Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 28, 1993 TAG: 9301280322
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
HIS TURN TO CHECK OUT
THE bench in the lobby where Lylburn Moore once sat - wearing a blue uniform with a light blue collar - is gone now, along with the Ponce de Leon Hotel.The hotel - there had been inns or their equivalents on the Second Street-Campbell Avenue site since the 18th century - is now the Crystal Tower office building.
Moore, 65, prevailed, however, and this month he will retire, kind of, as a one-man maintenance department.
He came to sit on the bench with other bellmen in 1956. They sat there, in descending order, waiting for the bell captain to call them to carry luggage and escort guests to their rooms. The tip rate was 25 or 50 cents.
The salary, after a year, was $7 a week. Before that, the income was tips.
If, Moore said, a salaried bellman needed his salary to pay his bills, it was an indication he was not moving fast enough to make the real money in tips.
"You weren't doing much work if you needed that paycheck to pay your bills," Moore said.
Moore recalled a frequent guest, who brought along a very heavy canvas bag.
He was not a a big tipper. "I don't care how heavy the bag was," Moore said, "he'd give you a dime."
Later, Moore learned of the death of the guest with the strangely heavy suitcase. It was heavy because the guest was a dealer in rare coins.
And Moore said: "That old dime man was worth a fortune. There was money in that bag and old coins that were worth a fortune."
There were kinder guests - singer Bill Eckstine; bandleader Lionel Hampton; the immortal Fats Domino; the Harlem Globe Trotters; and Joe Louis, when the former heavyweight champion of the world had been reduced to refereeing local wrestling matches.
There was Haystack Calhoun, a wrestler of some girth, who broke his bed down and trapped himself between the boards. It took two people to get Haystack out.
After that, any time the wrestler called for a reservation, the bellmen "bricked the bed up," which meant they put cinder blocks under it to sustain Haystack's weight.
Every section of the building has a memory for Moore. A bell captain, for example, collapsed and died where the bench used to be.
It is no secret that the Ponce de Leon - its name inspired, apparently, by a spring that still flows in the basement - had the reputation of being a bordello.
It was a classy operation, in that the girls worked the rooms and not the street.
But it was discreet, Moore said: "If you didn't know they were there, you wouldn't know they were there."
Moore remembers another obsolete business.
The clothing salesmen came with racks and samples in station wagons, and the bellmen took it all up to the third floor on the freight elevator. The drummers set up the racks in one room and slept in another.
When they came in, Moore said, the area around the hotel looked like the garment district in New York.
Do drummers still do that kind of thing? If so, where do they do it? "Sometimes I wonder," Moore said.
People who like to see the old preserved are in debt to Moore for restoring the tile mosaic that had once said much about the Ponce de Leon.
Under four coats of paint, there were:
A depiction of what must have been the galleon that brought Ponce de Leon to Florida in the search for a fountain of youth.
A golden, in-relief fish that once spewed water into a pool below.
And the tilework itself.
But Moore applied and reapplied paint stripper until the old glory was restored.
He couldn't do anything about five bricked-up, cathedral-like windows above the lobby. They were closed years ago, but Moore remembers the time when it was glorious to see the sun shine through them into the lobby.
Before he leaves full time, Moore will improve the lobby by rehanging an ornate lamp he has restored.
Moore said he got interested in maintenance work when he noticed the prices local tradesmen charged for repairs.
"I just thought to myself, I can do that," Moore said.
It will not be surprising to see Lylburn Moore back at the Crystal Tower after he retires. Management has mentioned part-time work, he said, "And if they need something, they can call me."
Moore is a native of Roanoke and graduated from Lucy Addison High School. He has been married for 20 years to his wife, Marie. He has two children, Janet and Doug, both of Roanoke.
Today, from 3:30 to 5 p.m., an informal reception will be held for Moore in the Total Action Against Poverty community room at the Crystal Tower.
Nobody will know better than Moore that this room was once the Buckskins Room - named for the unfortunate Buckskins, a professional football team that is also a part of Roanoke lore.