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

DATE: SUNDAY, April 2, 1995                   TAG: 9504150011
SECTION: HOTEL ROANOKE                    PAGE: 3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THEY WERE THE SPIRITS BEHIND THE PROJECT, BUT THEY DIDN'T LIVE TO SEE IT

James D. McComas and Horace G. Fralin were two of the people most responsible for the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center project, but both died while it was under way.

Fralin, a Roanoke Valley developer and president of the Virginia Tech Foundation who had battled prostate cancer for several years, died in January 1993. Virginia Tech President McComas, diagnosed with colon cancer in September 1993, died in February 1994.

McComas' spirit was an impetus for the project even before he moved to the New River Valley to take the Tech presidency, said Brian Wishneff, the city's director of economic development who became acting director of the Hotel Roanoke Conference Center Commission.

Many of the early meetings to discuss the project were held at the Roanoke Valley offices of Fralin & Waldron Inc., where Fralin was a partner, and Fralin would sometimes come to them directly from a cancer treatment.

"There were some long, excruciating meetings, and he stayed through them all," Wishneff said.

"Normally, his role was to raise red flags, but he stayed optimistic. He listened, then suggested."

Fralin was chairman of a committee to select a developer for the project, and "he led us through that process with tremendous strength and dignity," said James Harvey, former city councilman who was chairman of the hotel commission.

"I know Horace is looking down on us today and smiling," Harvey said in remarks at the Nov. 8, 1993, groundbreaking for the project. In the same speech, he praised "Jim McComas' foresight."

McComas was too ill to be at the ceremony.

by CNB