Snow like reflections of cotton wave over the cab of Elvin Hunter’s cotton picker. File photo by Christopher Tyree

Work. It fills our waking hours. It supports us. It excites us. It exhausts us. It defines us.

“Working Virginia” probes how Virginians feel about their jobs.

From day laborers and odd-jobbers to federal agents and CEOs, they all see work as a reflection of their goals, values and sense of self. The project examines how — or if — jobs intersect and shape their personal lives. 

The series – an idea borrowed from the legendary journalist Studs Terkel - collects the stories and images of Virginians across the commonwealth and through many communities. 

American work and family life has changed since Terkel conducted his interviews more than a half-century ago. Today, how do we think about work?

monthly series

 
Featured
A bagel-makers secret: “You'll just keep rolling and rolling and rolling”
A bagel-makers secret: “You'll just keep rolling and rolling and rolling”

If you stop for a bagel before your morning commute, you’re not alone. Over the course of a year, 200 million Americans are doing the same thing. Any way you slice it, bagels are a billion dollar business.

Ordered as a sandwich or with only a schmear, we expect them to be fresh. And that’s why Zephaniah Cain starts working at 3 a.m. every day. He does it for us. Cain bakes bagels.

Cain was born in Hawaii when his father was stationed there with the Army, and grew up in Portsmouth with his parents and two younger sisters. Cain did his own tour with the Army in the 1990s and worked as a chef. After various jobs, he always came back to cooking. He has been baking at Yorgo’s Bageldashery for the past five years. He’s so much a part of the business, a sandwich is named after him.


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A call to nursing, delayed but not denied
A call to nursing, delayed but not denied

Sharon Baker rested on a metal bench outside Sentara Norfolk General Hospital after her 12-hour nursing shift in the emergency department. Eyes wide-open — simultaneously alert and exhausted — she finally had a moment to relax in the early morning. 

Nearly one-third of registered nurses say they might leave their job in the next year. Not Baker. She worked too hard for this. Since childhood, nursing was her dream. 

Baker’s path was a long one. She grew up in Norfolk, the daughter of a Navy veteran and a mother who immigrated from the Philippines. She wasn’t a great student, and found a steady job after high school as a bartender in Ghent. 

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Engineering a balanced life
Engineering a balanced life

Dave Covington always knew he would be an engineer. His father put in 40 years at the Virginia Department of Transportation. His uncle was a branch chief for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center.

After college, Covington worked as a consulting engineer for 16 years. In 2014 he joined VDOT. Today, he is a program director for more than $2 billion of road and bridge improvements on 325 miles of Interstate 81. On the job, Covington relies on sophisticated technology and tools. But on his 107 acres in Highland County, where there is only a 10 x 12-foot cabin, Covington looks for a simpler life. One where work is more meaningful than his job. It’s a philosophy of life that he wants to pass along to his daughter.

Covington, 46, lives in Stuarts Draft. He spoke to us in a studio and again on his land in Highland County.

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A millennial’s search for connection becomes full-time work
A millennial’s search for connection becomes full-time work

Erik Barrett blurs the lines between job, work and life. He thinks of himself as an educator who uses podcasts and the streets as his classrooms. He’s an activist fighting to introduce and include minorities and the disadvantaged and overlooked into every facet of his community. He’s a self-styled philosopher, preacher and politician. In 2022, he ran for a seat on Norfolk City Council in Ward 4. He lost. 

Barrett uses the theme songs from two 1970s television shows, “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons,” to explain two career paths he could take as a Black man. He rejected one and embraced the other.

Barrett, 39, lives in Norfolk, Va.


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A marshal, a national tragedy and a new perspective
A marshal, a national tragedy and a new perspective

Greg Baxter joined the U.S. Marshals Service in 2006. He previously had worked security details in the State Department and the Supreme Court, and guarded U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Baxter, 50, lives in Herndon, Va.

On September 16, 2013, Baxter was one of the first responders with a team of federal agents at the Washington Navy Yard after civilian contractor Aaron Alexis murdered 12 people in an office building. It changed his life.


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 Working Virginia was a five part series by Philip Shucet. You can reach him at: philip.shucet@philipshucetphotography.com. Words and pictures ©️Philip A Shucet.