Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410240021
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-14 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In the background, Sharon Fogel, his wife, lifts the cover off a dish and cuts up barbecued chicken and cornbread into small squares.
Waller's too busy talking to notice. Her face is smiling and animated as she tells stories of the old days.
For the 105-year-old, there are a lot of days to remember. She has lived through 18 American presidents and six American wars.
Today, sitting in a blue padded leather chair in her room at Camelot Hall nursing home in Salem, she's telling Fogel about growing up in Franklin County at the turn of the century.
She remembers traveling by horse and wagon to the general store to get mail.
She remembers square dances, farm work and moonshine.
"We didn't know the people that made it, but we would drink the stuff," she says, giving Fogel a coy look. She tells him of country dances she attended as a teen-ager, where the women would "put some [moonshine] in a glass, swish in a little corn sugar and fill it with water.
"The women wouldn't get drunk, but sometimes the men would get REALLY drunk. There wasn't much water in their drinks. They would have a REAL happy hour."
Barry and Sharon Fogel both laugh, transported to another time by Waller's stories. It's almost hard to believe that Barry Fogel is Waller's attorney and not an old family friend.
Geneva Waller and Fogel met in 1992, shortly after Waller and her late husband, John Lynch Waller, moved into the Roanoke City Nursing Home.
City social service workers convinced the childless elderly couple that they should move to the home after John fell and broke his hip in their two-story home on Centre Avenue.
The Wallers wanted to go to Camelot Hall, where their brother-in-law was staying. But the home was reluctant to admit them without a guardian or family to look after their financial and medical interests.
The Council of Community Services' Guardianship Assistance Board stepped in and located Barry Fogel, who said he was willing to volunteer his help to the Wallers.
The Wallers signed a contract with Fogel, allowing him to handle their finances and make medical decisions for them. Camelot Hall then admitted the couple, and John Waller lived there until his death July 4, 1992.
Fogel still works with Geneva Waller, helping her manage her needs, which range from making monthly donations to her church to buying a new pair of eyeglasses. He deposits her checks and brings her receipts and monthly statements, showing how he paid her expenses.
Along the way, a friendship has blossomed between the two.
"Sometimes, it feels like I'm going to visit my grandmother or my great-grandmother," Fogel, 46, says of his visits with Waller.
"It's really nice to develop this kind of relationship from what was essentially a business relationship. She's got a great sense of humor and quite an appreciation of life. She seems just thrilled to be alive, and she has the attitude that every new day's a blessing."
About six months ago, he began bringing his wife along on his visits.
Now, the Fogels visit Waller about every three weeks, sometimes bringing flowers or mints.
Near Geneva Waller's bed, sitting on a tray with a pink plastic water pitcher, is a copy of the newspaper. The paper is never far from Waller's hands.
She holds the paper at some distance from her face as she reads the local news. "The older you get, the poorer your sight is," she says. "I don't want to go blind. If [the print's] too fine for me to read, I just go on and get it from the TV."
Her husband worked as a night janitor for the Roanoke Times & World-News from 1955 to 1961. Before that, he worked 19 years as a gardener for the family that owned the newspaper, the Fishburns.
Waller still keeps up with current events, especially local news. This day, she's concerned about the recent ill-fated crash landing of a small plane at the White House.
"Everybody is out to try and make a name in the paper. I was just so glad the president and his family weren't even home when the plane hit the White House grounds."
A life-long Democrat, she voted Republican only once, for Eisenhower. She voted for Clinton and says of him, "He seems to be a nice person. Of course, he has got his ups and downs like all government officials."
Waller plans to vote - Democrat - in the next presidential election. It will be her 18th presidential election since her first vote for Woodrow Wilson in 1920 at a voting precinct on Ninth Avenue.
Looking at the paper, she says she fears the violent turns the world has taken.
"The longer the world stands, the more barbarous they are. People don't like to stand still; they want excitement. I hope I won't be here when there's another war."
She points out an article about children and guns.
"There's so much real meanness going on. They're acting like a person's life isn't worth a chicken. People must be full of that whiskey, I reckon."
As a young woman, Geneva Waller moved from Franklin County to Roanoke, where she worked as a maid for various families. During World War II, she took a government job and retired from it when she married John Waller in 1952. It was the first marriage for both; she was 63, he was 57.
Born in Martinsville, John Waller moved to Roanoke as a young man and enlisted in the Army in 1918. He served at Fort Lee and a camp in New York and was discharged a year later.
Geneva Waller remembers meeting him soon after he returned. "When he came back, he was strutting like a general because he had been up North.
"We just met each other and started courting. We were kind of young. We were country jakes, just commoners."
One thing that put a semi-distance in their relationship was the fact that they went to different churches and were both active members, belonging to several committees.
John Waller went to Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, a church that had a more well-to-do congregation, and Geneva Waller went to Sweet Union Baptist Church, a church that had a humbler reputation, she says.
During their lengthy courtship, Waller says, her husband "was a gentleman from A to Z and a mighty nice looking man." Her eyes gaze to a faraway place with effusive joy, her voice singing, remembering the man she loved.
"I was crazy about him. For 40 years, we were together as loving husband and wife."
One of Fogel's jobs for Geneva Waller was to bring her a new television set that she asked him to buy with her money.
"Her eyes lit up, and the same thing happened for me," he says. "She couldn't give me a payment that would make me feel as good as she did then."
Of his volunteer legal work, Fogel says, "It makes me feel good to do it. I'm giving something back to the community. It doesn't take that much to do it for her. And, it's given me the opportunity to meet a delightful woman."
Holding Fogel's hand, Waller recalls a time when it seemed impossible that whites and blacks could ever be friends.
She remembers the time of Jim Crow laws, when some friends from "the North" came to Roanoke and ordered ginger ale at a lunch counter. The restaurant owner told them to drink it in back of the building.
"They threw the stuff down and told them to take their damn stuff. They didn't need it, because they were from the North.
"Yes sir, there's been many changes have taken place."
by CNB