Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 6, 1993 TAG: 9308060211
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAT BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But waiting shoppers were more interested in when the store would open than in labor issues.
It was the same at Crossroads Mall, where the Knoxville, Tenn., company was also opening a store. Some 300 customers waited outdoors there, mostly unaware that there was friction inside between mall management and members of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.
The union said it had a right to be on mall property to encourage people not to shop at Goody's. Mall management thought otherwise. Roanoke police mediated, and the union group, mostly children and teens, moved onto a sidewalk near Hershberger Road.
Robert L. Goodfriend, chairman and CEO of Goody's, was pleased with the number of customers at Tanglewood. "If we have an equal crowd at Crossroads Mall, I think that will be very good," he said.
Company President Roger Jenkins was at Crossroads.
Goodfriend said the protest against Goody's had not caused any inconvenience.
Raymond Crumpacker, a retired orchardist, said he came to the opening at Crossroads as a way of protesting the union's presence.
"I didn't buy anything, but I might come back," he said.
The Armentrout and Maze families came ready to buy. Lissa Armentrout, 11, and her friends, Lindsay Maze, 11, and Paige Maze, 14, had $50 each for purchases.
Lissa and her mother, Cathy Armentrout, who live in Roanoke, said they regularly shop the Goody's store in Christiansburg.
Betty Gruver of Franklin County brought her daughter, Joanna, on a birthday shopping spree to the Tanglewood store.
Joanna, who was l5 yesterday, said she wanted to price a jacket she had seen in the window and shop for shorts to wear when she enters Franklin County High School for her freshman year.
Hiawatha Belton also made the trip to Roanoke from Franklin County for the opening Thursday - not to shop, but to help her mom, Ronda Nunley, a Fieldcrest employee, with union work. Hiawatha wore a "We're fighting for our future" T-shirt, as did several other teens in the group.
Nunley said the crowd, for the most part, had been sympathetic to the union members.
"A lot of people came by and said they understood," she said, "But we had one heckler."
Before the Tanglewood store opened, cheers and applause could be heard from inside the store as workers warmed up with the "Goody's" cheer - "Give me a G . . . " - but some customers weren't impressed with the show of enthusiasm.
Denise Sweeney was ready to begin shopping. "I have to show a house at 11 a.m.," the real estate agent said.
Sweeney said she was a little bothered that there was a union controversy clouding the opening. "I thought there might be somebody here passing out leaflets so I could learn more about it. I don't know the whole story."
In fact, members of the union were just four doors away in a booth they had occupied on the advice of Judy Tullius, the mall's general manager.
Tullius told the union they could not actively give out leaflets on mall property but that an empty store would be available to them.
The union team moved in and decorated with a huge sign and colorful balloons that said "Boycott Goody's."
But down the hall a young woman dressed in a clown suit gave out balloons celebrating the grand opening to Goody's younger shoppers.
Staff writer Sandra Brown Kelly contributed to this story.
by CNB