Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 27, 1994 TAG: 9407290041
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In St. Louis, an alderman proposes similar public canings for vandals and graffiti writers.
In California, a state legislator moves to require paddling for juvenile offenders.
On the radio talk shows, innumerable callers, noting their concern about a national epidemic of lawlessness, enthusiastically endorse corporal punishment and public humiliation as ways to restore a bit of discipline in our nation.
And from legal scholars come warnings about the dangers of violating the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
For some of the residents of sparsely populated Bath County, in the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia, there is something familiar about all of this commotion. For these people with sharp memories, there are certain parallels between Singapore 1994 and Bath County 1974.
It all started with a petition from the Millboro Ruritan Club addressed to Gov. Mills Godwin and the Virginia General Assembly. The Ruritans, a service organization, wrote "beseeching permission" to institute "an appropriate punishment" for anyone who despoiled the beauty of rural Bath County by littering. The Ruritans' suggestion was that convicted litterbugs be "placed on public display for an eight-hour period on the front lawn of the County Court House, constrained by leg, arm and head stocks and then be subjected to the righteous scorn, indignation and spittle of the local citizenry ... "
The Ruritans never did get an official response from the governor. Nor did the General Assembly ever pass the requested enabling legislation, but the press - local, state, national and international - had great fun with the story, as did their cartoonists. Bath County was not only front-page news in Roanoke, Richmond, Indianapolis and Nashville, but also in Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Sydney.
One Bath County resident, on a cruise of the Pacific, was shaving while listening to the Voice of America news being broadcast over the ship's intercom when he heard the latest dispatch from home. "Damn near slit my throat," retired Chrysler executive Wally Edwards later reported.
Following up on the initial story, The Roanoke Times sent senior writer Ben Beagle and photographer Oakie Asbury into the wilds of Bath County to interview these disciples of colonial justice. Another front-page story (Sunday edition) resulted from this visit, accompanied by a mug shot of sad-looking ex-Navy officer Jim Rice peering out from authentic stocks fashioned overnight by local carpenter Glenn Williams.
Television also wanted in on the action. So it was that "A Morality Play in One Act: A Litterbug Meets Justice - Bath County Style" was drafted and subsequently acted out on the steps of the county courthouse in Warm Springs. Cmdr. Rice continued his role as the hapless beer-can-throwing villain, apprehended by eagle-eyed, shotgun-wielding housewife Judi McCoy, an impressive figure of a woman in her bonnet, apron and full-length dress; arrested by Sheriff Frank Pritt (playing himself); and finally convicted by Judge Penn Brooks, adorned with false handlebar moustache to complement his stentorian voice and black robes (academic rather than judicial) required for his previous employment as MIT dean.
Channel 7 of Roanoke filmed the action for the trial while background trumpet fanfares and drum rolls were furnished by the Bath County High School band. An estimated 200 spectators attended the open-air courtroom drama.
The subsequent correspondence and phone calls (London, Boston, Denver) were a shock to club President Ashby Rusmisel. Another surprise was an emotional letter to the editor of the Clifton Forge newspaper deploring the use of the pictured head and leg stocks. That, the writer thought, was excessive for an offense such as littering. Then there was the correspondence from Harvard University. Not only did the president of one organization consider such punishment to be alarming but, the Ruritans were informed, one of their members would shortly be flying from Cambridge to Richmond to inform Gov. Godwin of their concerns.
A more typical response in these mountains was the dumping of a pile of garbage around the marker on U.S. 220 delineating where Bath County begins and neighboring Alleghany County ends.
Twenty years: 1974 to 1994.
Twenty years ... and memories fade. Even in Bath County, most have probably forgotten about this bit of local history. Many younger and more recent residents, including present-day Ruritans in Millboro, are unaware of this brief moment of fame (or notoriety) in their county's history: When Millboro was the dateline for an international news story. When Bath County was, for the moment, a national leader in the crusade against litter. When civic leaders, looking back to colonial days, called for some old-fashioned remedies to cure some modern maladies.
It was all a joke, of course, all this talk about locking people up in head and leg stocks for a petty offense. Littering, even in a place like Bath County, is still considered a misdemeanor. So that spectacle in Warm Springs 1974 was just an imaginative attempt to make a point ... sure it was ...
Or was it? There are times in this county when one is not really sure. There are times in this county when one suspects some citizens would be only too glad to dust off those stocks and start dispensing frontier justice again - right smack dab there in the middle of the courthouse lawn in Warm Springs.
And one also senses that these Bath County folks, despite certain cultural differences and an unfortunate scarcity of mountains as well as an uncomfortable tropical clime, would feel right at home in that neat and clean and orderly Asian city of Singapore.
Edward T. Walters is a farmer in Millboro, in Bath County.
by CNB