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

DATE: TUESDAY, March 3, 1992                   TAG: 9203030292
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

CARVED IN GRANITE . . . CORRECTLY THIS TIME

All is right with the world, now that the railroad's name has been chiseled correctly into the downtown building's gray stone facade.

It took two workers barely 10 minutes Monday morning to replace the panel of Cold Spring granite imported from Minnesota. This time, no mistake: "Norfolk Southern Corporation," the inscription now reads. Last week's "Norfork" is apparently relegated to Roanoke's construction lore.

"Everybody inside and outside [the company] took it with good humor," spokesman Don Piedmont said.

"We got a lot of national notice. It was on National Public Radio; somebody told me it was on CNN," Piedmont said.

You have to wonder if that's the kind of public relations the leaders of a $4 billion company have in mind when they think "good press." But then, Norfolk Southern knows how to spell its name.

It was some still-unidentified subcontractor who apparently didn't. And that, according to the Atlanta contractor building the $25 million building, is the why the subcontractor "absorbed" the mistake.

"It was just a good, old-fashioned mistake," said Barry Compton, a project manager for Hardin Construction.

"We didn't go hunting for heads to find out what happened."

The old cornerstone?

by CNB