About Virginia Varsity
By Duncan Adams (Roanoke Times)
981-3324
Virginia Varsity Transfer traces its roots to November 1987. John Lugar was a freshman at Radford University. A budget-conscious family said they would pay $300, feed and lodge him for moving them to Florida.
Friend Steve Steorts joined in. The two teamed up again in May 1988 to move a family to an Atlanta suburb. That same month, they founded the company. Two years later, Lugar bought out Steorts’ interest.
Conjecture might conclude that the company’s history and Lugar’s obviously obsessive emphasis on empathic service started years before 1987.
Lugar said his family moved about five times.
“I remember one move very clearly. I was about 10 or 11 years old. I had spent weeks building this really elaborate bridge model out of toothpicks,” he recalled. “It was crazy — it was this spanning bridge with supports.”
One of the movers accidentally stepped on the bridge.
“That wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was that nothing was said. Nobody said they were sorry,” Lugar said. “Mistakes happen and that’s unavoidable. To me, it’s always been about how you rectify a move that isn’t perfect.”
At the start, Virginia Varsity’s hiring leaned toward college students. The company required a clean-cut look and favored workers who were personable and actually seemed to enjoy the packing and toting — a task most people find or imagine to be grueling.
The company later added the rental of storage units.
On Nov. 9, a youthful moving crew from the company parked a 28-foot Freightliner moving van on the street in front of the Roanoke County home of Jeanette and Bill Combs. She is 78. He is 87.
Until retirement, Bill Combs was a Methodist minister and the Combs family had previously moved 14 times.
The couple decided in recent months to relocate to the Brandon Oaks retirement community after each suffered a broken pelvis this year in separate incidents. At one point, both were using walkers.
“It was really a big decision,” said Jeanette Combs.
But the couple, who had hired Virginia Varsity before, seemed upbeat on moving day as the crew boxed up their belongings and lugged furniture out.
“They’re wonderful,” she said. “They really seem to have fun doing what they do.”
