The day a doctor found the tumor his left thigh, Mark Herzlich went home and lay in bed for two hours. He thought about his future—what chemotherapy and radiation treatments would be like, and how they might affect his chances of playing in the NFL. A few months earlier, Herzlich, a linebacker, finished the best season of his life. He led Boston College in tackles and was named the ACC’s defensive player of the year and a third-team All-American. This fall, as a senior, he was going to be one of the nation’s best defensive players, certainly a high pick in the 2010 NFL draft.

Vinny Giles, Lanny Wadkins, Bobby Wadkins, Curtis Strange and Robert Wrenn are among the best golfers who have called Virginia home. This is one fivesome the Virginia State Golf Association Foundation will allow on its state home for golf course, Independence Golf Club in Midlothian. The five greats will come together Oct. 5 for the Virginia Legends of Golf Skins Game exhibition. Tee time is 1 p.m.

A keyhole garden, a type of raised garden that occupies less space and is more accessible, is one option that’s getting some buzz among people who support gardening techniques that are environmentally friendly and require fewer resources.

More than 500 former Qimonda employees gathered at a career fair at Virginia Commonwealth University to network and talk with prospective employers about their job offerings.

General Motors Corp. could be majority-owned by the federal government under a massive restructuring plan laid out yesterday. The plan calls for GM to cut 21,000 U.S. factory jobs and eliminate the storied Pontiac brand by next year.

Embattled Republican Party of Virginia chairman Jeffrey M. Frederick is signaling that he will fight to regain his post at the state convention in May if the party’s leaders vote to remove him today. “I’m confident I’ll win the vote and this won’t be an issue,“ Frederick told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “However, if a chairman is removed, the Party Plan clearly states that the next regular Republican State Convention . . . must choose a new chairman.“

Fallen NFL star Michael Vick told a bankruptcy judge yesterday that he became a changed man in prison and is determined to do all the right things upon his release, including repaying his creditors with the millions he hopes to resume earning in professional football. But after more than three hours of testimony in which Vick laid out what he called his “exit strategy,“ U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Frank J. Santoro rejected it. Santoro told Vick to draft a new Chapter 11 plan, one with more certainty.

First Market Bank is hooking up with a bigger state bank, creating the largest Virginia-based financial institution. First Market Bank, mostly owned by Ukrop’s Super Markets Inc., said yesterday that it plans to join Union Bankshares Corp. in Bowling Green in a deal valued at $105 million.

Thomas Jefferson High School students had a very special visit yesterday. A delegation of students from Saitama, Japan, came to the school for a morning of cultural exchanges as part of the sister-city relationship between Richmond and Saitama.

Key elements of the state’s settlement over the Virginia Tech massacre continue to be dogged by delays that many families and victims say are frustrating. The settlement eight months ago resolved 46 lawsuits alleging Tech officials delayed warning the campus after senior Seung-Hui Cho’s first two of 32 murders on April 16, 2007.

Charges are pending against three Henrico County juveniles accused of starting a fire Tuesday night that destroyed a historic barn. The youths, whose names were not provided by authorities because of their age, have been released to the custody of their parents.

If former Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder’s slavery museum is being abandoned in Fredericksburg, some Richmond officials say it’s time to talk about the project—or something like it—for Shockoe Bottom.

Virginia licenses. inRich.com, keyword: featured New driver’s licenses to feature secure black-and-white photos
Whether your Virginia’s driver’s license is valid is becoming a black-and-white issue.

A regional center to help laid-off workers will open in Henrico County on March 9. The employment transition center will operate in the former Innsbrook Public Library at 4060 Innslake Drive. The center will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. The center will be directed by a small staff that reports to the Capital Region Workforce Partnership, a new regional organization with Henrico operating as its fiscal agent. It will aid displaced workers from eight localities—the city of Richmond and the counties of Charles City, Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico, New Kent and Powhatan.

Richmond is keeping its popular spot on the national off-road triathlon circuit for at least one more year, but there will be a new group overseeing the local event. The XTERRA circuit’s founders are looking for sponsors for the 2009 event after being unable to reach a new operating agreement with the Richmond Sports Backers, the event’s local organizer since it first came to the city in 1999.