Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 29, 1994 TAG: 9405310145
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Madelyn Rosenberg
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Scarlet Buckland Ratcliffe, clerk of the Circuit Court there, can prove it, just as she can prove the economy is rising or falling based on the number of marriage certificates she sees.
The county found out about Naomi's connection to the area this winter when a magazine story on the Judds mentioned Pearisburg.
"She was 17 when she was married and her mother came in and signed for her," Ratcliffe read off the 1964 license. Naomi's name back then was Diana Ellen Judd. Her husband was Michael Ciminella.
"We didn't know this was her until we saw that article in Good Housekeeping," Ratcliffe said. "She mentioned the date and we looked it up."
The courthouse is located on Wenonah Avenue, and Harold Woodbury, Sr., acting director of the Giles County Chamber of Commerce, likes to say Naomi's daughter, Wynonna, was named after that street. (The chamber used to be on Wenonah, too. Now it's on Main.)
That fact, however, is harder to substantiate.
A call to the duo's publicist was not returned by press time.
We hear Wynonna is expecting now. Perhaps she'll bring Giles more notoriety by naming her little one after Hobson Avenue. (Willow Circle if its a girl).
The New River Valley can boast no mayors like Clint Eastwood (which would at least bring more people out to council meetings). But its had other brushes with fame. It has its share of quirky landmarks. And while this isn't the sort of stuff that would put an area on the map (Cripple Creek notwithstanding), at the very least, it can jump-start a conversation:
Davey Crockett once owned a little haberdashery in Christiansburg.
The eastern continental divide cuts through, among other places, Craig, Montgomery and Floyd counties. Were a rain drop to fall on the rooftop of a house sitting on the divide, half would eventually trickle to the Atlantic, the other to the Gulf of Mexico.
This year in Wytheville, the Almost Whitney Houston's Christmas Tree was displayed in the town square. Houston had ordered the trees from a local tree farm, but later canceled the order.
Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley, at the time military officers, fought in the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain in Pulaski County. Both went on to become presidents.
During the early days of the NASA space program, Chris Craft, a Virginia Tech graduate, was the voice counting down to: "We have ignition."
Stephen Austin, founder and first president of the Texas Republic, was born in Austinville, a town in Wythe County named after his family.
Future Farmers of America was started by Virginia Tech.
Know any other New River Valley facts worth our Trivial Pursuit? Drop us a line at the bureau. And keep an eye on your neighbors. You never know who they might turn out to be.
\ Madelyn Rosenberg is the Roanoke Times & World-News' assistant New River editor.|
by CNB