Suffolk, Virginia - Notable People

Notable People

  • Amedeo Obici, founder of Planters' Peanuts, and his wife Louise, made Suffolk their adopted home. The 1951 Louise Obici Memorial Hospital was a gift to the community in her memory, recently replaced by a new facility, and later acquired by the Sentara Health System and renamed to Sentara Obici Hospital.
  • Virginia Governor Mills E. Godwin Jr. was from the Chuckatuck community of old Nansemond County.
  • AndrĂ© Leon Talley, Deputy Editor of Vogue Magazine, is a Suffolk native.
  • Lex Luger (producer), a hip-hop music producer.
  • Hope Spivey, Gymnast. Participated in 1988 Olympics in Soeul.
  • Joe Maphis, born Otis W. Maphis, in Suffolk in May 1921 and was one of the flashiest country music guitarists of the 1950s and 60s. He was known as "King of the Strings".
  • Charlie Byrd, famous guitarist born in Suffolk, Virginia, in 1925 and grew up in the town of Chuckatuck, Virginia. Byrd became the American guitarist who best understood and played Brazilian music, especially the Bossa Nova genre. In 1962, Byrd collaborated with Stan Getz on the famous album, Jazz Samba, a recording which pushed bossa nova into the mainstream of North American music

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