ROANOKE TIMES

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

DATE: SATURDAY, August 28, 1993                   TAG: 9308280054
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Brian O'Neill
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


THE IMPACT 5 YEARS LATER? FRIENDSHIPS

Frank Capra got it wrong.

In Capra's classic Christmas movie, "It's A Wonderful Life," Jimmy Stewart saw life as it would have been in his little town if he hadn't lived. All the biggest losses were due to Stewart's not being on the job. He was, of course, Chief Soft Touch at the local savings and loan.

Well, I spent nine years writing for the Roanoke Times & World-News, the last five as a columnist. I must have written somewhere around 700 columns from 1983 to 1988. Some of them didn't even have any spelling errors.

Yet what is the visible impact from my work? Approximately zilch.

When I returned to Roanoke this summer, I found a city that seems to have changed for the better since I split for Pittsburgh. If I were Jimmy Stewart, I might have driven to the Wasena Bridge and jumped. But I was only reminded that the greatest impact any of us have is through our friendships, not our jobs.

Take Boo. When I moved from Roanoke, I left my golden retriever with a roommate. I didn't figure Boo would like apartment life in Pittsburgh. You'd be surprised how many people up there frown on carrying dead birds on elevators.

But when I came back to Roanoke, I discovered I no longer had a golden retriever. Boo had gone silver while I wasn't looking.

At 13, she can still thump her tail like a cheap fan if anyone scratches her belly. And she'll still wade into Smith Mountain Lake in her quest to rid the region's waterways of sticks. She just no longer recognizes me.

One day, too soon, Boo will die a Southwest Virginia dog, with her new best friend, my Long Island childhood buddy Dick, whom I persuaded to move to Roanoke in 1985, only to leave him holding Boo's leash three years later.

This is how life works.

True story: A wonderful woman I dated in Roanoke took Dick and another friend to the Roanoke Airport Marriott one night when I was working. Must have been 1985. When Ruth An went to the women's room with her friend Linda, the two talked enthusiastically from nearby stalls about my friend.

Suddenly there came a voice from the stall between them: "I'd like to meet this guy." The voice belonged to a woman named Kathleen. When she, Linda and Ruth An emerged from the women's room, Kathleen was introduced to Dick.

They married three years ago.

They live in Christiansburg with three cats and the aforementioned Boo. And it all began because Kathleen chose that stall, that night, at that moment, to speak up over the sound of working porcelain.

You might say theirs is a relationship flushed with success.

Sorry. But the point is, if I didn't persuade Dick to move to Roanoke from Manhattan, someone else would be living in that house in Christiansburg. And who would give Boo her aspirin twice a day?

Maybe you have to move away from a place and come back before you can really see it.

I like the new skyscrapers that Roanoke, ever the polite metropolis, didn't put up until all the other cities finished building theirs. I was glad to see all the additions to Kim Epperley's mini-Graceland on Riverland Road. You usually have to go to slumber parties to see that many Barbies.

I love the increased vitality of the city market. I'm glad the H&C Coffee sign stayed, and I'm not sorry the viaduct left.

The only phenomenon I really questioned was all those customized flags hanging from Roanoke's homes. It looked almost as if Brandon Avenue had seceded and become the Republic of Giant Mutant Fruit.

But all that was not as important as seeing a friend's child, once 7, suddenly 12. Or seeing that a couple who met on my porch now have three - count 'em, three - children.

I've missed a lot of stories in the past five years, but the Blue Ridge Mountains were waiting for me when I took my seat at Salem Municipal Field. And some of the best lives being led in the shadows of those hills would have been different if I hadn't passed through.

I didn't do anything but introduce good people to good people who introduced more good people. But it was satisfying work. And, in Roanoke, it wasn't hard to do.



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