One man’s search for a hiking partner became a 5,000-member group honoring history

RICHMOND, Va. (Aging Untold) — Dennis Bussey was looking for someone to go hiking with. Now he has thousands of people, and they also volunteer in the community. How the group started Bussey, who now lives in Lexington, Virginia, founded James River Hikers, which describes itself as “hiking with history.” He had walked along the river by himself for a year and a half before starting the group. “I thought, gosh, I wish I could find someone who would go hiking with me,” Bussey said. After searching online, he found people to join him. The first meetup drew about seven people, and that was 14 years ago. “Today we have 5,000 people,” Bussey said. “We do hikes. We do history. We do social things. We do all kinds of things,” Bussey said. Cleaning headstones One of the hikers’ volunteer projects is cleaning gravestones at Shockoe Hill Cemetery. The cemetery is the final resting place for some of Virginia’s historic figures: James Marshall, the nation’s fourth chief justice. Elizabeth Van Lew,