PROMOTERS DEVELOP PLANS TO BOOST `LONG WAY HOME'

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

DATE: SATURDAY, March 6, 1993                   TAG: 9303060172
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-7   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD                                LENGTH: Medium
PROMOTERS DEVELOP PLANS TO BOOST `LONG WAY HOME'
Leaders from throughout the New River Valley got together Friday on plans to give "The Long Way Home," the region's 22-year-old outdoor drama, a monetary shot in the arm.
Plans call for drawing audiences from farther distances, raising money to bring financial stability to the program, and hiring a full-time administrator to oversee it, said Luther Dickens, fund-raising committee chairman.
William J. Hawkins and Al Smith of Blue Chip Management Services Inc., a public relations firm from Mechanicsburg, Pa., have spent the last few days gathering information on the drama's potential.
Their tentative timetable calls for a strategic plan for promoting the play to be developed between now and mid-April, Smith said. An annual operating budget and capital improvements estimates would then be drawn up.
The administrator should be hired in time to oversee the first phase of the strategic plan in May and June, Smith said. A capital campaign would follow from September to December.
The play is performed Thursday through Sunday at 8:30 p.m. from June 24 through Sept. 4.
It is performed on a stage built where the real-life heroine, Mary Draper Ingles, lived after she escaped captivity by the Shawnees in 1755 and made her way through Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky back to the New River Valley.
Board member Marty Gordon outlined some initiatives that are already under way, including guided tours of the Ingles Ferry Walking Trail; a demonstration of frontier life June 26 and 27 as it existed in the area before 1840; a militia day July 24 with demonstrations of units ranging from the Colonial militia to the modern National Guard; a special performance sometime in August for the hearing-impaired by a sign-language specialist signing the lines of the play, and a re-enactment in Giles County Nov. 6 of Mary Draper Ingles' rescue there following her 850-mile trek.
Gordon said other activities include a $700 marketing program for the play this year, a "Long Way Home" month in every school in the New River Valley as an educational feature, and taking advantag of the schools, highways and parks named for Mary Draper Ingles in the other states she passed through.
"We look at this as one way to promote the New River Valley. To us, it is like a small industry," Radford Mayor Thomas L. Starnes said.
Bob Thomas of New River Valley HOSTS said all of Southwest Virginia gets only a nickel of each tourist dollar spent in the state, but that can change when more tourists are made aware of attractions like the drama that can make this area a destination instead of a pass-through.
"We're going to change that," he said, "because candy money is not good enough for what we have to offer in the New River Valley."
Dickens said the play, now gearing up for its 23rd season, helps the region's economy but could do more for it.
"It's an under-utilized asset," he said. "We believe it could bring in vastly larger numbers of tourists. . . . This is the beginning of the study to see what we can do."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB