Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 27, 1994 TAG: 9412280066
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Maybe it happened when we were on our way to the mall.
Maybe it happened when we were on our way to the bank.
For Howard Dowe and Sam Kessinger, it happened when they first put on their caps and T-shirts.
Whenever it happened, one day we woke up and realized we'd become Carolinians. Not just any Carolinians, mind you, but Charlotteans.
So you think it doesn't mean anything that our biggest mall and our biggest building were built by someone from Charlotte? Or that one of our most cherished landmarks, the Hotel Roanoke, is being renovated by someone from Charlotte? OK, OK, that Henry Faison sure gets around. But what about the fact that our biggest bank is now owned by an even bigger bank in Charlotte? Or that we have to fly through Charlotte's airport to get just about anywhere - even if it's only the other side of Virginia?
If you don't think any of those are important, then what about all those caps and T-shirts we're seeing for the Carolina Panthers, Charlotte's expansion franchise that starts play in the National Football League next season?
The ubiquitous gear for the Charlotte Hornets basketball team, that was something different. After all, when did you ever see someone around here wearing a Washington Bullets cap? Heck, they don't even wear those up in D.C.
Besides, says Carolyn Clinevell, a buyer for CMT Sporting Goods in Roanoke, the Hornets have cool colors and a neat logo. "With the little bee, you get a nice-looking hat. Colors are really important. If they don't have decent colors, people won't go buy it."
But the Panthers? That's a different matter. Here we are deep in the heart of Washington Redskins territory, yet walk down the hall of any high school - or the mall, for that matter - and you'll find folks sporting the logo of a rival team that hasn't even played its first game.
"It blows my mind," says Bill Fletcher, who patrolled the halls at Christiansburg Middle School last year and now sees the Carolina Panthers shirts as assistant principal at Shawsville High School. "I've been amazed at how many of the kids are wearing them."
He may be, but geographers aren't. They say all those shirts and caps are a sign that Roanoke is culturally seceding from Virginia - and throwing in its lot with North Carolina. "It's a re-orientation," says Virginia Tech geographer (and assistant provost) Susan Brooker-Gross. Author Joel Garreau is more emphatic, and more colorful. "It's like Roanoke is switching churches," he says. "This is not trivial. History is made out of little movements like this."
\ Well, let's see.
Talk to the folks wearing Carolina Panthers gear, and some of them prove CMT's Clinevell has a lot of sporting-goods buyers pegged.
It's color that counts.
Why was 19-year-old Gene Bess wearing a Panthers shirt as he cleaned tables at the Roanoke City Market building this summer? "I don't know," he shrugged. "I like the colors."
What about Maria Sublett, a seventh-grader at Andrew Lewis Middle School in Salem? "I like the little panther. I think it's a pretty shirt."
And why does Clay Haley think so many of his classmates at Cave Spring Junior High School are wearing Panthers caps? "They're stylish."
But talk to others, and the extent of the Panthers' range becomes clear. Sam Kessinger, a groundsman at Virginia Military Institute, says a lot of his buddies plan to ditch the Redskins for the Panthers. "A lot of the guys I work with already have their hats, T-shirts and mugs, what not. I'm sure they'll have a big following. The Redskins have become old hat. They've gotten stale. It's time for something else."
Besides, he says, "Charlotte is a little closer to home. It's something we can call our own." If a guy from Buena Vista thinks of Charlotte as "closer to home" than Washington, then what about people in Roanoke?
"I pay attention," says Howard Dowe, the owner of Howard's Car Care on the edge of downtown. "A lot of people come in wearing either Panthers shirts or hats. That's really giving me a lot of indication in what's going on. The Redskins fans are totally fading off."
That might be an exaggeration. Many of those wearing the Panthers logo are like Roger Clark, a General Electric retiree from Salem. "I'm gonna stay a Redskins fan," he says. "I guess I'll always be." But now he'll have two teams.
Lester Stoneman, another GE retiree from Salem, figures it will take time for the Panthers to overtake the Redskins. But eventually, he says, fan allegiance in Western Virginia will be split "about even-steven" between the two teams.
Already, CMT reports its sales of Panthers and Redskins memorabilia are about tied.
And that's where the geographers - the cultural geographers, who study things like Southern accents and sports allegiances, not the boring cartographical types who made us memorize the list of state capitals in grade school - are having a field day.
"I can see you guys being at the pivot of the two magnets," says Garreau, the Northern Virginia-based author of "The Nine Nations of North America," a book about how cultural differences transcend state and even national boundaries.
The old magnet used to be Washington.
The new one is Charlotte.
Why is this happening?
nThe map helps. Charlotte's closer, a three-hour straight shot down I-77. "Charlotte's not that far away," Clark says. "You can go down and see some games."
Of course, we could see some games in Charlotte even if it were far away. That's where some non-cartographical factors may come into play.
nThe Redskins have a waiting list for season tickets some 40,000 names long. Want to catch a game? Are you on a first-name basis with owner Jack Kent Cooke? But the Panthers plan to hold back 7,500 tickets each game for occasional fans who want to drop in from out of town. Even so, a surprising number of Southwest Virginians have been sending off to Charlotte for season tickets. Nobody's made a count yet, says Panthers spokesman Charlie Dayton, "but it's caught my eye how the number of times that a Southwest Virginia address would come up."
nThe success of the Charlotte Hornets also may have prepared folks in Western Virginia to look toward a Charlotte team as the home team.
At Staunton River High School in Bedford County, "a fair number of our kids root for the Charlotte Hornets," says principal Robert Ashwell. "I anticipate they'll do the same for the Panthers."
nHornets, schmornets. The geographers say Western Virginia's allegiance to Charlotte was inevitable.
Pull down the map for a moment and get ready for a brief history lesson.
Eastern Virginia was settled by the English pushing up the James River. Western Virginia was pioneered by Germans and Scotch-Irish who followed the Great Valley down from Pennsylvania - and some kept going right on into the North Carolina Piedmont, even without I-77 to speed them along.
"Western Virginia has a different historical pattern from the rest of Virginia," Garreau says, "so it's not surprising that allegiances would be up for grabs west of the Blue Ridge."
But not for long. One of the nation's pre-eminent sports geographers predicts the Panthers will inevitably win out. "Culturally speaking, Roanoke should have closer ties to Charlotte," says Georgia State University's Richard Pillsbury, the co-author of "The Atlas of American Sports."
Why? Because Washington is everything Roanoke isn't, he says. Its image these days is confined to the two C's - crime and corruption. Charlotte may have its problems, he says, but its image is more positive, more wholesome. In Washington, you might get mugged. In Charlotte, you make make money.
"North Carolina is still closer to God's country," Pillsbury says. "I think that's a good part of it. Charlotte is more attractive than Washington for the average small-town person."
\ But does it really matter? So what if folks here sent all their Redskins shirts to Goodwill and pulled on a Panthers jersey instead?
It matters, Garreau says, because sports teams are one of the clearest ways that cities create a wider sense of community. Put another way, if we think of a Charlotte team as the home team on the football field and the basketball court, then we're likely to think of Charlotte as the home team in other endeavors.
"It's a subliminal thing, the realignment of allegiances," Pillsbury says.
But what really matters, he says, is money.
Charlotte's already decided that Roanoke lies within its economic orbit, he contends. "The Charlotte money is very aggresive and conscientiously trying to build a trade area. It's all part of economic territory-building." Put another way, Charlotte's money men (and women) are seeking out opportunities farther and farther away from home, and finding them in places like Roanoke. (See Faison, Henry. See banks, First Union.)
That's all macro-economic stuff.
Here's the micro-economic stuff: Once folks here start driving to Charlotte for games, "they'll get to know the city better, and they'll head off to do other things there," says Tech's Brooker-Gross. "It could have a cascading effect."
One day you're cheering on the Panthers, the next you're doing your big Christmas shopping at the Carolina Place Mall. And after that, who knows, maybe your kids are moving there, if they haven't already.
"Migration theory holds that people migrate to places they have information about," Pillsbury says. "As people go to the games, the place you'll have information about is Charlotte, not Washington. So when you get to the point in life that Roanoke is dull and boring and it's time to move on, you'll go to Charlotte."
Interesting theory. But Warner Dalhouse, the Roanoke-based chairman of First Union National Bank of Virginia, isn't buying it.
"Dollars are not usually influenced in that way," he says. "I don't believe many people are going down to Charlotte to take advantage of entreprenurial opportunities because they've learned about Charlotte through the Charlotte Hornets or the Carolina Panthers."
Still, he admits, he's been tempted himself. On trips to First Union headquarters in Charlotte, he's noticed Carolina Panthers T-shirts on sale in the lobby. "I've threatened to buy some and mark 'em up and re-sell them because there does seem to be a market here."
by CNB