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

DATE: MONDAY, May 24, 1993                   TAG: 9305240021
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

& NOW THIS . . .

Now that the Roanoke Civic Center has a hockey team, it may get a new scoreboard, too.

The center's scoreboard is not designed for hockey. It doesn't have a place to record the periods or scoring. Nor does it measure time in tenths of a second, the way college and professional basketball games now do.

Center Manager Bob Chapman said now's a good time to seek proposals from companies that are willing to provide a new scoreboard in exchange for advertising rights.

For one thing, with at least 34 hockey games a year in the center, there will be more exposure for potential advertisers.

And because of the improvement in the economic climate, Chapman said, businesses might be more inclined to submit proposals.

Chapman told the Civic Center Commission that he might be able to work out a package deal to get a both a new scoreboard and an identification sign on the Interstate 581 side of the building.

There are no signs on the building identifying it for out-of-town travelers.

Who says pennies are useless?

In downtown Christiansburg a penny is still worth 12 minutes of parking on the town's meters. A nickel is worth an hour.

Violators are hit with a whopping 50-cent ticket.

"They aren't meant as a money maker," says Town Manager John Lemley.

The two-hour meters, he says, are in place only to keep people from using town streets as a parking place while they are at work.

The town makes about $6,000 a year from the meters.

Gainsboro: Dead or alive?

During a student government association visit with city officials last week, William Fleming High junior Jasmin Haley asked Roanoke Vice Mayor Bev Fitzpatrick about plans for Gainsboro, home of her great-grandparents.

She said Fitzpatrick told students that Gainsboro is a "dead area" and that opposition to two proposed four-lane roads there sprung from a woman who moved back to Roanoke a few years ago.

Jasmin objected and told him he was talking about her great-aunt, Evelyn Bethel, president of the Historic Gainsboro Preservation District.

"He shouldn't make comments like that about people," Jasmin said later.

Fitzpatrick says he meant no offense. He said he was trying to explain that "Gainsboro will not grow unless we provide the right kind of ingredients around it" and that there was no organized road opposition until Bethel moved home from Washington.

Kudos for the city

City officials have taken their lumps for proposing to build two four-lane roads through the historic and mostly black Gainsboro neighborhood.

Friday night, they won praise from black residents just to the west of Gainsboro.

Florine Thornhill and her Northwest Neighborhood Environmental Organization honored City Manager Bob Herbert, Stephanie Cicero and William Hackley Jr. with the Roanoke Neighborhood Partnership, Total Action Against Poverty and nearly every bank in Roanoke.

The Northwest Roanoke organization, covering neighborhoods from 5th Street to 14th Street, thanked the city and all the honorees for years of help with home improvements and other services.

Just can't stay away

Nearly a year after leaving office, former Roanoke Mayor Noel Taylor returned for a City Council meeting this month for the first time, amid praise from his successor and applause.

Taylor was in a familiar role - even if he is no longer mayor.

He helped Mayor David Bowers recognize a boys' basketball team sponsored by Taylor's church, High Street Baptist. The High Street Saints, a team of 13- and 14-year-old boys, won a tournament held by the Virginia Parks and Recreation Society.

Taylor, who was mayor for nearly 17 years, said he has tried to keep a low profile since leaving office June 30. "I didn't want anyone to think that I was second-guessing them," he said.

Taylor, who decided to retire after learning that he had prostate cancer, said his health is good and he has taken up golf.

He said tests show that his cancer is dormant, but he still takes medication.

Different choices

Two of Western Virginia's congressmen got a chance last week to vote on the Freedom of Choice Act, which would codify the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide but which has been somewhat diluted in subsequent rulings. By a 20-15 vote, the act cleared the House Judiciary Committee - where Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, voted for it and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, voted against it.

The bill now goes to the full House.

Praying for the president

When Iran-Contra figure and prospective U.S. Senate candidate Oliver North was in Bristol recently, a minister clapped him on the shoulder and said he hoped North would join him in praying for the president.

The minister, North says, even offered a specific Bible passage: Psalms 109, Verse 8.

Later, North says he looked up the passage, and found it one that usually prompts rousing applause when he uses it at Republican gatherings around the state: "May his days be few and his office taken by another."