History, despite its wrenching pain,
cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage,
need not be lived again.
—Maya Angelou (1928–2014), “On the Pulse of Morning”
Laughter broke the silence of the subterranean sanctuary just as Gary and I were approaching the garage elevator and saw the sign at the same time.
We couldn’t help ourselves.
The sign was anchored prominently on the wall to the right of the call button. Painted forest green, it was so glossy, even in the shadows, that it made the letters of the hotel’s former name seem more raised than they might have seemed otherwise. And the overlaid white lettering of the hotel’s new name seemed nearly an afterthought.
After our first burst of laughter, Gary and I both gasped:
“Oh. My God. Why’d they do that? Why didn’t they install brand new signage? This is just … painted o’er!”
We kept laughing as we took the elevator up to the spacious historic lobby. I recognized it at a glance. It was exactly the same as it had been when I attended meetings there a decade ago. And a year before that. And a year earlier.
We were in the midst of understated, old-world elegance. Muted olive-green velvet sofas and generous upholstered chairs gathered over richly patterned rugs, and dark-wood nested tables gave the seating areas a slightly clubby intimacy. Overhead, enormous brass chandeliers hung dramatically. The whole place felt gracious, traditional, and faintly grand—comfortable rather than showy, as though it had settled safely into its history.
Nothing had changed. Except the name.
And when it came to the parking garage, the signage hadn’t changed either. Not really. Its historic name—though painted o’er—overpowered the present.
I was still laughing quietly when we found our room and got settled in. I could not help but think about a similar scenario in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.”
After sleeping for twenty years, Rip returns to find the quiet village inn gone, replaced by a shabby “Union Hotel”; the old shade tree has given way to a flagpole flying the unfamiliar stars and stripes. The world he knew has become a new nation.
But then Irving undercuts the transformation.
Rip looks at the tavern sign and recognizes the same ruby face of King George beneath the alterations. The red coat has simply been changed to blue and buff; the sceptre becomes a sword; a cocked hat is added; and “General Washington” is painted on top.
Painted o’er.
Surprisingly, this whole notion of a name change and what it means—or doesn’t—packed itself up and followed me as Gary and I drove back to our Shenandoah Valley home.
I started thinking about name changes outside literary landscapes. I started thinking about name changes in the real world.
I started thinking about Shenandoah County’s Stonewall Jackson High School. In 2020, following nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd, the Shenandoah County School Board voted to rename it Mountain View High School, removing a name associated with the Confederacy.
Four years later, a newly elected school board voted to restore the name Stonewall Jackson High School. In August 2026, a federal judge ruled that restoring the Confederate names violated federal law and ordered the School Board to replace them. The board has appealed the ruling and is seeking to keep the names in place while that appeal proceeds.
For now, Stonewall Jackson High School is Stonewall Jackson High School once again.
Painted o’er. But in reverse.
The new name hadn’t been lettered over the old one. The old name had been lettered back over the new.
And that old name carried a history of its own. During the trial, a historian testified that when the school board first chose the name Stonewall Jackson, it did so in part to discourage Black students from seeking transfers into the newly opened high school.
That wasn’t a name chosen for its ring. That was a name chosen to keep a door closed.
And then I thought again about the hotel.
I had known it for decades as the Stonewall Jackson Hotel. Now, I had slept in Hotel 24 South.
I couldn’t help but wonder about its name change. What prompted it? Would it, too, return to what it had been before? Had the hotel simply painted o’er?
I had no idea. But I knew a little research might help me decide whether I had been laughing at or laughing with.
I found the answer, and it, too, took me back to 2020.
In the weeks following the murder of George Floyd, protesters began gathering outside the Stonewall Jackson Hotel, calling for the hotel to change its name and remove the enormous rooftop sign.
On June 16, the owners announced that they would do just that. They said they wanted to respect the history of the Shenandoah Valley while honoring all of its citizens and, with a new name, embrace “a future that enhances our values of equality and inclusiveness for everyone.”
Fine words. But words are easy.
The protesters knew that. They kept coming. They wanted to see the words followed by action.
In July, signs began coming down. In August, the hotel asked Staunton’s Historic Preservation Commission for permission to remove “Stonewall Jackson” from that enormous rooftop sign—the very sign I had seen more times than I can count. On September 1, the new name was announced.
Change took place. Real change.
Hotel 24 South.
The new name intrigued me, too. It wasn’t an attempt to invent a history for the place. Quite the opposite. The hotel stands at 24 South Market Street and opened in 1924. Its new name reached backward even as the hotel’s owners said they were looking forward.
Then I discovered something else.
The enormous rooftop sign itself wasn’t original to the hotel. It had been added decades later, as downtown Staunton businesses worried that bypasses, Interstate 81, and development on the city’s outskirts would carry travelers—and their dollars—right past them.
Even Staunton’s preservation staff concluded that the sign was not historically significant to the architecture of the hotel. Old, yes. Familiar, certainly. But not an essential part of what made the building historic.
That stopped me. I had been thinking about all of this backward.
Changing the name hadn’t changed the hotel’s history. The history was still there. The building was still there. The grand lobby was still there. The olive-green sofas, the rugs, the dark wood, the enormous brass chandeliers—all of it had greeted Gary and me when we stepped off that elevator.
Stonewall Jackson was still there, too. Not on the roof. Not over the entrance. Not as the hotel’s name. But in its history.
And get this. Hotel 24 South doesn’t pretend it was never the Stonewall Jackson Hotel. Its own history still says that it was. What changed was not the past.
What changed was what the hotel chose to call itself in the present.
Maybe that was what I had missed when Gary and I stood in that parking garage laughing at that ridiculous-looking sign.
Those raised letters underneath the glossy forest-green paint suddenly looked different to me.
They weren’t necessarily evidence of something unsuccessfully hidden. Maybe they were evidence of something remembered.
There is a difference.
We cannot paint o’er the past and make it disappear. Nor should we. George III remains underneath George Washington. Stonewall Jackson remains part of the history of a grand old hotel in Staunton—and part of the history of a high school in Shenandoah County.
But remembering a name and continuing to bear it are not the same thing.
The hotel chose to remember. The school board chose to bear it again.
One lets the past show through. The other asks the past to speak for the present.
Was I laughing at that sign in the parking garage? Laughing with it? With it, I think.
Perhaps that old sign got it right after all. The old name is still there. You can see it if you look.
But over it, another name.
Painted o’er. This time, with good intent.
