Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 9, 1994                   TAG: 9411090076
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HIS LAST WISH WAS GRANTED

Payton Moore, 81, grasped the rubber tires of his wheelchair. Slowly but surely, he inched toward the voting booth at Lincoln Terrace Elementary School.

Moore raised his frame out of the chair as his daughter, Patricia Harbour, stepped into the booth to assist him. She pulled the lever, and the curtains closed behind them. A minute later, they emerged.

How do you feel? Moore was asked.

"All right," he replied. There was a sense of relief in the soft, raspy words.

Over the past 60 years, going back to when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, the retired railroad worker and bail bondsman has never missed a general election. Barring a miracle, Tuesday was the last vote Moore will ever cast. To do it, he climbed out of the bed he probably will die in.

The cancer discovered in his kidney almost a year ago has spread throughout his frail body. Doctors recently said there was nothing more they could do. A month ago, hospice workers began coming by his Staunton Avenue home.

Last week, said nurse Sharon Reynolds, it didn't look as if Moore would live to see the election.

Doctors called Barbour in Cleveland to come to Moore's bedside. The widower told her his last wish was to vote.

Late Thursday afternoon, Barbour called the Roanoke registrar's office and was told she had only 30 minutes to pick up an absentee ballot, take it to him, have it marked and signed, and get it back to the election office. There wasn't time.

"The lady in the office said, 'Honey, if you can get him down here, we'll bring the ballot out to the car.' But he was too sick."

Barbour could have done it Friday or Saturday, but she was afraid to leave her father's side.

"On Friday, we were about ready to put him to bed for his last ..." Reynolds said, her voice trailing off.

"He was very weak, shaky, nauseous. He could hardly speak. When he did, he talked a lot about wanting to go and vote, and being afraid he wouldn't be able to. It means a lot to him," the nurse said.

On Monday, Moore suddenly rebounded. Barbour peeked into his room that morning, and he was sitting up in bed doing arm exercises.

"He said, 'Good morning! We've got a lot of work to do today. We've got to vote,''' Barbour said.

She told him the election wasn't until the next day and suggested he conserve his energy.

"We planned and looked forward to - all day yesterday - how we were going to vote today," she said.

"It's my privilege. It's my privilege," Moore said. "It's the only right I have."

The Indiana native, who moved to Roanoke more than 50 years ago, still remembers his first time at the ballot box in 1934. Since then, he's worked in scores of election campaigns.

He's a fiercely proud Democrat, and Tuesday his vote went to Sen. Charles Robb.

Moore recalls the 1989 gubernatorial campaign of former Gov. Douglas Wilder as his own personal political zenith. His voice cracks as he describes Wilder's razor-thin margin of victory over then-Republican Marshall Coleman.

In that one moment, decades of toiling in the political trenches paid off, he said.

"The first black to be governor of a state. It gave me a charge," he said.

Tuesday's balloting had a different meaning for Moore.

Does the likelihood that it's his last time bring a measure of added significance?

"Yes - and a lot of pain," Moore replied in a hoarse whisper. "Nobody wants to die."