Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 15, 1993 TAG: 9306150025
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Paul Dellinger
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A Northern Virginia real estate executive before accepting Gov. Douglas Wilder's appointment last June, she once spent a year at the University of Tokyo studying the Japanese economy.
Maxine Waller had a ninth-grade education when she became the first and, so far, only president of the Ivanhoe Civic League in 1986. A solid and plain-spoken presence, she makes no bones about being a country gal and conveys an attitude of "what you see is what you get."
These two seeming opposites came together last month when Magennis, visiting Blacksburg earlier with some other state officials, brought her entourage to the Ivanhoe community, straddling the border of Wythe and Carroll counties.
Ivanhoe once boomed but lost its major source of jobs when National Carbide closed its plant there in 1967. The company gave its property to Wythe and Carroll counties for possible new industry.
Nearly two decades later, it's still empty. The only road to it from Interstate 81-77 is winding, twisty Virginia 94, which is a bottleneck for manufacturers wanting to get products out.
So the industrial authorities in both counties decided to sell the industrial park to the highest bidder. The thought of Ivanhoe losing its industrial park, which many saw as its last hope of ever regaining jobs, mobilized opposition from which Waller emerged as a leader.
Ivanhoe folks took things into their own hands - improving homes, setting up an education center. (Waller is among those who have earned their state General Educational Development certificates.)
Former Ivanhoe residents return each July for a week of homecoming activities. College students from all over have found Ivanhoe a place to volunteer their labor during summers and school breaks while learning about community self-help. Residents have published books on Ivanhoe's history. A community radio station to be run by the youth is planned.
Waller says the youngsters, hers and others, pushed her into helping organize the league and all that has followed. Members of the Ivanhoe Youth Council gave a report to Magennis' delegation on their activities.
They punctuated it with their version of a Travis Tritt song titled "I'm Gonna Be Somebody." Abbey Bailey, a special assistant to Magennis, had tears in her eyes when she heard it.
It turned out that she had been living in Ivanhoe two years ago as a community volunteer when the kids wrote it.
As for Magennis and Waller, they seemed to hit it off famously, even doing an off-the-cuff comedic routine over whether Waller was going to give Magennis one of those books on Ivanhoe or whether Magennis would have to promise a state contribution to a league project to get it.
"I got to say something else, too," Waller said as the formalities were about to end.
"You know what else is exciting about this?" she said, holding up Magennis' hand. "A woman!" And Magennis, the first woman to hold her post in Virginia, grinned and nodded.
Paul Dellinger covers Pulaski County for the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River Valley bureau.
by CNB