Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 26, 1993 TAG: 9304260038
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Roanoke Valley's gone national.
Or, it went national - on April 12, to be exact - when an advertisement calling the valley "Virginia's Best-Kept Secret" ran in USA Today.
"Deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains we know a secret place perfect for weekend escapes," the ad said, touting everything from the Farmers Market downtown to "sailing or canoeing a mountain lake."
"It was our first time," enthused Martha Mackey, executive director of the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Our ads are evidently working because people are calling."
Her office usually fields about 200 telephone inquiries per month. So far this month, inquiries have exceeded 600.
Was it worth the $1,485 paid to USA Today? "Very much so," Mackey said. And so were the ads that have recently run - or are running - in Mid-Atlantic Country, Southern Living, Blue Ridge Country and Vacations magazines, she said.
Incarcerated candidate
Most of Virginia's gubernatorial hopefuls use news conferences and public appearances to get their message to the voters.
Not Samuel H. Sloan, who mailed his platform to the newspaper in an envelope stamped "Inmate Mail."
Sloan is being held in the Lynchburg City Jail on charges of attempted abduction, soliciting to commit a felony and failing to appear in court.
That didn't stop him from sending out a four-page, typed platform that outlines his vision as a Democratic candidate for governor.
If he's elected, Sloan wrote, "a number of prominent judges, religious leaders and high public officials will quickly be brought to justice. . . . Indeed, I have optimistically drawn up a list of persons to be investigated and possibly indicted when I become governor.
"The Virginia taxpayers will never have to worry about me favoring my friends," he wrote, "because I am a man who has no friends."
The Port of Roanoke?
Virginia Tech President James McComas was almost carried away by his own eloquence when he welcomed participants to the Blue Ridge Region Export Conference in Roanoke last Thursday. Travelers coming to "the port of Roanoke, close by the natural harbor of Vinton, must land at Woodrum Field," he said.
Former Gov. Gerald Baliles, a native of Patrick County and keynote speaker for the conference, came from Woolwine, known for "the export of sheep trimmings," according to McComas.
Smart cookies
\ Roanoke County schoolchildren are moving in bigger circles these days - Family Circle, to be precise.
A school project that borrowed chocolate-chip cookie recipes from the national magazine (which borrowed them from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barbara Bush) landed the kids in the magazine's April 27 "Circle This" section.
The 6,849 students from four high schools, five middle schools and the Arnold R. Burton Technology Center gained the magazine's attention by baking 10,000 cookies and donating the $200 profit to charity. Sweet.
Long live the king - of the forest
Red wolves aren't the only endangered species being tended at the Explore Park. Now it's home to 30 chestnut trees as well.
Once the kings of the Appalachian forest, the American chestnuts were nearly wiped out by a blight at the opening of the 20th century.
But scientists continue to work on efforts to revive the chestnut - through genetic research, nurturing the offspring of the few chestnuts that survived and cross-breeding with blight-resistant oriental chestnuts.
This spring, the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation sent 20 purebred offspring to be planted at Explore, in eastern Roanoke County, and the American Chestnut Foundation sent 10 cross-bred saplings.
A North Carolina philanthropist and nature buff - Brad Stanback, the grandson of the headache powder magnate - has promised $45,000 over the next five years for Explore to build a fence, erect an educational display, buy organic pesticides and otherwise care for the chestnuts.
Now Explore's backers have to persuade the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors, which faces a decisive vote Tuesday on whether to fund Explore's operating expenses, to not put the park itself on the endangered list.
by CNB