Fair. Trusted. Reporting in Rappahannock County and across Virginia’s Piedmont.

Donate
Donate

Washington Mayor Joe Whited announces cancer diagnosis

by | Mar 27, 2024

Washington Mayor Joe Whited announced Monday his recent cancer diagnosis and upcoming absence from town meetings while he undergoes treatment. 

“Shortly after the last council meeting, I found out that I was going to be one of 1.9 million Americans this year who were diagnosed with cancer,” Whited announced before adjourning a joint meeting with the Town Council and Planning Commission on signage at Rush River Commons. 

“My diagnosis, it was caught early…the numbers look good, but it does mean the next six or seven weeks I will be spending a lot more time in big Washington than here and will likely be missing the next couple of Town Council meetings.”

Whited, 44, said that as an elected official, he felt it was important to share news about his diagnosis, and he urged people in his age group to “stick with those routine medical screenings.” 

Whited said in an interview that he was diagnosed with gastrointestinal cancer, and will be undergoing chemo and radiation treatments. He said he will not step down from his mayoral duties during treatment. 

Whited, a United States Navy veteran and current chief of staff for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Washington, D.C., was elected mayor in 2022 after winning an uncontested race. Before that, he served as a council member and vice mayor.

Members of both the Town Council and Planning Commission offered Whited their support and thanked him for his leadership. 

Subtext

 

Republish License

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.

By Ireland Hayes

Read more articles by Ireland Hayes
Ireland joined Foothills Forum as a full-time reporter in 2023 after graduating from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication with a degree in journalism and minor in music. As a student, she gained valuable experience in reporter and editor positions at The Red & Black, an award-winning student newspaper, and contributed to Grady Newsource and the Athens Banner-Herald. She spent three years as an editorial assistant at Georgia Magazine, UGA’s quarterly alumni publication, and interned with The Bitter Southerner. Growing up in a small town in Southeast Georgia, Ireland developed a deep appreciation for rural communities and the unique stories they have to tell. She completed undergraduate research on news deserts, ghost papers and the ways rural communities in Georgia are being forced to adapt to a lack of local news. This research further sparked her interest in a career contributing to the preservation of local and rural news.