Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 20, 1993 TAG: 9305190563
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
She has been elected president of the Virginia Federation of Garden Clubs for 1993-95.
From her first message to members, it appears she will combine a love of nature and education during her term.
Armbrister taught at all grade levels in Giles and Pulaski counties and was an elementary school principal for 10 years. She established Giles' pilot kindergarten program, and served on the state Board of Education textbook adoption committee several times during her career.
As for her gardening, she is a nationally accredited master flower-show judge, landscape-design critic and life member of the Virginia Federated Garden Clubs and National Council of Garden Clubs.
Her love of growing plants is obvious from those surrounding the home where she and her husband, Paul, live on Claytor Lake. She joined the Pulaski Garden Club in 1948 and has been in a garden club somewhere ever since.
"Garden Club members are known throughout the state for their knowledge of good planting and growing habits but, to keep abreast of today's mounting environmental concerns, we must have the awareness, initiative and know-how to face these problems," she said in her opening president's message.
She urged members to take more of their organization's continuing education program and its classes.
"These classes, taught by top-grade instructors, give us a working knowledge and the self-improvement needed for community leadership," she said.
For the past two years, Armbrister has been state chairman of landscape-design classes taught throughout Virginia and sponsored by the Federated Garden Clubs and Virginia Cooperative Extension Service.
She is president of the board for the 50-year-old ecology and earth sciences Nature Camp in Vesuvius, on the edge of George Washington National Forest, with a summer enrollment of 350 students.
If all this was not enough to keep her occupied, she also is active in the New River Valley Art Center, Wilderness Road Historical Society and Museum, Pulaski Chamber of Commerce, Pulaski Woman's Club, St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital Auxiliary and New River Valley Board of Realtors.
She has bachelor's and master's degrees from Radford University, as well as being a graduate of the Realtor's Institute of Virginia and an real estate agent in the New River Valley.
by CNB