Charles A. Veatch with Robert E. Simon,Jr., Reston's Founder and
bronze statue of Mr. Simon at Lake Anne Village Center. October, 2006

Charles A. Veatch was born in 1942 in Washington D.C. He obtained his B.S. in Finance from the University of Virginia in 1964. During the summer of 1964, he began working for Robert E. Simon's Palindrome Corporation, the developer of Reston, Virginia, and in 1968 moved to Reston with his wife and two children. Veatch obtained his real estate license in 1960, while still a student at UVA. He started his own real estate development and consulting firm, Environmental Concepts, Inc., in 1970. He soon developed many residential and commercial projects throughout Northern Virginia, including ones in Reston.

For decades, Veatch has been an avid participant in Reston community organizations. During the early days of Reston, he was a founding member of the Reston's Lions Club and the Reston Board of Commerce. He is currently a member of numerous non-profit boards including Friends of Reston for Community Projects, Planned Community Archives, Reston Historic Trust, Greater Reston Arts Center, Nature's Best Foundation, The Potomac Conservancy, and Fairfax County Parks Foundation. Furthermore, he has many other affiliations with non-profit organizations such as the Friends of Shenandoah River, Friends of North Fork, and The French and Indian War Foundation.

Veatch has been honored with many awards for his extensive community service. He received the 1994 Fairfax County Volunteer Service award for instituting "Ethics Day" Programs in local high schools. In 1998 he was named the Best-of-Reston Honoree. In 1999 he received the Martin Luther King Jr. award for "Contributions to the Community of Reston". In 2000 was named Reston's Citizen of the Year; and in 2004 was chosen as Fairfax County's Citizen of the Year.

As a fly fisherman and lover of nature, Veatch began photographing the scenes around him. Now a passionate and accomplished photographer, Veatch published The Nature of Reston in 1999, a book of his photography of natural areas of Reston. Profits from this book, now in its second printing, have gone towards the construction of a Nature House in Reston. Currently, Charles Veatch is the president of The Charles A. Veatch Co. He also devotes his time to many non-profit organizations concerned with nature and the environment.

The Charles Veatch Collection contains materials related to the history of Reston, Virginia. These items include: working papers and other documents, newspaper clippings, brochures, maps, videorecordings, and books. Total volume of the collection is 3.3 cubic feet or 4.95 linear feet.

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Planned Community Archives, Inc., is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to improving the quality of community development in the United States. It seeks to use its archival, research, publishing and instructional resources to maintain the historical records of community development projects, to prepare and disseminate information and analyses drawn form these records, and to design and participate in interdisciplinary courses of instruction on community development.

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