ROANOKE TIMES 

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

DATE: MONDAY, December 6, 1993                   TAG: 9312060077
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

READY FOR BUSINESS - ALMOST

The Conference Center of Roanoke - which is not much more than stakes near Hotel Roanoke now - is debuting with a full page ad in the January edition of Virginia Business magazine.

Ad executive Lin Chaff has spent $43,269 to tout the meeting site, which is scheduled to open in 1995. She's bought ads for next year in a variety of convention magazines.

The Virginia Business ad, which cost $1,664, will be part of the show-and-tell at a news conference in January. There, Chaff and others promoting the reborn Hotel Roanoke are to unveil the campaign designed to put Roanoke on the list of "convening" places.

Who gets the reward?

Samantha K. found her purse.

The little girl showed up at the new Roanoke County Administration Center to claim the lost purse on Nov. 23, a day after it was mentioned in this column.

Much to Samantha's delight, the purse contained money - $8 and change - that was in it when she lost it last summer.

County employee Melinda Rector was so excited that she forgot to ask Samantha for her full name.

The lost purse went unclaimed for months. The only clues to its owner's identity were a family picture and a skating pass in the name "Samantha K."

Whoever you are, Samantha, we wish you smooth skating.

We've got a lot to offer Gov.

Douglas Wilder likes to brag about surveys that ranked Virginia No. 1 among the 50 states when it comes to financial management.

But it's doubtful Wilder - or anyone else in the state - will do much boasting about Virginia's appearance on Spy magazine's list of 1993's 100 worst people, places and things.

Virginia - the only state to make the list - came out 95th. Among the state's "misdeeds" the magazine lists with typical irreverence: " Ollie North as senatorial candidate; courts take away lesbian's son and give him to grandmother whose boyfriend allegedly molested boy's mother as a teen-ager; psychotic feminist heroine lops off drunk husband's penis; reigning gun capital of the world; home of polo-playing Sam Shepard; headquarters of fundamentalist brothers Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and famous . . . born-again theme park, Holy Land USA."

Among Spy's other targets: Madonna, Germans, NASA, and, at No. 1 - YES! - Seinfeld. 


 by CNB