Mark Huffman is a “come here” who came to live in Virginia’s Northern Neck and later left for Richmond —but his heart remains in the Northern Neck, as he continues to give back to the adopted community where he and his wife lived fulltime for 17 years until their 2019 move to Richmond to be closer to family.
Huffman, who has been involved in media and broadcasting since he was 17 years old, grew up in Mayfield, Kentucky. Mayfield is perhaps best-known today as the small Kentucky town devastated by a December 2021 EF-4 tornado that killed 80 people and destroyed 400 buildings.
His small-town roots led Huffman away to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where he earned a B.A. degree in history and later embarked on a news career for a decade at the Associated Press Radio Network in Washington, D.C. He has also worked as a correspondent for Westwood One Radio and Marketwatch.com. In 2004, he became a news reporter focusing on consumer issues for www.consumeraffairs.com, a position he continues to hold. Consumer Affairs, often mistaken for the nonprofit Consumer Reports, began in 1998 as a news and advocacy site that has evolved into service journalism, helping readers make big purchasing decisions. Huffman says he began “dabbling” in video production in the 1980s during his news career.
After being introduced by friends to the area, he explains, “We wanted a place on the water, and I got tired of I-95 [traffic], so we sold our house and moved fulltime to the Northern Neck in 2002. When a former boss started consumeraffairs.com, I was hired as a contractor to write news articles and also did video [segments].”
In 2007, Huffman was working with Patty Long, then with Northern Neck Tourism, who suggested doing videos on all 19 museums in the Northern Neck area. He responded by doing a video featuring 90 seconds per museum that Huffman notes was “very successful.” In 2009, he was talking to Carroll Ashburn, now president of The Kilmarnock Museum at 76 North Main Street, about the possibility of doing a video on the history of Kilmarnock. Always interested in history and drawn to stories in the Northern Neck, Huffman wanted to do a video for cost that the museum could sell to help its mission.
“Because I work for Consumer Affairs, and they pay me well, I am not dependent [on the video business for income]. I just wanted to support the Kilmarnock Museum,” Huffman says of his video
production journey. “Back then it [cost] over $1,000 for 1,000 [DVD] copies. So we went to ten businesses and asked for $100 per business, and they got a little [commercial mention in the video].”
The resulting 26-minute film, titled Kilmarnock, Virginia Living History 2009 sold out, which whetted Ashburn’s appetite and started Huffman’s business, 26th Street Media, on the road to producing videos in a documentary-style that highlight stories and people of the Northern Neck.
“Money we pay him [Huffman] is for wholesale costs, and the money made [from video sales] is proceeds to the museum,” confirms Carroll Ashburn. “We have DVDs and flash drives for sale at the museum for $20.00 each. Museums in the Northern Neck that participate in the video sales also sell them for $20.00. The videos have raised our profile immensely.”
Following the success of his first video on Kilmarnock history, in 2010 Huffman produced a 38-minute film called The Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay that chronicles the lesser-known stories of the pirates of the Caribbean who spent time in the Chesapeake Bay, plying their trade amid the coves and tributaries of the Northern Neck. The film tells the story of colonial governors in both Virginia and Maryland joining together to wage war against the pirates who attacked not only ships of Britain’s Royal Navy but merchant ships as well, with the first recorded act of piracy taking place in 1635. Huffman eventually uploaded the Kilmarnock film and The Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay 2010 film to YouTube, where both can be seen today for free; at press time, the pirates film has had over 90,000 views.
Huffman says he uploads the video films to YouTube once museums sell out of his videos. Regarding his choice of subjects to focus on, Huffman shrugs, “I just think of things that interest me. At this time I am only trying to cover duplication costs, not production costs. I don’t really plan on retail distribution.”
His next video project, the 35-minutes long Historic Churches of Virginia’s Northern Neck 2020, was birthed by a simple premise: Huffman says he has driven by old church buildings in the area for years and began wondering about them and their histories. The resulting video, also currently available via YouTube, features not only the famous 1735 Historic Christ Church but many other area churches, such as Yeocomico Episcopal Church, established in 1655 and built in the 1700s.
“They think George Washington was baptized there,” Huffman says of Yeocomico Episcopal, the ninth oldest church in America. “It was built without plans and blueprints. I interviewed church historians and others.”
Another church featured in the video is St. Mary’s White Chapel Episcopal Church near Lively, a 1669 building whose cemetery includes the gravesite of now-classic film actress Margaret Sullavan. Born in Norfolk, Virginia to a wealthy stockbroker and heiress, Sullavan’s four marriages included husbands Henry Fonda and famed director William Wyler. She won an Academy Award in 1938 and made four movies with Jimmy Stewart. Two of her three children (from her third marriage to Hollywood agent Leland Hayward) committed suicide. Sullavan herself passed from an accidental prescription pill overdose in 1960 and after a Connecticut memorial service was interred in St. Mary’s church cemetery. Another church included in the film, Morattico Baptist, established in 1778 with the present building erected in 1856, spawned America’s first female missionary to China.
Huffman’s 24-minute 2023 film RADM Bert Chase-A Dream of Flight, also now available on YouTube, came about after another conversation with Ashburn.
“Carroll told me, ‘We have our very own Top Gun here’… technically, he [Chase] was not, because the Top Gun [school] was not yet established,” Huffman notes.
Ashburn says Bert Chase was a school classmate and describes him as “always full of mischief,” so he was well-aware of his story, which he shared with Huffman. The film follows the story of the late U. S. Navy Rear Admiral Henry “Bert” Chase, who grew up in Kilmarnock and died in 2021. Chase was an aviator similar to those portrayed in the Tom Cruise film Top Gun and flew planes like the FA-18 and F-4 phantom jets. Via interviews with his widow Genny and two of his four sons, Chase’s life is chronicled from his childhood dreams of flying in the film.
One of Chase’s stories: while stationed at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach and driving home to Kilmarnock, Chase stopped on the Norris/Route 3 bridge connecting Middlesex and Lancaster counties across the Rappahannock River. He devised a plan to fly his F-9 jet, which traveled at 600 mph, under the Norris Bridge—which he later did—becoming a local legend in the process.
For years Chase never talked about the incident. Ashburn says in the film, “He was afraid of repercussions… he finally admitted he flew under the bridge [in a U.S. Navy fighter jet] and then decided to fly over the town of Kilmarnock upside down.”
In the film, Chase’s son Hank notes the kind of jet his dad was flying could be in Kilmarnock from Virginia Beach in about three minutes. Hank Chase recalled in the film, “Grandma would talk about him flying over [Kilmarnock] all the time… today you would lose your wings [if you did that].”
“We premiered the film at the Compass Cinema Six in Kilmarnock. I told [Huffman] everyone will want to see this,” Ashburn recalls. “We booked it for four shows for two nights and sold tickets. We wound up having five showings, including a showing at Rappahannock Westminster Canterbury [retirement community] and sold out all of them.”
Huffman’s film, A Fish Story, premiered in May 2024, also had five showings. That film covers all aspects of the fishing industry, including crabbing, oystering and the menhaden industry in Reedville. The Kilmarnock Museum, as well as The Reedville Fisherman’s Museum at 504 Main Street in Reedville, is selling A Fish Story at their respective museums now.
“I don’t put anything on YouTube that the museums are trying to sell,” Huffman explains. Once the video sells out, I put it on YouTube, because it gets the story out there. People don’t realize how important local history is—this region has so many stories!”
Huffman is already looking at his next story (or video, in this case) which will focus on steamboats.
“If you think about it, the Northern Neck was totally isolated [in the era before bridges connected the Northern Neck to the mainland], but with steamboats, you could get on a steamboat and be in Baltimore the next morning,” Huffman says.
Huffman says the most rewarding aspect of producing videos about the Northern Neck involves his love of history.
“I majored in history in college and always liked it. I enjoy learning, especially about places where I have lived. In each of these [video projects], I have learned about people who came before us and had a lot of impact,” he explains.
Carroll Ashburn notes, “It’s been amazing for him to do this for us, basically just giving back. He’s an amazing person. It [proceeds from the videos] has kept the museum going. We operate on donations—we do get some grants, but we have no government funding.”
By the way: from his home in Richmond, Huffman discloses that he’s purchased a lot in Lottsburg for a second home to be built there— “so again soon we will be part-time residents on the Northern Neck.”
DVD copies of most of the videos are sold at the Kilmarnock Museum.