Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 12, 1991 TAG: 9102120246
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Kevin Kittredge
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It has a forked tail, all right, and the long body of a barracuda. But it has a ball for a head.
And then, it is covered with pigeon droppings. And riddled with bullet holes.
And it is sitting in Donnie Martin's office in Giles County, where a fish has no business sitting.
But don't try to tell Martin it isn't a fish.
"That's a fish," said Martin, holding the broken thing up. "Hell, yes, that's a fish."
It is a sad excuse for a fish that workers hauled down from the top of the Giles County Courthouse last month. But Martin, the county's building official, has taken it under his wing.
He plans to clean it and shine it up like a new penny and display it in a place of prominence in the courthouse - where people on their way to the court clerk's office, for example, can stop a minute and reflect on whatever it makes them reflect on. The durability of aquatic life, maybe.
After all, this alleged fish has been around for 155 years. The pigeon droppings, some of them, must be fossils by now. The bullet holes date from the Civil War.
In its silly way, the fish has come to symbolize the renovation of the run-down Giles County Courthouse. Originally mounted on the courthouse lightning rod as a weather vane, it collapsed some 25 years ago and lay rag-limp atop the courthouse cupola for years.
Martin said he knows of only one other fish weather vane in Virginia, on a building in Richmond.
According to Martin, when people in Pearisburg came by to bend his ear about how the old courthouse was falling apart, it was often the fish they mentioned first.
"I've had a lot of comments: `Why don't you fix the fish?'" said Martin, who has served on the county's Board of Supervisors. "We have a dead fish sitting on top of the courthouse."
Last year, county officials took the hint and began a $68,000 renovation program, aimed at saving the decaying building.
For the past several weeks, workers have replaced wiring, plugged leaks, doctored the delicate cornice work, and stripped the caked-up paint - 28 layers of it - from the courthouse porch.
Martin, who said the work is largely completed, estimated they had extended the life of Southwest Virginia's oldest functioning courthouse by 75 to 100 years.
They haven't yet fixed the fish, which local historians had insisted be a part of the renovation work.
"We want that fish cleaned up and put back," Ruth Blevins, research chairwoman of the Giles County Historical Society, told a reporter in December.
But Martin said the old fish has earned its resting place inside the courthouse after 155 years of exposure to the elements. But he is working with an area industry, Hoechst Celanese Corp. of Narrows, to have a duplicate fish made free of charge for the courthouse roof.
Martin said people already have volunteered to install the new fish on the lightning rod when the time comes. "People are excited about this."
When the new fish is installed, Martin said, he plans to have a little celebration.
The renovation work included illumination of the courthouse cupola, a prominent piece of the Pearisburg skyline. But Martin said the new weather vane won't be neglected.
"Yes," he told a reporter recently. "There'll be a light on the fish."
by CNB