Month: July 2026

By Kelsey Jones

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    LANCASTER COUNTY, Virginia (WTVR) — A Lancaster County mother has spent years fighting for her daughter life. Now she says she may have to fight all over again.

Haley Smith, 26, has Dravet syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy. She began having seizures at five months of age and was suffering more than 1,000 seizures a year before her mother, Lisa Smith, successfully lobbied for a change in Virginia state law in 2015 that allowed Haley to begin using Charlotte’s Web CBD oil. The family orders the oil from Colorado.

Since then, Lisa says Haley’s seizures have become less frequent each year.

“Now, at the age of 26 or almost 26, she’s having only two to four a month, which is remarkable. It’s the best she’s done in her entire life,” Lisa said. “Before CBD she was merely existing, and now she’s living.”

That progress is now at risk. Starting Aug. 15, changes to Virginia’s hemp law will eliminate an exemption that allows products with higher THC levels when paired with significantly larger amounts of CBD. Haley’s oil contains 180 milligrams of THC — well above Virginia’s normal limit for hemp products. Under the state budget approved last month, it will be illegal for Haley’s CBD oil to be sold as hemp in Virginia beginning Aug. 15.

“I don’t think it’s fair that we’re taking away something that we really fought for in 2015, and it’s done wonders for her and so many other people too,” Lisa said.

Democratic Sen. LaShrecse Aird was a key proponent of the change. In a statement, she said the law is not intended to interfere with medical care.

“I have deep compassion for any family trying to access treatment that improves a loved one’s quality of life, especially when it involves a child with serious medical needs. That is exactly why Virginia has allowed access to medical cannabis products for seizure-related conditions, and for any condition for which a practitioner recommends them, since 2015. Nothing in this framework takes away access to safe, tested products through our existing medical cannabis system. The purpose of closing the 25:1 loophole is not to interfere with legitimate medical care, it is to ensure products being sold broadly in the marketplace meet basic safety, testing, and accountability standards,” Aird said.

Lisa says if Haley is forced to go without her current CBD oil, the consequences could be severe.

“We could have a hospitalization, which we’ve had before, where she was induced into a coma, or we could be planning a funeral,” Lisa said.

Haley’s CBD oil will also become illegal at the federal level in November. Lisa says she is working with some members of Congress to change that.

“No one would really understand unless they’re living this,” Lisa said.

This story was initially reported by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. WTVR verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Anthony Sabella

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    NORFOLK, Virginia (WTKR) — A voicemail changed everything.

After News 3’s February report on Norfolk Botanical Garden’s decades-long effort to identify the 220 African Americans who cleared the land for the garden 90 years ago, a woman named Barbara Rice left a message.

“I was watching the news this morning as I normally do. I saw your story about the Azalea Gardens and the Black ladies that worked there,” Rice said in the voicemail. “I don’t know if you have my grandmother’s name or not, but I do know that she was one of the ladies that worked there.”

Her grandmother’s name was Marie Freeman Davis Boyd — a woman Rice called Big Mama.

“We would sit down at the dining room table. She taught me to embroider, she taught me to sew. We’d do puzzles sometimes,” Rice said when News 3’s Anthony Sabella recently spoke with her home in Virginia Beach. “This is the Big Mama that I know.”

Just like Big Mama shared her memories around the dining room table, Rice shared hers — and the only two photos of Big Mama she could find — around her table.

“She always talked about she only had a 5th grade education,” Rice said.

That lack of education left Boyd with few job options at the end of the Great Depression.

In 1938, Norfolk’s Works Progress Administration hired 200 Black women and 20 Black men to clear 25 acres of trees, brush, and swamp for the city’s Azalea Garden — now Norfolk Botanical Garden.

The work paid 25 cents an hour.

“They got picked up in a truck. You had to bring your own food,” Rice said she learned from her grandmother. “There was no bathrooms for the ladies there. I remember Big Mama talking about the snakes — that was why they had those thick rubber galoshes. She said it was terrible.”

Despite the conditions, it was a job.

Rice says the story was passed around her family, inspiring them to reach for more — until it faded into a distant memory.

Then came February.

“They were trying to find the ladies that helped build the botanical gardens and I was like, Big Mama told me those stories, she did that,” Rice said of seeing the News 3 segment.

Historian Martha McClenny Williams has spent more than 20 years trying to identify who she calls the “Original Gardeners.” The last known living WPA worker of Norfolk Azalea Garden, Mary Elizabeth Ferguson, died in 2017.

Williams records information from family members in her notebooks. Of the 220 workers, she has only been able to recover 75 or so names.

“There were no records kept, no names, nothing,” Helen Ferguson Williams, Mary Elizabeth Ferguson’s daughter, told News 3 in February. “The only thing we can rely on now is if their descendants can tell us.”

When Rice called the garden, the verification process began.

“It always begins with a telephone interview,” Martha McClenny Williams said.

That interview is followed by a handful of questions.

“Number one, the person must have been born somewhere between 1884 and 1922,” Williams said. “They must have lived in the city of Norfolk where they could have been picked up. Also, I want to hear some stories.”

Those stories must match what Williams knows about the garden’s construction and working conditions.

She says two months ago, she determined one name met the criteria.

“Marie Freeman Davis Boyd,” Williams said.

When asked how exciting it is to add a name, Williams did not hesitate.

“It is very exciting,” she said.

The recognition is complicated for many, McClenny Williams says, for the same reason it has been hard to get people to come forward.

“The work that they did in the garden did not give them a sense of pride,” Williams said.

Segregation laws also meant the people who built the garden were not allowed inside until the 1960s. Rice says her grandmother passed around 1961 and did not live long enough to see it.

“But I know she’d be pleased,” Rice said.

In September, Norfolk Botanical Garden will host its annual celebration of the WPA workers around the statue dedicated to them. Marie Freeman Davis Boyd’s name will be honored along around 75 others and Rice says she and her family will be there to celebrate their Big Mama.

“[Her descendants] are gonna be able to see this and know their grandma was somebody special, not just to us, but look at what she did and the adversities that she went through to do this so that we could be here now,” Rice said.

McClenny Williams says she’s also currently vetting two other names, but has not yet confirmed whether they were part of the Azalea Garden project.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Cyera Williams

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    PERRY POINT, Maryland (WMAR) — More than three decades after Rayfield J. Mason III received a bad-conduct discharge from the U.S. Air Force, a military records board found he was the “victim of an injustice” and upgraded his discharge to general under honorable conditions.

The 2022 ruling did not overturn Mason’s court-martial conviction, and he says it could not restore the years he lost to shame, anger and addiction. But today, Mason is nearly 10 years sober, married, a homeowner and someone others depend on.

He now returns to the Perry Point VA Medical Center to fish and enjoy the peace he once believed he would never find.

“I’ve had enough for a few lifetimes,” Mason said. “I just like peace and quiet.”

Mason joined the Air Force at 20 years old after attending the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. He said he was drawn to military service largely by the promise of help paying for college.

He served from 1986 to 1990 and spent his tour stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. In 1987, he traveled to Cairo, Egypt, for Exercise Bright Star.

Mason said he did not initially understand that being in the military extended beyond his workday.

“I thought what I was doing was a 9-to-5 job,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was a career.”

His military career changed after he was accused of using marijuana and cocaine.

“I was accused of the use of marijuana and use of cocaine,” Mason said. “Have I maintained my innocence? Since day one.”

Military records show Mason pleaded not guilty to both allegations. He was acquitted of cocaine use but convicted of marijuana use at a general court-martial. He was sentenced to six months of confinement, reduced to airman basic, ordered to forfeit pay and given a bad-conduct discharge.

Mason says he never had a positive urinalysis and believes he was convicted largely because of the people with whom he associated.

He also hired a civilian law firm to work alongside his military defense attorney.

As a young Black airman, Mason believes race affected how severely he was treated.

“I feel like my youth was stolen because of the color of my skin,” Mason wrote in a message after his interview. “I felt like my life wasn’t as important to some people as the lives of others.”

The Air Force board’s decision did not make a finding that Mason experienced racial discrimination.

After his conviction, Mason said he felt ashamed to identify himself as a veteran. The discharge was especially painful because his father, an Air Force veteran, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

“My dad is buried in Arlington Cemetery,” Mason said. “How do you live up to that? How do you live up to that?”

Mason returned to Baltimore angry at the Air Force, the judicial system and himself. He said the shame of the discharge and the feeling that no one believed him pushed him toward a self-destructive life.

“I didn’t want to be here anymore,” Mason said.

Heroin became an escape. Mason said he sometimes hoped he would use enough to fall asleep and never wake up.

“I used to wake up in the morning in active addiction, and I would literally cuss God for waking me up,” he said.

His addiction lasted approximately 27 years. He said relatives stopped trusting him, and he reached a point where his family took precautions when he entered a room because they feared he might steal from them.

For years, Mason blamed the Air Force for everything that followed his discharge. He eventually came to believe that he could not move forward until he took responsibility for the choices he made afterward.

“There was only one constant in everything—me,” Mason said. “So I blame myself. But you live and learn.”

Around 2015, Mason began working with attorney Michael Stone through the Homeless Persons Representation Project to seek an upgrade of his military discharge. The effort continued for approximately seven years.

His attorneys argued that Mason’s punishment was excessive, that he was not provided an opportunity for rehabilitation and that a first offense involving marijuana use would not typically receive such severe punishment under more recent Air Force practices.

While that legal fight continued, Mason began a separate fight for his life.

On Aug. 1, 2016, he entered a recovery program at the Perry Point VA Medical Center.

“I admitted myself into the program there,” Mason said. “Eventually, I bought into it, surrendered and just been running with it.”

Mason said Perry Point and the people he met in recovery saved his life. He became active in therapy, returned to steady employment and began rebuilding relationships with his family.

He later met the woman who became his wife. The couple married and purchased their first home in 2020.

By the time the Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records issued its decision in 2022, Mason said he had already decided he could no longer allow the discharge to control his future.

The board concluded that Mason was “the victim of an injustice” and granted relief based on clemency, citing his post-service conduct and successful transition into civilian life. His bad-conduct discharge was upgraded to general under honorable conditions, and his reason for separation was changed to “Secretarial Authority.”

The decision did not erase Mason’s marijuana conviction. The board stated that it did not have the authority to reverse or set aside a court-martial conviction.

Mason said the upgrade felt validating but incomplete.

“They said I was a victim of an injustice, and that was it,” he wrote. “I didn’t even get a face-to-face apology.”

Mason said he still recognizes the opportunities and sense of community military service can provide. He is sharing his experience not to discourage others from serving, but to give hope to veterans who believe shame, addiction or past mistakes have permanently defined them.

On Aug. 1, Mason will mark 10 years without a drink or a drug.

He now fishes at Perry Point, the same place where he entered recovery. What was once the site of his surrender has become a place of reflection and peace.

Mason hopes another veteran will hear his story and understand that no matter how many years have passed, it is not too late to fight for a different life.

“You could just give up, live out the rest of your life, or you can fight and live out the rest of your life,” Mason said. “Either way, you’ve got to live out the rest of your life. So why not fight?”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.