My story is about a gunfight, a historical mystery and a secret society… all in Hampton Roads.

Mostly, it’s about one of the saddest things I’ve ever learned, something that breaks my heart every time I think about it. You don’t really get to tell your own story.


All your life you are stuffing messages into bottles and throwing them into the ocean. You hope those messages will help someone, someday.

Which brings us back… to the election of 1878.
Willis Hodges was a community leader – a free Black man born in Virginia in the time of slavery.

I discovered something even more surprising: Hodges formed his own secret society in 1842 to help enslaved people escape the area.

I went looking for clues about who might have been in the secret group. I found people who were already researching different parts of this question – historians collecting new information about the Underground Railroad, local residents uncovering their own family stories and a church community trying to preserve its legacy.

Hodges spent his last years vilified by white society. He died in relative obscurity. To this day no one has ever even found his grave. But he and his network changed lives. Hidden heroes are everywhere in the American story. That fact suggests two things:

First, it will take a host of people to tell the story of social justice in America. Historians will play a role, but so will families, community leaders and random people digging into books and boxes. They’re out there finding the truth many of us have ignored.

Second, you simply don’t know what your life will mean to others. You may never see anything approaching victory. The greatest things you will ever do, or attempt, are messages to people you will never meet. Take heart. Keep going.
Paul Bibeau has been a reporter and producer for more than 20 years, with bylines in Marketplace, the Washington Post, the New York Observer, and other outlets.

He produced The Secret War of Willis Hodges, an 8-part investigative podcast for WHRO about previously hidden portions of the Underground Railroad in Hampton Roads.

He was a producer for HearSay With Cathy Lewis from 2018 until its final show in 2021.

Bibeau reports stories on the military, politics, history and city government and has won multiple awards for investigative journalism.

In 2006 he wrote Sundays with Vlad, a humorous book on the legacy of Dracula, for Crown/Three Rivers. As part of his research, he rented a car and traveled across Transylvania, tracing the path of Jonathan Harker in Stoker’s book. He appeared as a Dracula expert in an HBO documentary on the subject.

Bibeau has a beautiful and tolerant wife and three boys who are smart and often break thing This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at [ Ссылка ]

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