Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 28, 1993 TAG: 9304280039
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But it's drama all the same, live theater performed with shovel, rake, tractor and backhoe.
The crew faces the same pressure that you face when you try to paint the nursery before the baby's born, or mow the grass before the team picnic at 3 o'clock.
During the winter, the crew ripped up a short dead-end nub of College Avenue that jutted unattractively into the otherwise picturesque college campus. The street was a vestige of a longer College Avenue of yesteryear, and once had been used for a dozen or so parking spaces. Even more recently, it'd been roped off to vehicles and spruced up with a couple of upright concrete planters.
The plan was to rip up the nub and replace it with brick sidewalks and lush plantings. This is to be the formal gateway to Roanoke College's picture-perfect campus.
Paid for by the college and by this year's senior class, as a gift, the new and improved threshold to higher education was to be completed by graduation day.
Commencement draws those assorted parents, guardians, grandparents and alumni who have bled cash for four years to pay for the degrees. All colleges want to look their Sunday best for the big day. The learned graduate with the multiple job offers is proof of the intellectual worth of the investment. The campus appearance is proof that any money left over after the intellectuals have had their fill is prudently spent on paint and grass seed.
Graduation at Roanoke College looms 10 days from today.
The new entranceway is taking shape, but clearly has an under-construction feel to it. Dump trucks are parked nearby. A backhoe tears up turf, a weary man guides a buzzing tamper over a packed patch of gravel, electricians dig a trench to bury wires.
Mark Burton steers a Roto-Tiller on a slender peninsula of soil that will, God and weather willing, be a garden by May 8.
He's supervising this last-minute dash.
"I don't think," he admits, idling the tiller, "I realized how big a job this was going to be."
In his defense, he didn't realize either that a blizzard would shut down the project for a week or that prolonged rains would turn it into a quagmire.
The comfortable schedule now is cramped.
Burton's working the grounds crew overtime, including full days on Saturdays, to race the calendar toward graduation.
"The grounds crew is very optimistic," says Burton. "Everybody else is unsure what it'll look like when company comes."
That broken cast-iron lamppost should be welded back together by then. And holly trees will be growing where that tractor is parked. And the tufts of soil being churned by Burton's tiller will be planted in juniper and covered in mulch. And that gravel will be covered by a neat brick sidewalk.
God and the weather willing, Roanoke College will look just fine on graduation day.
"You come back next Wednesday and see what it looks like," offers Burton, and he gazes at the dirtscape.
"Or Thursday. Come Thursday."
by CNB