LONGTIME BUENA VISTA PUBLISHER LLOYD PAGE DIES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 1, 1992                   TAG: 9202010151
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: BUENA VISTA                                LENGTH: Short
LONGTIME BUENA VISTA PUBLISHER LLOYD PAGE DIES
Lloyd T. Page Jr., outspoken and often controversial former publisher of The Buena Vista News, now called the Rockbridge Weekly, died Friday at the age of 71.
Page, a past president of the Virginia Press Association, published the newspaper his father founded in 1916 from 1953-1978.
His editorials fueled controversy on subjects ranging from unions to flood walls to the city's Police Department, which sued Page for libel in 1978. The suit was dropped after Page sold the paper later that year.
He was not afraid to speak his mind.
"He took a stand on all issues . . . [and] he would not back down on it, regardless of cost or price," said Shuler Kizer, former mayor of Buena Vista. "He stood up to controversy. He polarized people."
But Kizer and Wilford Ramsey, a longtime friend of Page's, agreed that his concern for the community was the driving force behind Page's stands.
"He was sold on Buena Vista," said Ramsey, for whom Page worked as a real estate agent after selling the newspaper. "If he believed in it, then he believed in supporting it all the way."
Page was named Buena Vista's Citizen of the Year in 1961.
He tried "to serve the role of watchdog for the community," which, Page said in a 1972 Roanoke Times article, "is the duty of a newspaper."
Page was a past president of the Rotary Club; vice president of the local Democratic Party; vice president of the fire department; and a long-time deacon, trustee and Sunday school teacher at St. John's United Methodist Church. The funeral will be held there Sunday at 2 p.m.
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by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB