Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990 TAG: 9005130075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B7 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: IVANHOE LENGTH: Medium
And the residents - who have already established an educational center and published a history book on Ivanhoe - are already planning still another enterprise: an FM radio station to be operated by its young people.
"Well, praise God, WHOE - ho-ho radio - will arrive sometime in 1991," said Maxine Waller, president of the Ivanhoe Civic League. "This radio station will be unique because it's going to be run by the children of Ivanhoe."
A council of 14 young people, between the ages of 9 and 18, are already making plans for it. "They're going to put it together," Waller said. "And the first song we will hear on the radio every morning will be the `Star-Spangled Banner' and it will be played by Jimi Hendrix."
Linda Copeland, a Volunteers in Service to America representative working with Ivanhoe's young people since last October, came up with the radio project and got an $18,074 Appalachian Regional Commission grant to plan for it to be set up in the building next to the Ivanhoe Educational Center.
"She was able to put this together with the children and present it to the ARC, and they said `Sure,' " Waller said. Preliminary approval from the Federal Communications Commission has been obtained for WHOE to broadcast for a 15-mile radius.
Del. Tom Jackson, D-Hillsville, joked Saturday that the next step would be for the community to put a satellite transmitter atop the old Shot Tower and widen its broadcast area.
Jackson was the main speaker at the dedication of the industrial shell building.
"I understand it's a storage building," he said, referring to a short-term contract with ABB Power Equipment Inc. of Bland County with the Wythe-Carroll Joint Industrial Development Authority to use it.
"It's my feeling that it's not going to stay a storage building very long," Jackson said, because a community whose members have obtained literacy training and published a book would not settle for that.
"I just know that Maxine and her group are not going to let this be a storage building forever. And I know the joint IDA is not going to let that happen," he said.
Jackson said Ivanhoe residents have shown what can be done with limited resources. "I guess we're like the folks who don't have a whole lot of bullets to shoot in a war. You better make 'em count when you aim."
Travis Jackson, assistant Farmers Home Administration district director for the 13-county region covering Ivanhoe, said the $300,000 grant for the building was part of only $1.5 million in FmHA assistance for the entire nation in the year it was obtained. "That was quite a feat in itself."
Wythe County added $40,000 in funding for the project.
"This building, I feel, is the first step in the economic revitalization of the Ivanhoe area," said Earl Joy, executive director of the joint IDA. "Although it is being used right now as a storage building, I don't think that will last very long."
He said the joint IDA will have sent mailed out more than 400 marketing packets for this region by the end of the third week of May, and is working hard to bring this area to national attention.
by CNB