Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 5, 1994 TAG: 9403080026
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Look around you today, and you can't help but see monuments to Hancock's generosity and influence: Center in the Square. Explore Park. Hancock Hall, home of the College of Engineering and College of Architecture and Urban Studies at his alma mater, Virginia Tech.
Roanoke Electric Steel, of course - the company that he founded and that made him a millionaire.
Other monuments are less visible, but no less real.
Roanoke's success, compared with other cities', in peacefully integrating public facilities in the 1960s, for instance, was helped along by the quiet but pivotal leadership Hancock brought to that effort.
The measure of political clout that the Roanoke Valley enjoyed in Richmond for many years - decades before young legislators like Dick Cranwell of Vinton gained a toehold on power - was buttressed by Hancock's friendships and influence with a long string of governors and General Assembly leaders. (For eons, past governors will tell you, Hancock's annual Christmas party in Roanoke was the command performance for the highest and mightiest politicians of the commonwealth.)
Hancock was a mover and shaker, a guiding hand or contributor to innumerable Roanoke Valley projects, especially efforts to expand this region's economic development, its cultural activities and charitable endeavors. He was a cheerleader and, often, a financial "angel."
His deep concern for education also made Hancock one of the leading benefactors of Tech, and he extended his support to many other of Virginia's colleges and universities.
Yet Hancock did not wish to dominate public attention. He was a quiet man, almost a shy man. For all his determination to see to the betterment of the city and the institutions he cared about, he didn't talk much about such affairs outside his own small circle of business friends and leaders.
To a younger generation of Roanokers, Hancock may have been regarded as an elderly rich man, a South Roanoker who threw a lot of money around for pet causes. Indeed, it is a sign of our community's ambivalence about leadership that his support of Explore Park, for example, was held in suspicion in some quarters, as if he stood personally to profit.
Yet Hancock's interest in giving was as a citizen's, in a thriving community. And it should be remembered that he made his fortune by his own hard work, pluck and ingenuity.
During his service with the Air Force, quonset huts caught his eye. He figured they might be an answer to the housing shortage in the United States. On returning home in 1945, he set up a Roanoke company to fill the need. When demand for temporary housing wavered, he diversified to sell other products. In 1949's building boom, Hancock saw the need for open-web steel joists as supports for construction.
Unable to rely on erratic shipments of steel from Pittsburgh, he decided he needed a steel mill of his own. He figured that by firing furnaces electrically, instead of using the traditional coke-oven method, he could build a mill in Roanoke that would require less space, fewer employees and less capital investment.
Roanoke Electric Steel came into being in 1955 as the first such mini-mill in the Southeastern United States. In 1962, it became home to the nation's first continuous steel casting machine - Hancock's brainstorm.
With his death Thursday, Roanoke and Virginia lost a great friend, citizen and philanthropist. But for all that he contributed to Roanoke's cultural and charitable life, Hancock made his way as a great exemplar of America's amazing entrepreneurial spirit. Would that more come along in his footsteps.
by CNB