Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 31, 1990 TAG: 9007280177
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Madelyn Rosenberg
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A heckuva lot, if you ask Michael Bentley, director for the new Governor's School to be opened this year in Pulaski County.
The school, which will attract some of the brightest high school students from an eight-county area, has been informally called the "Challenger School" for the past year. But that name will be changed if Bentley has anything to do with it.
"I'm a little disconcerted about using the name of the Challenger because of the technological disaster," Bentley said at a recent board meeting. "You don't name things after the Titanic or the Hindenburg . . . It gives a powerful impression - and a negative one."
Bentley said he remembers where he was when he first learned about the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986, the same way most people remember when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.
"It doesn't seem wise to be associated with it," Bentley said. "Maybe we could name the school after someone aboard the Challenger, but not the machine itself. The machine failed."
And failure is not in the vocabulary of Governor's School officials, who say the students are capable of making mostly A's and B's.
Bentley said he would rather see the school named after the region, with the title followed by the sub-heading ". . . a pioneering learning community in southwestern Virginia."
The unofficial name for the school came about last year during the grant application process, Bentley said. The former school superintendent had wanted a name that connoted technology.
"When I considered taking this job, that was the one thing I was unsatisfied with," Bentley said. "I would manage if they gave it that name, because `Challenger' can mean more than the ship."
But with a wall-sized mural of a space shuttle adorning the building's interior, a lot of people will think about the disaster, Bentley said.
"When we first started on this, back in December, that's the first thing popped into mind," said Charles Fore, Bland County's representative to the school's governing board.
Fore said he hasn't given much thought to an alternative, yet, but the board will discuss the name at its next meeting in August.
Anne Neighbors, Pulaski's representative to the board, said she thought of the school's unofficial name as a play on "challenging" - until Bentley made his point at a recent board meeting.
"We proably should have a name that will show this is in the New River Valley and identify us," Neighbors said. "It'd be nice to have a catchy name - something to get people's attention. It's not the most important thing. But it's important."
by CNB