I want to talk about two elements of this story: Diego Osuna (the subject of the story) and Frank Shatz (the writer of the story). They illustrate what’s so great about this town that I’ve lived in for almost 25 years.
First, Diego Osuna. A native of Columbia, he attended William & Mary in the early 1990s. He was the co-founder and the first president of the college’s Latin American Students Club. While he was president of this club, he learned that Latin American ambassadors to the United States were having periodic meetings in nearby Washington, DC. He asked himself, Why not in Williamsburg? To make a long story short, he worked with William and Mary’s administration, the college’s Reves Center for International Studies, and some of the ambassadors themselves to bring a meeting to Williamsburg in 1992. He persuaded Colonial Williamsburg to provide free accommodations for the two-day meeting, which was attended by 10 Latin American Ambassadors.
Diego went on to a successful career with T-Mobile, where he is responsible for marketing to Hispanic people in the U.S.
Now, Frank Shatz. He is a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor who moved to Williamsburg with his wife for part of the year (the winters) in the 1980s, while living in Lake Placid, NY, during the summer. In the early 2000s they moved full-time to Williamsburg. Jaroslava Shatz, Frank’s wife of 74 years, died in 2022 after suffering from dementia for almost a decade. You can read about Frank here and here. You can read what he wrote about Jaroslava on the occasion of her death here.
Frank recently received an email from Diego Osuna, which led him to write his article today.
Here's what happened. Frank had interviewed Diego while the young man was in the midst of planning the Latin American Ambassadors meeting. Here’s what Diego wrote in his email to Frank:
“Dear Frank, I recently came across an article about you, and I realized that you are the same Frank Shatz that interviewed me for The Virginia Gazette, some 30 years ago, back in my student days at William & Mary.”
Frank, as one of the founders of the Reves Center at the college, had engaged the young college student as he was planning this event. Diego went on to say in his email:
“I just wanted to thank you for writing that article so many years ago and seeing something in me that I didn’t even realize that I had.”
Frank closed his article by saying that Dr. Todd Mooradian, Diego’s former marking professor and now dean of William & Mary’s business school, has asked Diego to come to Williamsburg to give a talk to his students.
Frank is still a lively presence in Williamsburg. He walks three miles a day, writes a weekly column for The Virginia Gazette, gives lectures at the college, and can be found holding forth at the college bookstore. Although his interests are extensive and diverse, his life’s work has focused on ensuring no one forgets the Holocaust.
There are a lot of college and university towns in America. They all feature a similar mixture of young energetic students and seasoned older folks. But it’s only in smaller college towns like Williamsburg that the encounters among these disparate communities are facilitated by a small number of common “third spaces.” In case you haven’t come across the term before, this sociological concept touts the value of what one article called “serendipitous, productivity-free” physical spaces. Not your home and not your workplace, a “third space” is something like a French café or an English pub. People who gather in third spaces are engaging in the waning art of “hanging out” just to see what develops.
Williamsburg is still small enough to have viable third spaces. It has one public library within the city limits; I suspect that if I hung out at the library every morning for a week I would see a lot of people that I know (although I’ve never tried this — even MY life is not that random). There are a couple of bars/restaurants that host regular karaoke or trivia nights where people gather just to hang out and have some fun. People who attend these events look forward to seeing the same folks from one week to the next. When I take a walk through the historic area of Colonial Williamsburg I almost always see someone I know – this 300-acre piece of land is a big third space. The Osher Program associated with the college generates third spaces, as people gather week after week to take classes and reconnect with friends. People sometimes go out to lunch or dinner together after a class.
Developers are aware of the need for third spaces. Many communities include amenities such as a clubhouse and meeting rooms. But because these spaces did not grow organically, they are often underutilized. Third spaces have to emerge from spontaneous desires to be with other people. Because technology increasingly diminishes our need to share spaces with other people – we shop from home, attend meetings via Zoom, and check out ebooks from the library rather than browse the shelves – we have lost many of the opportunities for serendipity that generate third spaces.
In a small town like Williamsburg, the possibility of seeing Frank Schatz on the street or at the bookstore, and the possibility of engaging with energetic students like Diego Osuna in a local coffee shop or deli, makes me want to be out and about.
If you would like to learn more about Frank Shatz, his book Reports from a Distant Place, a compilation of his writings about survival during the Holocaust and about living dangerously in Stalinist eastern Europe, is available at Amazon.
Well done, Karen, especially the part about the third space. Thanks!
Terrific piece. Enjoyed it and it confirmed why it is I am so happy here. I think Williamsburg, James City County is a GREAT place to live!