Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 22, 1994 TAG: 9407220136
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Her family worked for weeks to shelter Gassett from the roar and hammering of construction across the street from her house. Contractors for the state are installing utility lines there for the Gainsboro neighborhood, the Hotel Roanoke renovation project and a new conference center at the hotel.
Gassett long dreaded the construction, which has gone on sporadically since early this year, and the eventual taking of part of her front yard to widen Wells Avenue to four lanes. She liked to sit on her front porch on summer evenings.
Wells Avenue will become an east-west loop for hotel and downtown traffic and hook up near Gassett's house to a new Second Street/Gainsboro Road from downtown to U.S. 460.
Branch Highways Inc., the company doing the Wells Avenue work, sent representatives to be with the family during blasting of rock last Friday and paid for a medical assistant to be with Gassett that day.
Rick Sells, project manager for Branch, said Gassett's caregiver said Gassett seemed unaware of the muffled blasts.
Gassett was a Roanoke beautician and businesswoman for more than 60 years. She once owned True Reformers Hall in Northeast Roanoke and out of it she ran apartments, a beauty and barber school, a beauty shop with six hairdressers and a restaurant, the Star City Chicken Shack.
She later ran a beauty shop on Gainsboro's Henry Street. Beauticians still work in the beauty salon in offices alongside Gassett's home at 16 Wells Ave. N.W., once the home and dental office of the late dentist Dr. L.E. Paxton.
by CNB