Joe Tennis of the Bristol Herald (VA) and author of "Beach To Bluegrass" was a guest of the JEB Stuart Birthplace Trust on June 2, for the Scottish Highland Games.

Joe has taken sincere interest in the site representing the home of Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, CSA, and the Stuart and Lechter Family of the 1700's and 1800's. He spent considerable time interviewing Tom Bishop, Executive Director of the Patrick County Chamber, Shirley Keene of the Birthplace and Henry Ayers of the Patrick County Historical Society at Saturday's Event. The JEB Stuart Birthplace Trust presented a gift basket to Joe with items representing the Patrick County community. Below is a resume of Joe fromt the Bristol Herald: "Features writer and "Tennis Anyone?" columnist Joe Tennis joined the Bristol Herald Courier in 1993. A Virginia Beach native, Tennis spent his early years traveling to the Tri-Cities to visit his grandparents in Greeneville, Tennessee, about an hour south of Bristol. A graduate of Radford University, Tennis began his journalism career as a freelancer for The Virginian-Pilot in 1990. He later served as an intern and correspondent for The Roanoke Times and spent a year as a staff writer for the Kingsport Times-News. Tennis' love of local history, waterfalls, lakes and scenic mountains inspired his first book, 2004's "Southwest Virginia Crossroads" (The Overmountain Press), an illustrated history and guide that Tennis said he wrote "to prove the state does not stop in Roanoke." Tennis subsequently released two more books, "The Marble and Other Ghost Tales of Tennessee and Virginia" (Backyard Books) and 2007's "Beach to Bluegrass" (The Overmountain Press), which follows a journey across Virginia on U.S. Highway 58. His work for the Bristol Herald Courier has won numerous awards from the Virginia Press Association, Tennessee Press Association, Northeast Tennessee Tourism Association and Society for Professional Journalists. He and his wife, Mary, have two children."