As a young Army lieutenant stationed in Germany, Bob McDonnell made the Guinness Book of World Records. He organized his hospital unit to carry a 120-pound woman on a stretcher on a record-breaking trek -- 93.4 miles in 32 hours.
Thirty-two years later, McDonnell is doing a different kind of heavy lifting, as he seeks to break Democrats' eight-year hold on Virginia's governorship.
Since word surfaced seven weeks ago of his controversial graduate-school thesis, McDonnell has sought to focus the campaign on jobs creation in an economy battered by a deep recession.
That strategy appears to be working. Recent polls show McDonnell with enough of a lead over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, a state senator from Bath County, that he is cautioning supporters against overconfidence.
"I've told my staff to forget the polls," McDonnell said in a recent interview in Verona, at a picnic sponsored by U.S. Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, R-6th.
"We've got a hard-working opponent. We are opposed by President Obama and Tim Kaine," the governor and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, "who have considerable resources. The only way we are going to win is to stay focused on our message and do an absolutely A-plus get-out-the-vote effort."
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On the campaign trail, the former attorney general is cool and unflappable, traveling the state in a Ford Expedition with a McD4VA license plate.
In his trademark button-down shirt and khakis, he moves slowly through a crowd, pausing to shake hands and make conversation with each prospective voter. He also exhibits a keen sense of humor.
In February, during a dinner with reporters who cover state politics, McDonnell poked fun at one of his formative political alliances. He said he was so worried about the Democrats' media coverage and fundraising that he "called Pat Robertson and asked if he could direct a hurricane" to their Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.
McDonnell, 55, caught a break in his quest for governor when Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling decided not to challenge him for the Republican nomination, but instead run for re-election.
It wasn't the first time good fortune blessed McDonnell's family. In 1912, according to family lore, one of McDonnell's grandfathers got sick and missed a voyage -- on the Titanic.
McDonnell was born in Philadelphia but grew up in the Mount Vernon area of Fairfax County. A Roman Catholic, he attended Bishop Ireton High School, where he played wide receiver and defensive back for the football team.
In November 1971, McDonnell's Bishop Ireton squad faced off against the undefeated T.C. Williams High School powerhouse team memorialized in the film "Remember the Titans."
Ireton lost 26-8, but McDonnell scored his team's only points, on a 63-yard touchdown reception and a two-point conversion.
Scott O'Brien, quarterback on the Bishop Ireton team, says McDonnell was a "tough and feisty" football player. When he scored the two-point conversion against T.C. Williams, McDonnell "was hit so hard that he vomited on the sidelines, but he was back in the game on the next play," O'Brien said. "He probably didn't weigh 150 pounds dripping wet."
Now a high school administrator in Myrtle Beach, S.C., O'Brien also remembers McDonnell's sense of humor.
"He had a nickname for everyone," O'Brien said. McDonnell called O'Brien "Sonny" after Washington Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgensen.
"He had great people skills," O'Brien said of McDonnell. "Everybody congregated around him."
In "Deeds Reality TV" Creigh Deeds and Reporters Say
Q: "But when you said, "I'm not going to raise taxes," what did you mean? You said in the debate, "I'm not going to raise taxes." What did that mean?"
Deeds: "What that meant in the general sense of the term, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna raise general fund taxes. Um, I know we're gonna have to raise money for transportation."
Q: "So you'll raise other kinds of taxes?"
Deeds: "I think I, I, I, I meant ... I meant what I said. I have no, um, plan to raise general fund taxes."
Q: "So what kind of taxes would you raise?"
Deeds: "We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna ha ... everything's on the table when we consider how we raise money for transportation."
Q: "Is the gas tax a general fund tax? Does the gas tax go into the general fund?"
Deeds: "The gas tax goes into the Transportation Trust Fund."
Q: "So it would not then be covered under "not raising general fund taxes."
Deeds: "I think I made myself clear, young lady, I don't know."
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As a young Army lieutenant stationed in Germany, Bob McDonnell made the Guinness Book of World Records. He organized his hospital unit to carry a 120-pound woman on a stretcher on a record-breaking trek -- 93.4 miles in 32 hours.