Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 16, 1994 TAG: 9408160089
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Dunlap was the last president of the Norfolk and Western Railway, for years headquartered in Roanoke and for years the valley's biggest employer. Indeed, it isn't too much to say that without a Norfolk and Western Railway, there wouldn't have been a Roanoke.
The day in 1982 that Dunlap became NW president is the day that its merger with the old Southern Railway took effect, to form the new Norfolk Southern Corp. headquartered in the neutral site of Norfolk. When Dunlap retired in 1986, so was the job and title of NW president. By then, NS was well on the way toward successfully completing a genuine merger into one corporation with one corporate culture.
Aliff had been national commander and national finance officer of the 29th Division Association, and director and charter member of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, which seeks to erect some kind of memorial in Roanoke to the D-Day invasion that 50 years ago began the liberation of occupied France. D-Day holds a special place in Southwest Virginia history, of course, because among the 29th Division infantry units that saw ferocious combat at Omaha Beach were National Guardsmen from this region.
A famous battle doesn't offer the same kind of memories as a railroad's decades-long presence in the community, and one that continues as a major cog in the NS system, but both kinds of memories are important.
With renovation and reopening of Hotel Roanoke, an erstwhile NW property, and plans for a railside walk to a spruced-up transportation museum, Roanoke's rail heritage is being polished up nicely. Southwest Virginia's special role in D-Day ought to find some form of permanent expression, too.
by CNB