Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 5, 1994 TAG: 9410050110
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER NOTE: below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Ray Robrecht's friends showed up Tuesday night to show him that he has made a difference.
Robrecht, a Republican member of the House of Delegates for 10 years and Roanoke County commonwealth's attorney before that, is ill with Lou Gehrig's disease.
The Raymond R. Robrecht Appreciation Dinner at the Salem Civic Center was a total surprise to Robrecht, who showed up in jeans, running shoes and a flannel shirt. Becky Bane, one of the dinner's organizers, said Robrecht thought he was just going to dinner with a client who picked him up.
"It was the best-kept secret in Salem in 25 years," Bane said.
Robrecht was led into the ballroom at the civic center to a standing ovation from a crowd that included friends, law colleagues and fellow politicians.
House of Delegates Majority Leader Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County, and Minority Leader Vance Wilkins, R-Amherst, were seated at tables near Robrecht.
"With all these legal eagles in the room, I need a gavel to bring this thing to order," said Salem Police Chief and master of ceremonies Harry Haskins.
The idea of the dinner started one Sunday evening in late August when Bane visited Nancy Robrecht. Becky and her husband, Gene Bane, a Salem optometrist, are longtime friends of the Robrechts.
Nancy Robrecht said her husband was despondent, not because of the disease, but because he had become a lawyer "to make a difference," and he thought he hadn't done that.
"That's where it all started," Becky Bane said. "I have had the most incredible support."
Robrecht, 57, has no health insurance. It's too complicated to explain, Becky Bane said, but it's not Robrecht's fault. "This is nightmare material," she said.
About 300 people came to the dinner Tuesday night. Becky Bane said that 259 people signed up in advance and paid $25 a plate, which won't make a lot of difference as far as medical costs are concerned.
But, as the letter from the "Friends of Ray" said:
"Tickets were set at this low price to encourage as many of Ray's friends as possible to attend. But even a large gathering ...will not generate a sizable gift. If you can give more, please do. It is much needed."
Becky Bane said she had no trouble lining up the speakers for the program: Haskins, as master of ceremonies; Steve Agee, who succeeded Robrecht in the House of Delegates; Del. Morgan Griffith, a Salem Republican who succeeded Agee; former Rep. M. Caldwell Butler of Roanoke, who also was in the House of Delegates when Republicans in the legislature were scarce; and the Rev. Bob Copenhaver, a fellow runner - on the road, not in politics - with Robrecht.
Interviews with Robrecht's friends indicated that the idea - aside from health insurance - was to show Robrecht that he is appreciated and that he did make a difference.
This is the kind of support Becky Bane got:
Griffith used his computer for the mailing list, culled from the list of eligible voters, and used a bulk mail permit to send 4,000 to 5,000 letters.
Agee wrote to 100 of Robrecht's former colleagues and current members of the General Assembly - of both parties. Although Agee said he didn't want to appear to be running a separate fund-raising operation, some legislators sent checks.
And, Agee said, some of the people who got the original "friends" letter have copied it and sent it to other people. Letters from Gov. George Allen and U.S. Sen. John Warner were among those sent by people who couldn't attend, Agee said Tuesday night.
The Salem-Roanoke County Chamber of Commerce wrote to its board of directors. Robrecht is on the 18-member board.
Fred Anderson, Roanoke County's treasurer since 1971, is treasurer for the fund-raising effort. It is, he said, an honor to do that.
Although Becky Bane said she didn't "want to get too Republican" with the dinner, it is an inescapable historical fact that Raymond Robert Robrecht, a Morristown, N.J., boy who came south to Washington and Lee University for his education, was a part of a Republican operation that changed the way things were.
In 1967, Robrecht was the GOP candidate for commonwealth's attorney. Along with former Roanoke County Sheriff O.S. Foster and former County Clerk Elizabeth Stokes, he dazed the ruling Democratic order in the county courthouse by getting elected as a Republican.
Throughout the years when the political organization of Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd managed Virginia the way one might manage a large department store, loyal occupants of county courthouses - from circuit judges to sheriffs - had been the machine's glue.
In 1967, the Byrd Organization, as it had been known and feared at one time, was essentially just a memory, but the GOP victory in the county was still incredible.
Salem had been a town - a county seat. It is still a county seat, but no longer a town - which makes a big difference in Virginia government.
When Robrecht and Foster and Stokes came storming into office that November, Salem knew that it could no longer control the county. The Republicans were beginning to grow in the subdivisions that would soon overwhelm the southwestern part of the county.
Salem, in an immaculate legal and constitutional move that surprised almost everybody, became an independent city - almost immediately.
In Virginia, independent cities are separate and apart from counties. Counties collect taxes in towns, not in cities. The county lost an astonishing percentage of its revenue, but it has survived.
And it had new, less jaded and, in some cases, more expert people in some of its main offices.
This, it must have seemed to the people at the dinner, was a pretty good example of making a difference.
Those were heady times. The Roanoke Times called Robrecht, who went on to win election to the House of Delegates in 1971, "the handsome young pugilist turned prosecutor." He was called that because he had been a champion middleweight boxer and was a ring referee at the same time he served in the House of Delegates.
Agee said the difference made in the 1967 election probably extended beyond Roanoke County. The 1967 election, he said, can be seen "as really starting the Republican Party on its way in Virginia." Two years later, Linwood Holton of Roanoke became - as reporters insisted on writing in those days - "the first Republican governor of Virginia in modern times."
As Becky Bane said, there was more than politics involved in the tribute to Robrecht.
There is Copenhaver, rector of Salem's St. Paul Episcopal Church. Robrecht didn't attend his church, but he and Copenhaver were runners together - an activity that breeds brotherhood almost certainly because of its demands on the body.
Copenhaver was there two years ago in Blacksburg - the time Robrecht "ran through the finish line and just kept on running."
They thought it was heat exhaustion, but it was a swelling in the brain that required surgery.
Robrecht - the runner and the boxer and the vital human being - "seemed to be recovering," Copenhaver said.
But after the aneurysm, Becky Bane said, Robrecht "became uninsurable."
Then came Lou Gehrig's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a crippling disease of the nervous system that takes away the ability to talk and swallow and shrinks the muscles.
"This has just kind of beat him since then," Copenhaver said.
Robrecht is "a man of conviction and his word," Copenhaver said. "He is fun, too. He has a nice degree of humility for all he has done."
Robrecht is now unable, or unwilling, to talk. He was a prosecuting attorney who had a reputation for being dogged, and a member of the House of Delegates who would take on the governor of his own party if the governor offended his sense of what was right.
Treasurer Fred Anderson remembers Robrecht as "no flash-in-the pan politician."
"He wasn't going to tell you one thing and then go to Richmond and vote another way."
Said Anderson: "Ray's touched probably a lot of lives. It's payback time."
Staff writer Matt Chittum contributed to this story.
by CNB