Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 11, 1993 TAG: 9309110029
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
FLASHBACK: 8:15 on a freezing February night in Millburn, N.J., 1983. Policeman Ray Batiato sees a car run a stop sign, turn onto a dead-end street and into a driveway where it doesn't belong.
"Two guys bailed out and started running in over a foot of snow," recalls Batiato, 43. "I ran after them through the snow, across a creek. Man, my feet were freezing. We caught 'em four hours later. The car was stolen."
Today: the only sound that breaks the Appalachian silence is the faraway cry of a pileated woodpecker. Overhead, a turkey buzzard rocks in the August thermals; higher still a red-tailed hawk is flagged to the sun.
Ex-cop Ray Batiato, welcome to Floyd County, Virginia.
Batiato and his wife, Joy, left behind the high-pressure existence of life in and around urban Northeast law enforcement. Whether inn-keeping in the Blue Ridge mountains will turn out to be easier than busting car thieves is an open question.
But on July 4 the pair officially opened the Stonewall Bed & Breakfast on Virginia 860 just off milepost 159.5 on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Wormy Chestnut antique shop is directly across the parkway.
Thirteen acres of mountain heaven, with a brand-new, three-story, 5,000-square-foot log and stone structure. Small-to-medium-sized as bed-and-breakfasts go, the building accommodates a maximum of eight guests in its three bedrooms.
But the special bathroom facilities and entrances designed for handicapped guests are something you don't find in the average country B&B, as are the hiking trails out back. The inn has a reading room stocked with local historical literature and Civil War memorabilia.
The Civil War, in fact, played a big role in the Batiatos moving south in the first place.
"We were visiting the Antietam battlefield in Maryland a few years ago and noticed a fine old farmhouse there that we thought would make a perfect B&B. But none of the local B&B's would allow kids younger than 10. We thought that was a shame," said Joy Batiato.
The couple's twin boys, John and Aaron, are 9 years old.
"After that it all came about quickly," said Ray Batiato. "A friend of Joy's moved to Salem and sent back real estate brochures. I had in mind Pennsylvania, but Joy wanted to go south - she was born and raised in North Carolina - and though I won't say it too loud, she was right."
Ray Batiato said the 13 parkway acres "jumped off the page" of the brochure when he saw it in October 1990. The Batiatos visited the property the following month and liked what they saw. They bought the land in October 1991, and began construction on Labor Day 1992.
"After we bought the property we were going to wait," said Ray Batiato. "Policemen retire kind of late in life. But New Jersey passed a bill saying you could retire after 20 years on the job, and there was a buy-back provision where I was able to count three years and 11 months of my military time as well."
Though he took terminal leave more than a year ago, Batiato's actual official separation from the police department wasn't final till Aug. 1.
A Civil War buff, Batiato says the business was named partly for Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, and for the natural stone outcropping in front of the building, plus the stone front of the inn as well.
The Batiato family lives in the inn, and John and Aaron attend fourth-grade classes at Floyd Elementary School.
Joy Batiato, who spent years working in the personnel department of Penney's department stores, will handle the cooking at the Stonewall Bed & Breakfast.
"I have an approach, and it's basically to give the guests what they want, within reason," Joy said. "We talk to the guests the night before about breakfast the next morning. It's family style and there's no set time. If I can, I want to avoid the heavy foods and high-cholesterol stuff.
"I make a Martha Stewart vegetable egg casserole, and my buttermilk biscuits are the best I know of except for my Aunt Vera's. We make our own jellies, we'll have pancakes, French toast, and we're growing our own raspberry canes and blueberries and peaches.
"Let's just say that I'm not going to let anybody go to bed hungry," Joy said.
Because they built it from the ground up, the Batiatos were able to invest the Stonewall Bed & Breakfast with a number of special touches. Embedded in the floor of the upstairs reading room is a John F. Kennedy silver dollar. The floor of the kitchen is lined with stones that once were part of the chimney of an old Floyd County home.
As a North Carolina native, Joy Batiato feels right at home in the Blue Ridge mountains. More surprisingly, Ray Batiato says he feels no culture shock in rural Floyd County after a lifetime in the urban Northeast.
"People are so friendly down here," said Batiato. "They're so different from up north. I mean, you could live 30 years in one house and never get to know all your neighbors.
"I miss my job on occasion. It was kind of an adventure. But I think I'll have enough to do here."
There are some details that remain to be ironed out at the Stonewall. The three guest rooms eventually will have names, and Joy Batiato thinks that good descriptive handles - "The Rose Room," for example - will fill the bill nicely.
But Civil War enthusiast Ray is holding out for The Grant Room, The Lee Room and The Jackson Room. At last word the skirmish was still under way with no victor in sight.
by CNB