Monday, May 5, 2014

Tyler Potterfield


Tyler Potterfield, 2009.



It has been just over a week since we learned of the death of Tyler Potterfield. The loss of our friend and colleague still hurts. Tyler was a senior planner in the Richmond Department of Planning and Development Review. He wrote, published, and lectured on the city's history. He was the co-founder of the Shockoe Examiner and wrote our very first blog post, published nearly five years ago on the origins of the name Shockoe.

As many Richmonders know, in his role as a city planner, citizen and city historian, Tyler was generous with his time and knowledge. His death at age 55 was too early. He had so much more to contribute to the world - of making the city a better place to live and of chronicling its history.

While the news of Tyler's death has been sad for us, we know it is not a tragedy. We were lucky to have known him and to have called him our friend. With his quiet manner, he lived life to its fullest. That's not a cliche when it comes to describing Tyler's life. He seemed to be always involved in a variety of new projects, new publications, or planning new trips. He was busy living.

Our thoughts are with his wife and our friend, Maura Meinhardt, his parents, Ruth and Thomas Potterfield, Sr., and his sister Beth. He will be greatly missed by them and by his many friends and colleagues. 

If we want to honor him we should try to emulate his passion for life.

- Ray and Selden.

Below are links to recent articles about Tyler:



by Harry Kottatz, Jr., Richmond Magazine, April 30, 2014.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I never met Mr. Potterfield, but read his book this spring and decided to use it as a textbook in a college class next fall. I was looking for contact information to ask him to come give a guest lecture to the class and instead found that he had suddenly died at such a young age. I am very sorry for his family and friends.