Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of William Charles Fugate of Lee, Virginia
The name William C. Fugate appears more than once in the older records of Southwest Virginia. Some of those references belong to earlier men, including a W. C. Fugate connected to Peoples Bank in Ewing before Judge William Charles Fugate was even born. This article follows the Lee County lawyer, legislator, prosecutor, and judge who was born at Gibson Station in 1931 and spent most of his public life in and around Jonesville.
His life was not built around one office. It moved from a small Lee County law practice to the Virginia House of Delegates, from the prosecutor’s table to the judge’s bench, and finally into a long regional career that touched Lee, Scott, Wise, Smyth, and the courts of the 30th Judicial Circuit.
A Boy From Gibson Station
William Charles Fugate was born on September 3, 1931, at Gibson Station in Lee County, Virginia. He was the son of Ray P. Fugate and Bess Parkey Fugate, and his life remained closely tied to the far western corner of Virginia. Gibson Station sat in the mountain country of Lee County, near the Tennessee and Kentucky lines, where local names often carried through law offices, banks, churches, schools, and courthouse records for generations.
Fugate attended Thomas Walker High School and graduated in 1946. He then went to Lincoln Memorial University, just across the state line in Harrogate, Tennessee, graduating in 1953. From there he went on to the T. C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond, where he completed his legal education in 1957.
That same year, he married Jean Gibbings Burton. Their home would be in Jonesville, the Lee County seat, and their family would include three children, Elisabeth, Alice, and Charlie. The official legislative record later listed Fugate as Methodist, an attorney, a member of the Virginia State Bar, and a participant in local and professional organizations that tied him to both the law and the community around him.
Opening a Law Office in Jonesville
After law school, Fugate returned to Lee County and opened a private law office in Jonesville in 1957. For a young lawyer in a rural county, a law office was rarely one narrow thing. It was a place where land, family, debt, crime, estates, local politics, and community reputation all met. The courthouse square was not separate from life in town. It was one of the places where local life became public record.
Fugate’s career began quickly. Within a year of opening his office, he was serving in Richmond as Lee County’s member of the Virginia House of Delegates. It was a remarkable rise for a man still in his twenties, and contemporary newspapers noticed his age.
The Youngest Member in Richmond
William C. Fugate served in the Virginia House of Delegates during the 1958, 1959, and Extra 1959 sessions. The official House of Delegates history lists him as a Democrat representing the County of Lee. His committee assignments included Agriculture, Militia and Police, Mining and Mineral Resources, and Officers and Offices at the Capitol.
Those committees fit a delegate from Lee County. Agriculture still mattered in the upland valleys and family farms of Southwest Virginia. Mining and Mineral Resources was especially important in a region where coal, land, labor, and mineral rights shaped public life. Militia and Police placed him near questions of public order and state authority. Officers and Offices at the Capitol connected him to the machinery of state government itself.
The General Assembly met in a tense period of Virginia history. Public schools, state authority, local control, and the political order of the Byrd era all stood near the center of Virginia politics. The surviving records used here do not establish Fugate as a leading figure in those statewide fights, and it would be wrong to force him into a larger role without evidence. What the records do show is that Lee County had sent a very young lawyer to Richmond, and that newspapers identified him as the youngest member of the General Assembly.
One contemporary item in The Commonwealth in January 1958 called attention to him in exactly that way. A February 1958 notice in the Lebanon News again identified Lee County Delegate William C. Fugate as the youngest member of the General Assembly. To readers in Southwest Virginia, the detail mattered. It marked him as a young man moving quickly in public life.
Commonwealth’s Attorney of Lee County
After his service in the House of Delegates, Fugate returned to Lee County public office in a different role. He was elected Commonwealth’s Attorney and took office on January 1, 1960.
The job placed him at the center of criminal prosecution in Lee County. It also tied him directly to the courthouse in Jonesville. A commonwealth’s attorney in a rural county did more than appear in dramatic trials. The office carried the daily burden of indictments, pleas, local disputes, witnesses, law enforcement, and the difficult public expectation that justice be both firm and fair.
Newspaper references from the early 1960s place him in that office. A 1960 notice identified him as William C. Fugate of Jonesville, Lee County commonwealth’s attorney and former state delegate. A 1961 Powell Valley News reference also identified him as Lee County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney.
His time as prosecutor did not last long, but it became a bridge between his early political life and his longer judicial career. After three years in the office, he resigned to become a district court judge in April 1963.
From District Court to Circuit Court
Fugate’s judicial career became the defining work of his life. He served as a district court judge, a juvenile and domestic relations court judge, and a county judge before moving to the 30th Circuit in 1985. By the time he retired in 1998, Virginia Lawyers Weekly described him as having served more than three decades as a judge in Southwest Virginia.
The court records themselves show the reach of that career. In the 1983 federal case Letendre v. Fugate, he appeared in his official capacity as Judge of the Lee County General District Court. The case began with a landlord and tenant dispute in Lee County and reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit because of a challenge to Virginia’s appeal bond requirement. Fugate’s name in the caption was not about personal conduct. It marked the office he held and the court from which the dispute had arisen.
Later records show him as a circuit judge in cases across Southwest Virginia. Powell Mountain Joint Venture v. Moore came from the Circuit Court of Lee County and identified Hon. William C. Fugate as the circuit court judge. Wise County Board of Supervisors v. Wilson came from the Circuit Court of Wise County and likewise identified him as judge. Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner v. Chadwell came from Lee County and also named him as the lower court judge.
Court of Appeals records from the 1990s place him in criminal and civil matters as well. Paul Ed Newton v. Commonwealth came from the Circuit Court of Lee County with William C. Fugate as judge. Hershel Frank Sullivan Jr. v. Commonwealth named him as judge designate in a Lee County case. James Lee Lane v. Commonwealth came from the Circuit Court of Scott County and named William C. Fugate as judge.
These records show a judge whose work extended beyond a single courthouse. In Southwest Virginia, where counties are close in geography but distinct in courthouse culture, that mattered. Fugate was not only a Lee County figure. He became part of the judicial life of the region.
A Judge in a County of Judges
Lee County has produced an unusual number of judges for a rural county. In 1998, the Lee County Bar Association held a Judicial Night to honor native-born Lee County judges. William C. Fugate was among those named. The account placed him beside figures who served as circuit judges, general district judges, juvenile and domestic relations judges, administrative law judges, federal judges, and appellate judges.
That gathering tells something important about the legal culture of Lee County. The county was far from Richmond and far from the state’s larger cities, yet its lawyers and judges reached into state and federal courts. Fugate stood in that line. He had begun as a local boy from Gibson Station, but by the end of his career his work had touched the 30th Circuit and the legal profession across far Southwest Virginia.
When Pennington Gap lawyer Birg E. Sergent was tapped to succeed him in 1998, Virginia Lawyers Weekly noted that Sergent was succeeding a law school classmate. It also summarized Fugate’s long service. He had been a general district court judge, juvenile and domestic relations court judge, county judge, and circuit judge. He had also served on the Judicial Council of Virginia and played a role in developing state sentencing guidelines.
Beyond the Courtroom
Fugate’s public life was not limited to court opinions and courthouse offices. His obituary described a wide range of local service. He was the first chairman of the Lee County Airport in Pennington Gap. He served on the Mountain Empire Community College board, including as chairman, and was remembered as turning the first shovel of dirt in the college’s construction in 1972. He also served on the state board of colleges and received the first honorary degree awarded by Mountain Empire Community College.
His education at Lincoln Memorial University remained part of his identity as well. In 2007, LMU inducted him into its Professional Hall of Fame. He also served on the board for the Appalachia School of Law in Grundy. He and Jean served on the board of directors at The Peoples Bank of Ewing for many years.
These details place Fugate in a familiar Appalachian pattern of public service. In a rural mountain county, the same person might appear in courthouse records, college records, airport records, bank records, church life, and funeral notices. His work was legal, but it was also institutional. He helped build and support some of the local structures that carried Lee County and Southwest Virginia through the second half of the twentieth century.
The Final Years
Fugate retired from full-time judicial service at age 66 because of health problems. After several back surgeries, he returned to the bench on a recall basis at the request of Chief Justice Harry L. Carrico. His obituary states that he worked an additional three years hearing cases west of Roanoke.
He died at his home in Jonesville in late February 2011. The obituary published in the Bristol Herald Courier through Legacy reported that he passed away on Friday, February 25, 2011. The Virginia House of Delegates DOME profile lists his death date as February 26, 2011. The difference is small, but it is worth noting because historical writing should not pretend that records always agree.
His funeral was held at First United Methodist Church in Jonesville, the church he attended through his adult life. Friends from the Lee County Bar Association served as pallbearers. Honorary pallbearers included local officials and retired state and federal judges of the 30th Circuit courts of Lee County. It was a fitting farewell for a man whose life had been tied so closely to law, county, and courthouse.
Legacy
William Charles Fugate’s life followed a path that was both local and regional. He was born in Gibson Station, educated in nearby mountain institutions and at Richmond, and returned home to practice law. He went to the Virginia House of Delegates while still a young man, became Commonwealth’s Attorney of Lee County, and then spent more than three decades as a judge.
His career tells a story about Lee County’s place in Virginia public life. It reminds us that influence did not always come from large cities or famous families. Sometimes it came from the county courthouse, from a small law office in Jonesville, from a judge riding circuit through the mountain counties, and from the steady work of local institutions.
Fugate was not simply a name in a legal caption or a line in a legislative directory. He was part of the legal memory of Lee County. He belonged to a generation of Appalachian public servants whose careers were built close to home, but whose decisions and service reached across the wider region.
Sources & Further Reading
Virginia House of Delegates Clerk’s Office. “Fugate, William Charles.” A History of the Virginia House of Delegates. Accessed June 12, 2026. https://history.house.virginia.gov/members/9809.
Virginia House of Delegates Clerk’s Office. “Sessions: House of Delegates History.” A History of the Virginia House of Delegates. Accessed June 12, 2026. https://history.house.virginia.gov/sessions/106.
“Summary of Gen’l Assembly Activities Convening in Richmond.” The Commonwealth, January 17, 1958. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=CAT19580117-01.2.9.
“Lee County Delegate William C. Fugate.” Lebanon News, February 20, 1958, 1. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19580220.1.1.
“Lee County Delegate William C. Fugate.” Richlands Press, February 20, 1958, 1. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RLP19580220.1.1.
Bristol Virginia-Tennessean, October 29, 1959, 9. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=BVT19591029.1.9.
Lebanon News, August 13, 1960, 5. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19600813.1.5.
Powell Valley News. 1961. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/powell-valley-news-1961/Powell%20Valley%20News%20%281961%29_djvu.txt.
Letendre v. Fugate, 701 F.2d 1093. United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 1983. Justia. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/701/1093/444058/.
Paul Ed Newton v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Record No. 1695-97-3. Court of Appeals of Virginia, April 6, 1999. https://www.vacourts.gov/opinions/opncavwp/1695973.pdf.
Hershel Frank Sullivan Jr. v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Record No. 1038-98-3. Court of Appeals of Virginia, April 6, 1999. Justia. https://law.justia.com/cases/virginia/court-of-appeals-unpublished/1999/1038983.html.
James Lee Lane v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Record No. 0349-94-3. Court of Appeals of Virginia, July 11, 1995. Justia. https://law.justia.com/cases/virginia/court-of-appeals-unpublished/1995/0349943.html.
Wilburn Junior Hale v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Record No. 1344-95-3. Court of Appeals of Virginia, December 10, 1996. https://www.vacourts.gov/opinions/opncavwp/1344953.pdf.
Untiedt v. Commonwealth, Record No. 2347-92-3. Court of Appeals of Virginia, August 23, 1994. Casemine. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/59148501add7b049344bfc5e.
Powell Mountain Joint Venture v. Ronald L. Moore, Individually and as Co-Executor of the Estate of Royce Moore, Deceased, et al. Virginia Supreme Court Records, Volume 248. Washington and Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/va-supreme-court-records-vol248/9/.
Wise County Board of Supervisors v. Delmer Wilson, as Commissioner of Revenue, Record No. 950223. Supreme Court of Virginia, November 3, 1995. Virginia Lawyers Weekly. https://valawyersweekly.com/fulltext-opinions/2008/01/11/wise-county-board-of-supervisors-v-wilson-as-commissioner-of-revenue-2/.
Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner, David R. Gehr v. A. B. Chadwell, Yvonne Chadwell, Lee Oil Company, Inc. and Patty Fee Young. Virginia Supreme Court Records, Volume 254. Washington and Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/va-supreme-court-records-vol254/45/.
“William Fugate Obituary.” Bristol Herald Courier, February 26, 2011. Legacy.com. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/william-fugate-obituary?id=22557816.
“Sergent Is Tapped for Lee County Judgeship.” Virginia Lawyers Weekly, July 13, 1998. https://valawyersweekly.com/1998/07/13/sergent-is-tapped-for-lee-county-judgeship/.
“Lee County: Lee County Honors Its Native-Born Judges.” Virginia Lawyers Weekly, July 20, 1998. https://valawyersweekly.com/1998/07/20/lee-county-lee-county-honors-its-nativeborn-judges/.
Mountain Empire Community College. “About.” Accessed June 12, 2026. https://www.mecc.edu/about.
Mountain Empire Community College. 2024–2025 Academic Catalog and Student Handbook. Big Stone Gap, VA: Mountain Empire Community College, 2024. https://www.mecc.edu/2024-2025_academic-catalog-and-student-handbook.pdf.
Find a Grave. “Judge William Charles Fugate.” Memorial ID 211702936. Accessed June 12, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/211702936/william-charles-fugate.
Author Note: William Charles Fugate’s story is a reminder that Appalachian public life was often shaped in county courthouses as much as in capitals. This article follows the records carefully, separating the Lee County judge from older W. C. Fugates in Southwest Virginia history.