The late reporter Burton LeDoux hastily moved to his wife’s ancestral home in Mathews County in 1949 and led a quiet life there until his death in October of 1979 at the age of 86.
Few people knew of the contributions he made to investigative journalism, especially his renowned exposure in 1948 of a health crisis in Quebec, Canada, known as The Silicosis Affair. That story is now being told through an award-winning documentary.
Betty Richardson Rinehardt, a Mathews native who now lives in Richmond, said Ledoux was married to her mother’s cousin, Margaret Murray, herself a renowned scientist, cancer researcher, lecturer and author. The couple didn’t spend much time in Mathews, said Rinehardt, but they returned to the county on a regular basis to stay at Williamsdale, the family home on Williams Wharf Road, and Rinehardt remembers visiting them as a child with her parents, the late Charles and Betty Ann Richardson.
Murray received enough press coverage over the years that everyone in Mat...