Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 1, 1994 TAG: 9403010215
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By STEPHEN FOSTER Staff writer
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
The disheartening sight of the blackened walls and crumpled metal mixed Monday with feelings of bewilderment and sympathy for the club's general manager, Judy Dean.
Investigators said Dean left notes in her vehicle saying she intended to burn the building so the club could be reimbursed with insurance money and offset financial problems it has suffered over a difficult winter.
Then, investigators said, Dean tried to kill herself with a mixture of pills and whiskey. She was admitted to St. Alban's Psychiatric Hospital on Monday.
Officials estimated the fire damage at $450,000.
In searching for any inkling of Dean's mindset Sunday night, club President Chuck Hartman and others talked repeatedly Monday of the club's plight financially, of money woes exacerbated by winter storms that kept golfers off the 18-hole course .
"We went for over a month and we didn't have a round of golf played," said Hartman. "We weren't doing well financially."
The club was $70,000-$90,000 behind in its cash flow, Hartman estimated.
But he said the club wasn't at risk of going bankrupt.
"We're not destitute," Hartman said. "The club's not going to go under. We've made our payments to the bank."
The club's board of directors was planning to vote by April on an assessment - a process that would have divided the revenue loss among the club's more than 380 members, who pay up to $1,525 for a membership.
The board was to meet Monday night to begin discussing how to rebuild.
"We're fully covered," said Hartman. "There's no problem with the insurance." Hartman said the building was insured for $680,000 and its contents for $250,000.
"Even if arson is proven, we will be able to collect," Hartman said he was told by the club's insurance agent, James Mensh, also a club member. He could not be contacted Monday.
Trying to attract new members probably will be more difficult, though.
"It'll be hard to sell a member on what we have sitting there," Hartman said.
Some members possessed a more optimistic perspective, though.
Wheeling a bag of clubs across the parking lot toward the course, P.E. "Blackie" Blevins went to join three others for a game.
"Not much we can do here, so we're going to go hit some balls," Blevins said.
Though the fire, fueled by gasoline, spread through two-thirds of the building, many personal items were saved. The fire stopped short of spreading to the locker rooms and a lounge where members sometimes played poker.
During the blaze, members pushed gasoline-powered golf carts away from the building, disconnected propane tanks on the deck area and saved a Vance Miller painting of the golf course. Miller is a well-known local artist and a member at the club.
Members also got into the storage area and began saving golf bags by carrying them outside and loading them into a waiting vehicle in brigade-like fashion.
Monday morning, other members showed up to retrieve bags, golf clubs and shoes. Workers loaded a pickup truck with chairs, a television and boxes.
But the fire consumed the clubhouse's kitchen, pro shop and some offices. On that side, only concrete was left standing.
"I will tell you, this is sad," said Robert E. Lee Chapman, 86, a long-time club member. "Nothing is as bad as a fire. It just kills you."
"We're just devastated," said Amy Hall, a baker in the club. She stood and looked at sooty, soaked timecards and papers from files strewn across the ground.
Hall said workers' hours had been cut recently, but neither she nor anyone else thought that financial worries were enough to make someone snap.
Club members spoke kindly of Dean, who came to work in Blacksburg about three years ago.
"She did more than you can expect from a general manager," said Maj. Gen. Stanton Musser, a board member and commandant of the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Tech. "She did a lot of it herself and maybe she should have delegated more."
Dr. Larry Cowley, another club board member, said she worked tirelessly.
"She did many things. She cooked, she managed," and she did the books, he said. "I doubt one person could have done the things she was doing."
When board members recently told her they were going to find her some help, she apparently took it as a failure on her part, Cowley said.
"We were just trying to get some assistance for her. She took it very personally."
Hartman, Tech's baseball coach, portrayed Dean, 48, as a workaholic who put in 80 hours a week regularly.
"We'd never had a manager who worked like she did," Hartman said. "She exerted a lot of internal pressures on herself."
He said he had no idea what may have triggered Dean's actions. Her contract ran through the 1995, and "she hadn't received any ultimatum" to control costs, he said.
"We're more concerned about her health," he said.
by CNB