Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 13, 1992 TAG: 9202130132
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WHAT COUNTS, DEAR ONE, IS THE HEART OF THE DAY
ON VALENTINE'S DAY, let's do that thing that gives you such incredible pleasure! Rent two videos? Valentine's Day means more than business behind the counter of the Great American Cookie shop at Tanglewood Mall.
Manager Lois Shrewsberry and co-baker Anthony Hall share warm, fuzzy feelings outside of work. They were friends before she transferred to the Roanoke Valley several months ago from Great American Cookie in Beckley, W.Va.
But, in this week with the day devoted to romance, Shrewsberry and Hall are mainly concerned with filling orders for the Valentine cookie, packaged with decorative balloons at $17.99.
Great American is using the Tanglewood store as one of its test spots for the giant cookie special promotion package.
It is one of the retail places heavily influenced by humans' desires to give some other human a special message Feb. 14.
And, like the shoeless kids of the shoemaker, many of the merchants avoid their own merchandise.
Shrewsberry bought Hall a statue, "Daydreams," and flowers.
"But no cookies," she said Wednesday. "We both have had enough of those."
Sweets, flowers, flimsies and cards are the main messengers of Valentine's, and behind each are sophisticated planning and unromantic hard work.
Fortunately, the holiday is limited in length so the pressure is short- ived, said Jim Silcox, manager of general mail facility operations at Roanoke's main U.S. Post Office.
Valentine's means some 500,000 extra pieces of mail must be processed in a week's time, and many of the sweet notes are in red envelopes.
The post office's automation equipment is not fond of colored envelopes, so most of the red ones will get kicked out by the machine for hand processing.
Silcox, a 30-year postal worker, said very few of the cards end up in a dead-letter pile, however.
"If there's anything at all that we can read, we try to deliver it . . . we put extra effort into it," he said.
But Silcox isn't mailing a card to his wife, Janet. She can expect flowers and maybe candy.
Vinton wholesale florist Wayne Dunman said he might break the norm and straggle home late Thursday with a few leftover roses for his wife, Becky.
"But, I'll make sure all orders are covered first," he said.
Becky's main Valentine loot will be a card.
Valentine's is a big business day for florists, challenged only by Mother's Day. By Friday, Dunman will distribute some 22,000 roses he bought from his childhood neighbor, John Kealey, who's a commercial rose grower in Abingdon.
Dunman bought other roses from Colombia, South America. He also filled lots of retailers' orders for carnations - the other popular Valentine flower - and did a good business in eucalyptus, daisies, dish gardens and orchids.
Rita Young, who owns Jobe Florist in Salem, isn't going to celebrate Valentine's Day until after it's over, and then it may mean going out for dinner on Saturday. She said husband Bev understands.
To fill orders, she and her staff will work 13- and 14-hour days and have no time off this week. Five extra drivers have been hired to deliver Jobe's bouquets, including lots of roses at $55 a dozen.
Undies with heart designs - for both men and women - are perennially popular for Valentine's Day gifting, and each year more and more items such as stuffed animals, coffee mugs, and heart-shaped picture frames are pushed as reminders of love.
Cards, though, are the real heart of the day. More than a billion Valentines will be exchanged this year, according to Hallmark Cards Inc. And Americans are expected to spend more than $735 million on other gifts for the occasion.
One of those gifts is the bread machine Bill Clarkson is getting. It's from his wife, Sylvia, who works at Jaclyn's Hallmark Shop at Tanglewood.
She probably will include a card.