14 May 29 , 2022
Virginia House of Delegates, including part of Clarke, told the
Winchester Star that he thought “very highly” of Tom and
Sharon. LaRock was also at Trump’s Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6
and followed the crowd afterward to the Capitol. He did not
respond to a request for comment for this story.
I asked Bev McKay, a Republican on the Clarke County Board
of Supervisors, how local government could best work to counter
extremism. “We don’t have concerns about political extremism
or possible violence,” he replied in an email. “This is a very
peaceful community.”
But Russell felt that the growing tensions in the county had
predated Trump and that things were getting worse, not better.
“It was coming since Fox News and [Rush] Limbaugh,” he said.
“With Trump, it intensified."A
bout a mile from the Berryville Grille is the Josephine
School Community Museum, whose building was con-
structed in 1882 by the area’s African American community so
their children could receive an education. Today it documents
the history of Clarke’s Black population. As I walked through the
museum’s archive, I learned that 200 years ago White elites
enslaved an estimated 3,439 people on plantations across the
county. After the Civil War, political leaders embarked on a
concerted effort to consolidate the White vote through portray-
ing Black people as criminals. Much of Clarke’s Black population
eventually moved on, many traveling north in line with the Great
Migration. Those who stayed founded some 20 Black communi-
ties across Clarke, including Josephine City. Today, based on the
most recent Census, Clarke County’s population is 14,881, and
90.6 percent identify as White, 6.4 as Latino, 4.7 as Black and 1.
as Asian.
The Caldwell family moved to Clarke from D.C. sometime in
the 1960s, when it was full of apple orchards that later thinned.
Tom’s father, Robert Caldwell, had a managerial position with
the Interstate Commerce Commission that covered the Shenan-
doah Valley, according to his obituary. When the Caldwells
arrived with their two children, the county was still segregated,
integrating its schools a year before Tom entered Clarke County
High School in 1967. In 1972, the Ku Klux Klan paraded down
Main Street, and then again in the 1980s. “When I graduated,”
recalled Dee-Dee Liggins, now 67 and on the Josephine Museum
board, “you could count the White kids on one hand who were
friendly.”
On Tom’s senior yearbook page, class of 1972, he’s clean-cut
and smiling broadly. Tom was involved in a litany of activities:
theater, football, chess club, recipient of a National Merit
Scholarship, member of the homecoming court committee.
Downtown at the Family Dollar store, Vickie Huff, also class of
’72, told me that Tom was respectful of teachers, interested in
girls, and one of the smart kids. She was shocked when she heard
he’d been arrested after Jan. 6, because “he was just an ordinary
guy.”
After college, Tom followed his paternal line into the military,
joining the Navy. Tom’s grandfather was in the Army, and his
father enlisted in the Navy during World War II. (Sharon also
comes from a military family; her father was in the Air Force.)
The Navy’s records indicate Tom served for more than 19 years.
According to Tom’s website, his spine was injured while he was
on active duty, leaving him with chronic pain.
After Tom retired from the Navy in 1995, he moved back to
Clarke and onto his family’s property. “I left the Navy to see the
world. I saw it, I didn’t like and I came back here,” Tom told “Theif any of those threads fit together to possibly radicalize Tom
Caldwell. I went home to find out.
I
n many ways, Clarke County is like any other rural region of
Virginia. The county seat, Berryville, consists of a Main Street
with two stoplights and a handful of restaurants and shops.
Outside the county courthouse is a granite statue of an unnamed
Confederate soldier, one of several Civil War relics spread across
the area. Berryville was deemed so symbolic of rural America
that in 2017, national Democrats launched their election
campaign agenda from there, briefly descending into the
“ruby-red” county, as a Washington Post headline about the
event described it. The writers called Berryville a convenient
drive but a “world away” from Washington.
I always found that separation begins as you drive across the
mountain from the increasingly suburban Loudoun County.
Cellphone reception cuts out, and as you pull over the crest into
Clarke, the highway bisecting the Appalachian Trail, blue-gray
ridges materialize across the horizon. To someone driving
through, there is probably nothing remarkable about the place, a
stopover on the way to the more bustling Winchester or historic
Harpers Ferry.
But those of us who grew up there know differently. There is
something almost mystical about the land, a presence better felt
than described. In late July, I sat on a porch on the mountain on
a sweltering morning and stared at a locust tree so large it
seemed to obliterate the sky. The withered trunks and branches
of oak, beech, tulip and walnut trees cover the foothills,
concealing black bears, deer and owls. The Shenandoah River
flows north through the area, and to the west of its muddy banks
lie the tiny communities of Boyce, Millwood and White Post,
situated amid farms and meadows. For decades, the county has
attracted people who want to live off the grid, whether they are
artists, farmers or simply people who prefer not to be found.
Tom and Sharon Caldwell reside in a one-story house on 19
acres of his family’s land in the remote northwestern part of the
county, near the West Virginia border. Tom’s fundraising
website explains that he works diligently to care for the farm,
weeding out invasive plants and replacing them with native ones.
At the time of his arrest, a “Trump Country” sign was posted
on Tom’s barn, according to a photo in the Winchester Star.
When I visited, it was no longer visible, but plenty of other
Trump signs were still on nearby plots. In 2020, Tom’s district
voted overwhelmingly for Trump, at 82 percent, more than any
of the county’s other four districts.
Downtown at the Berryville Grille, a popular breakfast spot
on Main Street, I met Jesse Russell, 73, a local historian whose
family has lived in Clarke since the 1700s. For years, Russell has
volunteered to work the Clarke County Democrats booth at the
weekend farmers market. Over coffee, he told me that for a long
time, there was friendly banter between the Democratic and
Republican booth volunteers, some of whom had gone to school
together. Then a few years ago, things changed. People he didn’t
know started manning the other booth. “The guy who was in
charge was giving you these dirty looks,” he recalled. “It was
bizarre. Because I was a Democrat, I was the enemy.”
In 2020 both Tom and Sharon were delegates of their district
to the local Republican convention in Berryville. I was eager to
meet with the Clarke County Republican Party, and I reached out
to its former head Greg Valker, as well as the current chairman,
Mark Tate, but both declined my request. Dave LaRock, a
Republican from the area who represents District 33 in the