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How Onzlee Ware overcame an arrest and shooting to become a trailblazing politician and Roanoke’s first Black judge.
Aaron Spicer
Onzlee Ware
Onzlee Ware looked headed for an easy reelection to the Virginia House of Delegates.
He’d previously won easily, too, and in 2007, his opponent had failed to make the deadline to primary Ware, so was running as an independent instead.
But then one of Ware’s political rivals called me, a reporter covering the race for the Roanoke Times, and dropped a tip: back in the ‘70s, Ware had been arrested with drugs. Not only that, he was shot through a door after his dealer found out he’d made a deal with prosecutors.
I confirmed the charge at the courthouse in Greensboro, North Carolina, then requested an interview with the delegate as my editors argued over whether to drop this 35-year-old news just weeks before the November election.
In the second floor office of Ware’s Gainsboro law firm, I laid out what I’d found, and asked him for his response. He took a deep breath and paused, like he knew this moment would one day come. Now, 32 years later, it was here.
Onzlee Ware was born as the next-to-youngest of four siblings in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1954 — the year of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education landmark decision to desegregate schools. He was six when the Greensboro Four began lunch counter sit-ins at the F. W. Woolworth Company store. The protestors were gradually joined by dozens and then hundreds, including Ware’s mother. In fourth grade, Ware was sent to a previously all-white school that was being integrated.
Those experiences exposed Ware to a diverse group of people and gave him a close education on race relations in America as they evolved through the tumultuous 1960s. In high school, a teacher suggested Ware become a lawyer, which pushed him in that direction. He attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University, where he joined a fraternity. And then: “I got with a crowd. I was green. And I got my head in a lot deeper than I thought it would ever go,” Ware said.
As a result, he started using drugs. In 1975, Ware was arrested and charged with possession of heroin and marijuana. He traded information to get the charges dismissed. A year later, Ware’s identity as an informant was revealed in a federal court proceeding. What happened next changed his life forever.
“I can remember going to my front door, and I just had a strange feeling,” Ware said. “I went to the door and somebody said, ‘Onzlee.’ I didn’t say anything, but soon as he said that, I heard a little voice in the back of my head say ‘Close the door.’ I simultaneously closed the door and heard a shot rang out. Had I not closed that door, I think I would’ve died.”
His girlfriend and future wife was upstairs in the house and ran down, saving his life. Ware later lost his left leg from the wound. He remembers lying in bed and knowing he’d have to face his mother.
“I was raised by my mother, and I knew that what I was doing was wrong,” Ware said. After the shooting, “I was embarrassed and ashamed because I thought I had embarrassed my mom and the family. The first time she saw me in the hospital, I just broke down and cried and said, ‘Mom, I’m sorry.’”
The incident became a turning point in his life. Ware graduated from the North Carolina Central School of Law and came to Roanoke in the ‘80s for a job with the Boy Scouts of America. He opened his law firm later that decade.
Soon Ware began participating in Roanoke politics as a grassroots organizer. He was elected as Democratic chairman of the 6th Congressional District in time for Mary Sue Terry’s failed run for governor in 1993. Ware said he took note of the campaign’s failure to organize and turn out Black voters. In future campaigns, he took action to fix that. Ware paid families to drive vans that took voters to the polls, painstakingly building a reliable get-out-the-vote network.
In 2003, Ware was elected as the first Black state house delegate west of Lynchburg by succeeding Clifton “Chip” Woodrum, who’d served in the House of Delegates for 24 years.
“Everyone in Virginia politics knew him and it didn’t matter whether you were a Democrat or Republican, folks only had kind words to say about Onzlee,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, who was then governor. “We became great personal friends.”
Ware’s entire legislative career played out while Republicans held a majority in the House of Delegates. He found ways to work with GOP members of the Roanoke Valley delegation, such as then-state House Majority Leader, now U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith of Salem.
“When he was nominated, because there wasn’t going to be a Republican in that district, I went to that victory party because I was glad to have somebody I could work with in the seat,” Griffith said.
Those warm relationships were reflected in Ware’s appointment to the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which oversees the state budget. But they sometimes sparked tension with the other Roanoke Valley Democrat, state Sen. John Edwards, who declined to be interviewed for this story.
“The whole time we were down there, we respected each other — but no love lost,” Ware said.
“Onzlee just calls them the way he sees them,” Griffith said. “If he disagreed with me, he’d tell me. If he disagreed with somebody on his side, he’d tell them too. Some folks thought he should agree with them all the time, and he didn’t.”
Ware played an important role in the narrow 2004 vote to pass Warner’s budget, but his presence required extraordinary measures. Ware was with a girlfriend in Las Vegas on a pre-scheduled vacation when an important budget vote came up in the House of Delegates. Warner flew Ware directly to Richmond so that he could vote while his girlfriend passed time in the carriage house at the governor’s mansion — a nice idea but a decided downgrade from the Bellagio in Vegas. That wasn’t all.
“Obviously there’s decorum to follow in the General Assembly and coming straight from Las Vegas, we couldn’t have Onzlee miss out on the vote because of his weekend attire, so one of my staffers volunteered to trade outfits – suit, tie, and all – with Onzlee to make sure nothing got between him and casting a vote on the floor,” Warner said.
Meanwhile, Ware took a hand in local Roanoke politics as city Democrats splintered on the question of whether to raze or preserve Victory Stadium, on the banks of the Roanoke River. Ware backed the faction that wanted to tear down the stadium, and in 2006, his support helped the so-called “For the City” ticket sweep city council elections and ultimately seal the stadium’s fate.
That may have been why Ware’s conviction and shooting were leaked to me by one of his political enemies a year later, when the incumbent delegate faced a challenge from Delvis “Mac” McCadden.
When I presented Ware with what I’d confirmed, he took a deep breath before acknowledging the incident and citing it as a motivating factor in his career ever since then. Ware later said he knew that story would come out one day, and that he owed it to his staff and volunteers to be truthful. He even told me he’d asked the doctors to leave the bullet in.
“I need to be, every now and then, able to reach back and grab my butt and remember where I was and how far I’ve come,” Ware said back in 2007.
The next month, he won reelection with 62% of the vote to McCadden’s 37%.
Ware served until resigning in 2014. His unexpected retirement from the General Assembly resulted in a primary among Roanoke Democrats that included two sitting council members but which was ultimately won by Sam Rasoul, who went on to easily win the general election. Ware’s former colleagues in the General Assembly, meanwhile, appointed him to become the first Black judge in Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.
Ware served as a judge there until 2020, when he became Roanoke’s first Black circuit court judge in a fractious appointment. Edwards supported another sitting J&D judge, while Rasoul backed Ware. When Edwards forced a vote on the issue, all of the Senate Republicans and a few Democrats walked off the floor instead of backing his choice. Sen. Lionel Spruill of Chesapeake, saying Edwards was trying to sink Ware because he “can’t stand” him. Instead, Ware was appointed to an eight-year term to replace the retiring Judge William Broadhurst.
Ware said he intends to serve his term and retire at 73, but hopes to see more Black and women judges on the bench by that time.
“I think I’ve had a good run,” Ware said. “And I’m not finished.”
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