Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 6, 1993 TAG: 9307060061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Now the dam has burst once more, and the great Postcard Controversy of '93 has spilled forth.
This is a scandal so far-reaching it stretches across three cities and two states, a public-relations disaster so humiliating it's forced Roanoke Mayor David Bowers to reach into his own pocket to personally fund a counterattack to repair the tattered reputation of his city.
Alas, even the optimistic Bowers admits the damage already may have been done. After all, Roanoke has unknowingly endured this embarrassment for seven years.
And to think it might have gone on another seven years had it not been for an eagle-eyed tourist - who shall remain nameless but who bears an uncanny resemblance to the mug featured above - and a 30-cent postcard.
The tourist recently was in Chattanooga, Tenn., the mayor's favorite unofficial sister city, in the gift shop of that burg's railroad museum. Before him stretched a vast rack of railroad-related postcards. Steam engines chugging uphill. Steam engines chugging downhill. Steam engines sitting idle. Cabooses in more colors than even a Sherwin-Williams store could offer.
Out of this train yard of postcards, one caught the tourist's eye. It was a scene from Roanoke.
Now what railroad-related postcard scene from Roanoke would you think might be on sale so far from home?
The mighty steam locomotive Class J, No. 611, the pride of the Roanoke shops?
The Hotel Roanoke, once Norfolk & Western's grand old lady on the hill?
Perhaps the massive switching yard at Shaffers Crossing?
No, none of those.
Instead, there was a postcard that showed the Virginia Museum of Transportation.
In November 1985.
When it was under water.
There on the back, where other postcards wax poetic about the attributes of the scenic vistas they display - such as Beautiful downtown Burlapville, the bustling center of activity in the "The World's Turnip Capital" - were the gory details about Roanoke's natural disaster for all to see:
"Flood scene at the old museum location in Wasena Park when the November of 1985 flood was at its height. The partially submerged building in the foreground is the main museum building."
This is the face Roanoke wants to show to the world?
No wonder there's no Amtrak route running between here and Chattanooga: The folks there must think they need to pack their sandbags before they come.
So just what do Roanoke's leaders think about their city being portrayed in postcards as a flood-stricken city where the major tourist attractions are best seen from a National Guard helicopter?
Let's just say they weren't pleased when confronted with the evidence.
"I am not a pleased chick here," declared Kay Houck, the museum's executive director. "I am so sick of hearing about the flood. We've just moved beyond that." In the museum's case, that's both literally and figuratively true. From the flood plain along Wiley Drive, the museum has now moved to higher ground along Norfolk Avenue downtown.
Bowers, for once, was left speechless, his jaw slack as he stared at the scandalous souvenir. "The good news," he finally sputtered, "is these postcards obviously haven't sold very well if they're still around. The bad news is, they're still on display."
So just where did this postcard come from?
A hastily organized formal investigation by the museum turned up this account:
The flood-scene card was one of about six commissioned by the museum's flood-era director, Nancy McBride. About 3,750 of each view were printed and distributed nationwide by Mary Jayne's Railroad Specialities, a mom-and-pop company in Clifton Forge that sells train-related souvenirs.
The other transportation museum postcards were dry-land vistas. But McBride apparently thought a postcard showing the facility under water would evoke sympathy for the struggling museum - especially when purchased in the context of the museum's current digs.
Unfortunately, that's not a view shared by the Roanoke chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, which had its well-publicized differences with McBride.
The flood postcard, it turns out, is a very sore point, and has been for years.
"It's a negative postcard," groused Grace Helmer, who helps run the museum's gift shop for the society. "It's not positive."
The irony is, she's selling the same postcard - along with the dry-land views - at this very moment at the Roanoke museum's gift shop.
She has to, she says. The chapter inherited them along with thousands of other cards when it took over running the gift shop from the museum a few years back and agreed to buy everything on the shelves.
"They're not a hot seller," Helmer said of the flood scenes. "We probably sell five a week." That's in contrast with the museum gift shop's top-selling postcard of the 611 locomotive. "We sell at least 20 of them a week," she says.
Helmer figures she has about 400 of the flood scenes left.
At the rate she's going, they'll finally trickle away sometime in late 1994.
That'll be a high-water mark, so to speak, she says. "They're not something I'd reorder."
But what concerns Bowers are the flood cards that remain in circulation around the country - and the folks who will see just that view, and nothing else, about Roanoke.
Who knows what they're doing to the city's image?
So Bowers vows to do his share. He says he's going to buy a stack of the dry-land Transportation Museum post cards and mail them to the railroad museum in Chattanooga to sell instead.
And the mayor's thoughts about the tourist who first spotted the flood card? He "should have bought them all."
\ When he's not playing tourist, Dwayne Yancey is a senior story editor and a reporter for this newspaper.
by CNB