Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 26, 1991 TAG: 9102260165
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: NEW RIVER LENGTH: Long
But he was born in the community of New River in Pulaski County between Dublin and Radford. He graduated from New River Community College and went on to Virginia Tech and Radford University. Now he is the community college's financial aid administrator, and still lives in New River.
When people say they are unfamiliar with his community, Sheffey jokes that there is a college, a river, an athletic association and a resource authority named after it.
Sheffey also represents New River as part of the Cloyd District on the Pulaski County Board of Supervisors, to which he was elected in 1987. He's the first black to serve on the board, and has been told he was the first black supervisor in Southwest Virginia but has never checked that out.
It would be appropriate, though, because Sheffey, 39, first became interested in public service as a member of the then-new biracial council at Dublin High School his senior year. The organization, established to look at issues affecting blacks and whites and to help create racial harmony, helped teach him to do more listening than talking.
He stayed busy in high school - Beta Club, Student Cooperative Association, football, basketball, track, senior class officer - but it was the council that was the real learning experience for him.
Later his public service would include being director of the county Chamber of Commerce Legislative Action Committee and New River Community Sentencing.
Sheffey has been director of the county Economic Development Organization since 1987 and both the Pulaski County Red Cross and county NAACP chapter since 1984. He's been of Riverlawn's PTA vice president, New River District PTA By-Laws Committee chairman, Riverlawn Recreation Association vice-chairman, New River community SHARE coordinator, New River First Missionary Baptist Church deacons and board of chairman.
Sheffey was chosen Pulaski County's Outstanding Young Citizen in 1986.
But he had never thought about a political office when prominent Democrats, including Milton Clark and then-sheriff Frank Conner, suggested it to him in 1983. He ran for the board that year and lost by 96 votes.
After coming so close, others encouraged him to try four years later. He did, and he won. His term ends this year and he has not decided about re-election. "I guess part of me is saying I would like to run again to see some of the programs that I started accomplished," he said. Another part of him says - usually to himself as he gets home past 1 a.m. after a long meeting: "Why are you doing this?"
He and his wife, Jeannette, have two daughters, Jody, James Madison University junior, and Janelle, a Pulaski County High sophomore.
Jeannette grew up in New River, too. "She was more like a sister than a girlfriend," Sheffey recalled. Her mother had been his Cub Scout den mother and Sunday school teacher.
He and Jeannette began dating in high school and were a homecoming court couple as Dublin High seniors. They were married in 1970 when they were both work-study students at - where else? - New River Community College.
"When I first started at New River, we had classes in the old Baptist Church here in Dublin," Sheffey recalled. Campus buildings were under construction.
While on work-study, he helped put up the college main entrance sign that since has been moved into the campus. He also worked for a teacher in in the college learning lab and as a 3-to-11 p.m., full-time orderly at St. Albans in Radford.
"I think it probably helped me mature a great deal, as far as setting priorities," he said. So did getting married young.
Sheffey received a Rockefeller Scholarship to Virginia Tech but continued working during his two years there, except when student-teaching. He was one of a handful of black students at Tech then.
He received his bachelor's degree from Tech on a Saturday and started work on his master's at Radford the following Monday.
At New River Community College, he spent a year administering its recreational program and another as student activities coordinator. In 1976, he became the college's financial aid administrator.
His small, windowless office is dominated by full bookshelves, a bulletin board, a phone that seems to ring constantly, and only two other items - an outdoor autumn photo bought during a family trip to Canada and his certificate of election as a supervisor framed by his wife.
Sheffey also gave occasional lectures on black history - "where we've come from, where we've been, where we need to go" - to high school and college classes.
Two years ago, Jean Whitman, his former principal, asked him to talk to elementary children, which proved even more of a challenge. He wondered how to approach such a young audience.
That was when Douglas Wilder was running for lieutenant governor, so Sheffey made that the focus of his talk.
A pupil at Northwood Elementary said Wilder would be the first black governor. In a later talk at Critzer Elementary, Sheffey mentioned that that youngster's prediction had come true.
"And I was the one who made that prediction!" the same pupil - unrecognized by Sheffey until then - called out.
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by CNB