REMEMBERING BILL MARTIN

Richmond lost its best friend, advocate, storyteller and neighbor today

Bill Martin was Richmond’s best friend.

The kind of friend who asked uncomfortable questions, but never left the conversation. Who knew your history, remembered your mistakes, and always pushed you forward.

For more than 30 years, he led — or sparked — some of the most important, incisive, and insightful conversations about the city.

Richmond’s past. Richmond’s present. Richmond’s future.

Bill had informed opinions — points of view, really — on every dimension of our city.

Asked. Led. Sparked. Had.

Bill died today — Sunday, December 28, 2025 — after a tragic accident in downtown Richmond.

As the director of the Valentine Museum, dedicated to telling Richmond’s story, Bill was eyes wide open about the stories that the museum could, and needed to, tell.

“For a hundred years, we’ve told the story of white Richmond. And for twenty years, we’ve tried to tell the story of Black Richmond,” he told me over one of our first lunches. We were discussing strategic planning with then-board chair Jim Klaus. “I want to know whose story we need to tell for the next 100 years.”

Jim quickly suggested that we identify some low-hanging fruit to accomplish during his two-year tenure as board chair.

The answer to Bill’s question is obvious now. But fifteen years ago, it required institutional courage.

The story of Richmond’s LGBTQ community. Its Latino community. Its pandemics. (Ironically, two years before Covid.) Its statues. Its tattoos. Its Asian community. And so much more.

Bill started with the Valentine during a ridiculous and ambitious moment of rebranding for the history museum back in the 1990s. It involved a grand new campus at Tredegar and pink bicycles. Pink. It was soundly mocked in the pages of Caffeine, the scrappy Gen-X magazine a group of friends and I published at the time.

It later struck me as ironic on so many levels that the statue of Jefferson Davis spent some time laying prostrate on the Valentine’s floor, covered in graffiti. Pink graffiti. Maybe it wasn’t ironic at all. Just the history finally catching up to Bill’s long game.

He went on to save the museum — from its branding mistakes, and from financial ruin. Dragging the Valentine from despair to success preceded Richmond’s own parallel journey to success. A journey that in many ways was shaped by Bill’s prescient ability to see opportunity beyond the horizon — well before most of us knew there was a horizon, or a corner to look around.

“Let’s get lunch,” was my favorite Bill Martin phrase. It usually meant the garden at the Valentine, or a random food spot that had not been on my radar. Stories. Questions. And Bill’s droll sarcasm occasionally dripping out about some civic decision. Never mean-spirited, but always spot-on.

Bill didn’t like everyone in town.

But he was friends with everyone in town.

Maybe he learned growing up in Culpeper that you needed everyone in the community to be part of the conversation.

When another group of friends and I wanted to launch a four-part series of events on revolution, innovation and creativity in Richmond, we knew we wanted to kick it off with a fresh look at the past. (That was Bill’s suggestion. We seized it.) So we put a dozen creative directors and designers at tables with random groups of Richmonders and pages of historic Richmond events. (WTVR! Bread Riots! Benedict Arnold! Poe!) The assignment? Design a poster that represented an oblique view of our city’s past.

The fourth event was a “screening of a new Richmond story.” We asked Bill, Christy Coleman and Gregg Kimball — repping the Valentine, the American Civil War Museum, and the Library of Virginia — to lead the conversation. We packed the Library’s auditorium. And then Bill waved off the chairs and podium, and sat on the edge of the stage all criss cross applesauce. Christy and Gregg joined him.

It was how Bill always showed up. Serious, slightly left of center, ready to flex.

Bill’s legacy will be oversized. And others will have better, more personal, and probably much funnier stories to share about his life, and influence on so many of us — and our lives.

His legacy as it relates to Richmond? He was a catalyst. He accelerated our community’s leap away from the past by elevating new stories, and challenging the way we told old stories. He was part of the spine that has held the leaders of the region’s museum and cultural institutions together for decades. He was always the first one to reach out to new leaders in the cultural scene — new in age, new in tenure, or just new to the community.

His imprint on me? Profound. Our best conversations were way back in the early 2000s when Rachel Flynn was dragging the city kicking and screaming through a Downtown Master Planning process. The ideas flew like confetti when Bill was at the table, and he was eager to up the ante and elevate someone else’s good ideas. And to politely piss all over the many stupid, backward looking ideas that inevitably surfaced.

In July of 2009, I was struggling to launch my business. Eight months in. Nikole called to ask me to transfer money from Floricane’s account to pay our mortgage. I told her we didn’t have any money in Floricane’s account.

My old boss from VCU came over to talk Nikole and I through our next steps. To push me to make a decision about running a consulting firm. Long story short, Tom said, “On Monday, you stop talking to people about nothing, and you start asking them how you can help their organization’s be successful.” It was the most terrifying thing I could imagine.

Bill — and the Valentine — stepped in.

Before I could start those awkward calls, my phone rang. It was Bill. He wanted to have lunch with me and Jim Klaus to talk about strategic planning for the Valentine. Which gave me the confidence and the connections (and the cash) to keep the business going. (For better or worse!)

Which is what Bill did best. He kept going.

Here’s an email he sent me in March of 2020. Peak pandemic confusion. Peak Bill Martin.

“So good to hear from you. The coming months are going to be challenging, but the Valentine has a tradition of morphing to respond to the needs of the times. Our focus is really on how do we create more meaningful experiences in the days after this strange moment. Let me know when you are available and we can get that coffee on the calendar. Wash your hands. — Bill”

The Valentine will continue its tradition of morphing. The harder question is whether the rest of us will.

• Dive deep with Bill Martin, Style Weekly’s Richmonder of the Year for 2024

Five ways to channel your inner Bill Martin:

1. Ask the 100-Year Question — Even When It Slows the Meeting. Bill didn’t ask what could be done this quarter; he asked what story would matter after we’re gone. The Practice: In your life, in your work, introduce one question that reframes time entirely.

2. Treat New Voices as Essential, Not Symbolic. Bill didn’t “include” people; he reoriented himself, and institutions, around them. The Practice: When someone new enters a room, assume they see something you don’t, and ask.

3. Be Serious Without Being Earnest. The stage-edge moment matters. Humor wasn’t deflection for Bill; it was accessibility. The Practice: Loosen formality when the stakes are high, not when they’re low.

4. Invest Before There’s Proof. The Valentine amplified stories on the margins before funders were ready. Bill backed me before Floricane had traction. That’s leadership, not performance. The Practice: Offer real resources before certainty arrives.

5. Keep Going. Not relentlessly. Not blindly. But adaptively. Curiously. With eyes wide open. Like Bill.