He stopped, did a double take, turned to his daughter and whispered, “That’s Ralph.”
It was a quiet, early August morning on the University of Virginia’s historic Lawn, and activity was limited to a tour for prospective students and a photo shoot inside 6 East Lawn, one of the rooms reserved for the University’s highest-achieving fourth-year students.
The older gentleman, walking in the back of the tour, couldn’t help but notice a familiar, towering figure as the group passed by on the east side of Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village.
There, in the small space where he once lived, the 7-foot-4 Ralph Sampson was posing for a variety of images. It’s been 42 years since Sampson resided on the Lawn during his final year as a UVA basketball superstar, but his aura remains.
When Sampson was chosen as a subject for the University’s historic portrait series, he was intentional about the location.
“We had brainstormed some other ideas,” UVA Today senior photographer Matt Riley said, “and he said, ‘No, I want to do it in my Lawn room.’”
Riley and his colleague Emily Faith Morgan spent hours arranging Sampson’s old room to feel like 1982 again. The walls were adorned with photos and posters from Sampson’s UVA days. A few of Sampson’s individual trophies sat on shelves. Tunes even played from a boombox.