Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 20, 1994 TAG: 9409220044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It was the early 1940s. The country was in between wars, Joe Louis fights were on the radio, and the parkway was brand new - a radical concept of a national park that anticipated the age of the motorcar.
And it ran right through the Roanoke Valley. Like a roller coaster, it dipped into rural pastures and then climbed to the mountain tops, where the view spread for miles.
The family would go up there most weekends for picnics and hikes. When Carlton was 8, they moved away, and the drives along the parkway faded into the boy's memory.
Abbott, 54, is only now beginning to rediscover the parkway. Along the way, he is rediscovering his father, Stanley, the visionary and chief designer of the national scenic highway.
And in the process, he is becoming one of the most ardent advocates for preserving one of the crown jewels of our public lands.
``I never thought that would happen to me,'' Abbott said recently. ``It's a twist of fate. I never thought I would come right straight back to my history.''
Shortly after Stanley Abbott died in 1975, a national magazine asked his son to write an article about the famous landscape architect.
The elder Abbott had been a pioneer in his profession, working on national park designs throughout the country. Here in Virginia, he did landscape projects at Virginia Tech, Hollins College and historic Jamestown back when most of his peers were designing formal flower gardens for wealthy clients.
But the young man, himself an architect of growing reputation, was still grieving the death of his father and 10-year business partner.
``I couldn't do it,'' Abbott said. ``I just couldn't do it.''
Only within the last couple of years has he read his father's notes and correspondence to understand the magnitude of his father's work, including the parkway.
``I've walked it, I've flown over it, I've looked in archives, I've found old buildings,'' Abbott said. ``If you show me a bridge, I can tell you what milepost it is.
``I've learned a lot.''
He has learned how the parkway was laid out to provide the most dramatic views, how the curves were designed to achieve a graceful motion, how local crews were used to construct tunnels and bridges with stone from local quarries, how some National Park Service land was leased back to farmers to keep in pasture, while elsewhere the fields gave way to woods.
He has learned that every aspect of the parkway was designed for a reason, from its serpentine route through the mountains to the slope of a shoulder into the drainage ditch.
Driving the parkway ``is almost a spiritual experience, it's almost a different zone you get into,'' Abbott said, his soft voice trailing off as he looked past his listener, his blue eyes gazing somewhere, as if summoning up one of those views inside the windowless room, miles from the parkway.
Abbott was in town recently to talk with Roanoke County officials about the parkway's history and design, and how certain architectural guidelines for new development in the ``viewshed'' could help preserve the magic of the parkway.
In an interview afterward, the first thing he says is that Abbott Lake at the Peaks of Otter Lodge is named after his father.
He then adds, in a confidential tone, that his father's ashes were scattered off the Peaks. His mother's, too. That sort of thing isn't allowed on public land, but his father was, after all, the parkway's first superintendent and longtime landscape architect.
Over the next hour, Abbott drifts from specific memories to his ongoing journey of self-discovery and society's loss of cultural identity, his tone rising and falling with urgency and self-reflection. A dapper dresser, his suit coat is folded on the chair beside him and his brown hair slightly mussed after a long afternoon.
``We destroy the things that we value. We're still in frontier mentality,'' he says, leaning forward in his chair, ``so we're trying to help people be more sensitive.''
His Williamsburg architectural firm has worked with the National Park Service on strategies to preserve the environs of other parks, including the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. He's also working on an open-space plan for Williamsburg, a design for the Blue Ridge Mountain Music Center proposed for the parkway, a public park along the James River, and many historic buildings and districts.
Because of his work, Abbott at times finds himself in the cross fire of debates over private property rights vs. the public good. Such is the case with the Blue Ridge Parkway.
He takes a conciliatory approach, though, telling people about the historical and cultural context of the parkway and encouraging them to get involved to preserve that. His diplomatic skills and his genuine love of special places are, perhaps, inherited traits.
``I know when my father was working on it, there was a lot of opposition to it, because it was a federal project,'' he recalls. ``They used to get shot at, and [phone] calls and all that.''
But Stanley Abbott was sensitive to the concerns of the residents. His son relates a story in which Stanley, worried that his design would ruin a mountain view for one of the locals, went to talk to the man. After hearing Abbott out, the fellow replied: ``That's all right. I done seen it.''
That was half a century ago. The views from the parkway have changed dramatically, and they will be different still a half-century from now.
Carlton Abbott wants to make sure that the changes don't destroy the character and magic of the roadway, that future generations will feel the same pleasure and spiritual joy he felt as a boy and again as a man.
``I remember him looking out his studio window,'' Abbott recalls of his father, ``and saying there'll never be another Blue Ridge Parkway.''
by CNB