a memory of these ballrooms," she said.

Even earlier this month, as renovation work at the hotel neared completion, Wolstenholme envisioned customers sitting in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the Marshall Room, the smaller of the two ballrooms, eating lunch.

Still, she is not straying too far from the company's early beginnings.

She will offer tenants in the Residences at the John Marshall a dinner program where they can order meals that John Marshall Catering — the new division of Homemades by Suzanne — prepares and stores in the apartment's refrigerator, ready when the tenant returns home after work.

It's much like she envisioned with she first opened Homemades by Suzanne in Ashland in 1983.

"You have to be good at the service, and the product has to be good, too," Wolstenholme said.

John C. Camper, who owns the Hampton Roads-based Virginia Atlantic Development Inc. — which acquired the John Marshall in 2005 and is co-owner on the project with Dominion Realty Partners — said he's known Wolstenholme for about seven years. But he feels as if he's known her his entire life.

"That's the way she makes you feel," said Camper, who describes the partnership with Suzanne as a win-win situation. "I think when you're a young bride or a business owner you want to feel comfortable with the person."

Wolstenholme has a long history in the Richmond region that includes once operating shops on Sixth Street in downtown Richmond, at Libbie and Grove, and at the Robins Tea House at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. Her company also once provided food for the dinner theater at the Barksdale Theatre in Hanover.

Jay Leno, before his "Tonight Show" fame in the early 1990s, once stopped in at the Sixth Street store. And during the 2008 election, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin visited the Ashland location while on the campaign trail.

* * * * *

Ashland Mayor Faye O. Prichard, who has known Wolstenholme for years, said Wolstenholme has a work ethic that is second to none.

"She never seems to run out of time," Prichard said. "The rest of us are confined by a 24-hour day; I'm not sure how many hours are in Suzanne's."

Life for Wolstenholme is not limited to just the business that bears her name.

She is an avid traveler and is active in the Ashland and greater Hanover County communities. She serves on the board of directors for the Hanover Humane Society and is active with the Ashland Chamber of Commerce, where she once served as its president.

Prichard credits Wolstenholme's hard work for keeping the Hanover Humane Society going over the years through helping with fundraisers and facility improvements.

She also has made a positive impact on the lives of others. Wolstenholme and her husband, Warren, are foster parents and have welcomed eight children into their home for various lengths of time.

"I think that we just felt so grateful having been blessed with all the good fortunes that we've had," she said. "We felt like it was a calling, something we needed to do."

Wolstenholme's company was lauded two years ago with the Small Employer Award from the National Association for Persons in Supported Employment.

The award is given to a business or people who advance equitable employment for people with disabilities.

"They need an opportunity just like anybody else," she said. "If we have one to give, then that's a good thing."

Prichard said Wolstenholme is not one to shy away from being her best, whether it's at her business or her nonprofit interests.

"Suzanne is the first one to always say, 'Competition is never a bad thing. We just have to show people that what we do, we do better than anybody else,' " Prichard said. "Those are not just words. She really does do whatever she does better than anybody else."

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