 Georgia Pacific president and former Virginia Tech president T. Marshall Hahn was instrumental in arranging the tour.Stan Kingma, who directed the group for its first six years, and most of the original New Virginians staff and originators (Stan Kingma and Christopher "Kit" Bond) left the program at the end of the 1978 season.After a year of inactivity, the University restarted the program in 1979 under the direction of John Howell where it continued until the end of the 1993 spring semester when John Howell founded and directed the Early Music Ensemble at Virginia Tech.