JUST WANTED OWN HOME, COUPLE SAYS

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

DATE: TUESDAY, February 25, 1992                   TAG: 9202250200
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: VICTORIA RATCLIFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
JUST WANTED OWN HOME, COUPLE SAYS
Next month, Regina Craighead and her husband, Keith, will have lived in their small, white frame home in the Penhook community of Franklin County for a year.
The Craigheads - he works as a machine operator at American Furniture and she as a packer at Tultex - were happy and excited in October 1990, while they were arranging financing for what would be the first home they owned.
"It's everybody's dream - to own their own home. And then for this to happen. . . . It's something I never expected. It's something that used to happen before my time," she said.
Before the Craigheads had a chance to move in, someone set fire to their home - once on Oct. 26 and again on Oct. 31. They later learned it happened because they were black.
Last July, a stranger - David Fleming Montgomery - pleaded guilty in federal court in Roanoke to setting fire to the house.
The Craigheads' neighbor, John Clifford Simms, was charged with hiring Montgomery to set the fire. A jury deadlocked on those charges in October when Montgomery testified that he acted alone.
But Monday, Simms pleaded guilty to two counts of arson and one count of conspiring with Montgomery to burn the Craigheads' home.
"I'm glad it's over," Regina Craighead said Monday. Craighead said she was surprised Simms pleaded guilty. But, she said, this proves he was guilty.
Craighead, 28, said she never believed Montgomery acted on his own. "He don't know nothing about us. We don't know nothing about him. And he's gonna do it on his own? I never believed that. It had to be somebody behind it."
But, other than knowing who Simms is when she sees him drive up the road, Craighead said, she doesn't know anything about him either.
"It's sad that it's people like that, but there are," she said. "I don't want to have anything to do with them. I'm just trying to live.
"There's a lot of hatred around. People do things and don't think of what they're doing. They should think about what they're doing."
Two other black families live nearby, Craighead said. But they rent their homes. "We're the only ones up here buying their home," she said, adding that she thinks that's why Simms didn't want her in the neighborhood.
She said she doesn't understand why he had to resort to burning the house to keep her family from moving in. "He had the money. He could have bought the house if he wanted it," she said.
Except for that first experience, however, Craighead said, "nobody's bothered us. . . . I like the house, I like where I'm at. It's peaceful. We could have bought a house in Rocky Mount or Martinsville, where we work every day. But we didn't want to live in town. We wanted out in the country."
The Craigheads have tried to explain to their 5-year-old daughter what happened, but they haven't told her it was racially motivated. After all, it's hard to explain.
The Craigheads try to live right. "I mind my business. I don't try to make trouble for anybody," she said.
"The way the world is now, you live in fear every day. Anything could happen to us or anybody else. But you can't dwell on it. I'm trying to put it behind me and look forward."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB