A Northern Virginia native, Scott McCaffrey has four decades of reporting, editing and newsroom experience in the local area plus Florida, South Carolina and the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. He spent 26 years as editor of the Sun Gazette newspaper chain. For Local News Now, he covers government and civic issues in Arlington, Fairfax County and Falls Church.
When Peter F. Murphy joined the Fairfax County Planning Commission, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Marie Travesky was Springfield District supervisor and the county was home to about 640,000 people — half a million fewer than today.
The year was 1982, and when Murphy was appointed as the commission’s Springfield District representative that December, few might have anticipated the changes he would witness and, in many cases, help shape across Fairfax over the course of two generations.
