Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 24, 1990 TAG: 9006280515
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER MUNICIPAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Something will be missing.
For nearly three decades, Garland has been there every Monday with his bow tie and his quiet, gentlemanly manner.
Council meetings won't be the same without the man who has become almost a father figure in Roanoke politics, council members say. One of the city's most enduring politicians, Garland will leave council when his term ends June 30 because he did not seek re-election this year.
"He'll be missed. It'll be different, there's no doubt about that," Councilman Howard Musser said.
Garland, 67, has been a councilman for 24 years - longer than anyone in Roanoke's history.
His political career has spanned 28 years. He was first elected to council in 1962, but he did not seek re-election in 1966 after finishing a four-year term. He returned to council in 1970 and has served continuously the past two decades.
Garland has served as adviser, counselor and friend for many new council members, including Mayor Noel Taylor, who has been on council two decades himself.
"He has been there since the first day that I was elected," Taylor said. "He was like a mentor to me during those early years. Bob helped me and had words of advice, and I'll be forever indebted to him."
Garland, a Republican, has been a calming influence on council, particularly in recent years since the Democrats won a majority of seats.
He never gets angry, raises his voice or verbally attacks others. He is a model of civility in a setting where political egos sometimes clash.
"Bob has the ability to be calm in the storm. He does not strike back, he is a real Southern gentleman in the highest sense," Taylor said.
Many politicians by nature are ambitious, aggressive and outspoken, but Garland thinks some should be kind and gentle.
"You need a balance. I've tried to be that balance on the other side of the equation," Garland said. "If I have brought anything to council, I hope I have brought the discipline of self-control, not let myself get angry or upset."
"He has been a stabilizing influence on council," Vice Mayor Beverly Fitzpatrick Jr. said, adding that "he's probably the most fiscally responsible council member. He looks carefully at costs."
Garland's political style is just as distinctive as his bow tie.
He started wearing bow ties when he was a pharmacy student at the Medical College of Virginia because, he said, "they stayed out of the way and didn't get singed or soaked." His bow-tie collection now includes nearly 500.
Garland already was on council when several current council members were schoolboys. Councilman David Bowers was 10 years old when Garland was first elected. Fitzpatrick was in high school.
When he was running his family's Grandin Road drugstore, Garland used to chase young James Harvey away from the comic books in the magazine rack. Harvey, who grew up in Raleigh Court, later served on council with Garland and is returning to start a new term July 1.
A Roanoke native, Garland never intended to be a politician and did not get involved in politics until he was almost 40.
His first love was the pharmacy business. And he thinks he may be remembered by Roanokers as much for his years as a businessman as his time on council. The Garland family was in business from 1914 to 1969 and at one time owned 10 drugstores throughout the city.
After earning his pharmacology degree and serving in the Army Medical Corps during World War II, Garland came home to Roanoke in the late 1940s to help manage the business started by his father, W.B. Garland.
He helped set up the pharmacy in the drugstore on Grandin Road Southwest, the largest of the Garlands' stores. The store became a neighborhood institution in the 1950s and 1960s.
The family sold that store in 1969 to White Cross Stores. It is now owned by the Revco Drug chain.
"The sale of the store in retrospect is one of the greatest regrets of my life," Garland said. "It was the social center for the Raleigh Court and Virginia Heights neighborhood. I underestimated the meaning of it to the community."
Garland thinks the pharmacy business helped his political career more than any other factor, particularly during his early years on council, because it gave him instant name recognition.
One of his customers persuaded him to get into politics. Billy Mullins, a leader in the city Republican Party, urged him to run for council. He decided to leave council after one term because of the demands of his business and his desire to spend more time with his family, including four children.
But he made a comeback in 1970 when he ran with Taylor on the GOP ticket. It proved to be a historic campaign because Taylor became the first black elected to council.
The political success of Garland's brother, Ray, a former state senator and member of the House of Delegates, also helped keep the Garland name before city voters in the 1970s and 1980s. Ray Garland served in the state legislature for 16 years, and now writes a political column for the Roanoke Times & World-News.
Bob Garland said he agonized over whether to seek re-election this year. He said his age and years on council were the main reasons he decided not to run again, but he also did not want to get embroiled in a bitter campaign.
"I did not want to get into recriminations about the past and the present and some decisions council has made in the past year," he said, referring to controversies over downtown development and the makeup of the School Board.
"Republicans always face an uphill battle in the city because we are outnumbered by 3 to 2," he said.
The Democrats won all three seats in last month's election to gain a 5-2 majority on council. Taylor and Councilwoman Elizabeth Bowles will be the only Republicans after July 1.
Despite the Democratic leanings of Roanoke's voters, Garland has been a candidate eight times and won seven. Because Roanoke annexed nearly 16 square miles in the mid-1970s, two of his terms were cut short, forcing him to run five times in the 1970s.
Garland lost only one election: a bid in 1972 to unseat then-Mayor Roy Webber, a popular Democrat. Webber won by less than 600 votes, but Garland did not have to give up his council seat to challenge him.
One of the biggest changes in city government in the past three decades has been the growth of the budget and council's role in preparing it, he said.
When Garland became a councilman in 1962, the city budget was $17 million. For the next fiscal year, it will be $152 million, a ninefold increase.
"When I first went on council, we would go over the budget, department by department, line by line, and make the decision on new typewriters, cars and such items for every department," he said.
Now, the city manager, the finance director and other administrators prepare the municipal budget, and "council makes only a perfunctory review of it," Garland said. But he says there isn't much waste in city government, and he thinks taxpayers are getting services at a bargain.
Because of growth in neighborhood and civic leagues, he said, voters complain more now than they did during his early years on council. "More people are involved now, and the neighborhood groups have become almost like a lobby."
Garland, who now works as a pharmacist at Community Hospital and a South Roanoke nursing home, hopes to have more time to enjoy life and his home after he leaves council.
Garland has no plans to seek public office again, but he won't rule it out. If council tries to "turn back the progress that the city has made under Mayor Taylor, I might get back into it," he said.
At the swearing-in ceremony for new council members recently, Garland said he had only one request and one wish for them.
"All I ask of you is to mind the store," he said. "And I hope they love you as much in December as they did in May." D4 D1 GARLAND Garland
by CNB