Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 2, 1994 TAG: 9407040123
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
On the day the Roanoke e taking shots at one another.
And they weren't the soldiers doing Revolutionary War re-enactments with muskets and flintlocks.
The heaviest volley came from Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County, who used the occasion to make what many Republicans in the audience considered an attack on Gov. George Allen, who just the day before sacked six members of Explore's governing body - including the board's chairman, vice chairman and former chairman.
"To those who would be a new generation of leaders," Cranwell said in his formal remarks, invoking a phrase Allen often used during his campaign last year, "the challenge is to remember the security and stability" that previous generations have provided. "Change just for the sake of change is not leadership."
Although Cranwell didn't name names, Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said it was clear to him what the House majority leader was talking about. "I heard a little attack on the governor for changing so many people," Griffith said afterward.
Roanoke County homemaker Trixie Averill, one of the six Republican Party activists or contributors whom Allen named to the state board that runs Explore, was fuming. "Pathetic, divisive drivel," she grumbled about Cranwell's remarks. "He seemed to have an axe to grind."
Cranwell, though, was hardly alone.
Just about every politician who paraded across the speaking platform took turns congratulating Explore Park leaders and then firing off warning shots at some other politician or government agency involved with the project.
Roanoke County Supervisor Harry Nickens declared that, once Explore is open, the Roanoke Valley should set its sights on getting the Blue Ridge Parkway's headquarters moved here from Asheville, N.C.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, chided the Blue Ridge Parkway for taking seven years to build the access road into Explore. By the time the 2-mile road finally opens in 1996, it will have been nine years since Congress first appropriated the funds, Goodlatte pointed out.
Nickens and Goodlatte also put in joint plugs for the Blue Ridge Parkway to build a visitors center in the Roanoke Valley, a much-discussed project on which some valley politicians think the parkway's staff has dragged its feet.
By the time it came for Blue Ridge Parkway Superintendent Gary Everhardt to speak, he felt compelled to embrace the idea of a Roanoke Valley visitors center - although offstage he pointed out to reporters that there's no money available for it.
Other speakers picked out other targets:
The head of the state's Roanoke preservation office, John Kern, publicly challenged Explore to do a better job of caring for the old buildings it has re-assembled and researching their history. Park director Rupert Cutler quickly said he would.
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers praised Explore as an example of how "true progress" is made by "cooperation and joint responsibility" - even though the city was cool to Explore for nine years and did not contribute financially to the project until this spring. "Joint responsibility" is often a Bowers code word for getting Roanoke County to help pay for some of the city's social programs.
And state Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop blasted the federal government for "excessive federal regulations and mandates without a scientific basis" and expressed the hope that Explore will be doing environmental research that could be used to challenge some of those federal regulations.
Griffith, who afterward joked that he was the only speaker who didn't get in a plug for a favorite project, said listeners shouldn't have been surprised that many of the politicians on the program brought their own platforms with them. "Any time you give folks a forum, they're going to use it," he said. "I think that's fairly normal."
Friday's ribbon-cutting ceremony - actually, a log-cutting with a cross-cut saw - wasn't entirely taken over by politics, though.
It was also a time for giving thanks to the many people who have worked on Explore these past nine years.
Cranwell singled out Roanoke Valley business leaders George Cartledge Sr., T.A. Carter and the late John Hancock, who each gave $90,000 to get Explore planning under way in 1985 and kept the project financially afloat over the years.
Norman Fintel, president of Explore's fund-raising arm, the River Foundation, added the late Roanoke developer Horace Fralin, another key contributor, to the list.
Cutler pointed to Stan Lanford, whose Roanoke construction company contributed the labor and machinery that helped the park meet its construction deadline this spring.
And Nickens recited a list of the park's neighbors, many of whom were originally opponents, but whose questions about the project, he said, helped reshape it for the better.. "Without Bern Ewert, there would be no Explore Park," Cutler said.
Explore opens to the general public today.
by CNB