Dr. Brian A. and Patricia (Pat) Long Dementi are native Richmonders, both born in Johnston Willis Hospital on Kensington Avenue. They met in a science class at the University of Richmond after Brian graduated from Hampden-Sydney College, and each pursued a graduate degree at the Medical College of Virginia, Brian in Biochemistry and Pat in Anatomy.

      The elder son of Frank Dementi, Brian was eight when his father had the exclusive opportunity to photograph Churchill and Eisenhower in the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg on March 8, 1946. But he grew up repeatedly hearing Frank’s stories of the event. After a career as a biochemist and toxicologist, the last twenty-five years spent at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., he has devoted much of his retirement to cataloguing and “informing” his father’s photos, with a goal of publishing the pictures, their context, and Frank’s stories. This book represents the first and perhaps the most comprehensive of several publications.

          Pat joined the Dementi family in 1967. After the birth of children Briana and Frank Dorset, she taught biology at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, for twenty-eight years. In retirement, she has devoted her time to grandchildren Bennett and Addison, to her second career sewing doll clothes, and to helping Brian in various ways in the publication effort..