Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 3, 1995 TAG: 9504040007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SALTVILLE LENGTH: Long
It is not a history of kings, queens and castles, but of prehistoric mammals such as mastodons and mammoths that left bits of their bones behind at Saltville, along with stone tool pieces from Paleo-Indians who lived here some 10,000 years ago.
Verner, 50, was hired by a group with interests in archaeology, geology and natural history. They want to build the Museum of the Middle Appalachians here in the near future. Though the museum does not yet exist, Verner is still its director.
``It was exactly the kind of job I'd come over to look for,'' he said. ``There aren't many of them, but there are some.''
In England, Verner had been assistant director of the Stratfield Saye Estate and Apsley House, both properties of the Duke of Wellington, and later executive director of the Southwick Estate, where he managed 15,000 acres including a Roman castle. Its mansion, Southwick House, was the site of Normandy invasion planning in World War II and was visited by President Clinton last year during the D-Day commemoration.
In the 1980s, Verner ran his own consulting business for museums, gardens and arboreta. The work involved much grant-writing and fund-raising, and he will be putting that experience to work now on this side of the ocean.
``The trouble is, there's a public conception that, when you have a director, in about three days they want to see ground being broken,'' he said.
The museum will not happen quite that fast, but it is not a far-future project, either. If its timetable continues on schedule, consultants will be hired to develop plans and specifications in 1997, construction will start in 1998, and it will be open before the end of 1999.
The first step, Verner said, will be to convince potential donors ``that you know what you're doing. I don't find that, actually, terribly difficult.''
The museum planners, organized as the tax-exempt Saltville Foundation, worked out a timetable including publicizing the project and raising funds for a director in 1993 and 1994. It is now into its next phase, with the director hired and planning to seek donations for the museum and outdoor facilities.
Verner and his wife came to the United States in February, 1994, and were living in Northern Virginia. Last April, he applied for the directorship and, following months of applicant interviews, was hired in October.
Since then, he has gotten the administrative side of the operation running and computerized.
``That means that what I can now do is concentrate my energies on the thing that really needs to happen straightaway, and that is the critical flow-in of funds.''
Verner said he was taken with the concept of a museum that, instead of simply capitalizing on the admittedly unique finds in the Saltville area, would try to interpret the past and present of the entire Middle Appalachian region including Virginia and adjacent parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and West Virginia.
He said the foundation's board of directors is drawn from business, academic and professional areas with a wide variety of backgrounds. ``All of them share the characteristics of being able to think beyond the area of their own personal discipline,'' he said.
And he found they had already accomplished a lot, not the least of which was an annual Woolly Mammoth Day complete with breakfasts of ``scrambled Ice Age eagle eggs, ground sloth gravy and biscuits, bison bacon, mammoth sausage, paleo-pancakes and more.'' The second one was held Jan. 28, with a mechanical mammoth - designed by Fred DeBusk of Saltville - challenging Punxsutawney Phil, the Pennsylvania groundhog who looks for his shadow each February, as to which is the more accurate weather prognosticator.
Some days find Verner wearing to work a Woolly Mammoth Day shirt complete with an illustration of the animal. Woolly, he confided, is a she and may have some progeny in the years to come.
Besides trying to get the publicity of Woolly Mammoth Day beyond Saltville, Verner is looking forward to a four-week archaeology dig this summer in cooperation with the Virginia Museum of Natural History. Such summer digs have gone on here for years and have yielded both early American Indian artifacts and bones from long-extinct animals.
The last week of this year's digging will overlap with the first week of nearby Abingdon's annual Virginia Highlands Festival, which brings thousands of people into the area.
The festival will be able to send tours from Abingdon to the dig site, Verner said. There are plans for the museum to hold a benefit auction during the festival in one of Abingdon's tobacco warehouses, and the museum plans to make experts in various fields related to the project available to speak during the festival.
``What we're aiming to do is be a major presence there this year,'' Verner said.
There also are plans for an on-going educational outreach program.
The idea for that originated with the children of DeBusk and museum administrative assistant Beverly Rowland, who has been on the dig for the past five years. It involves a computer bulletin board that could be linked to home computers used by young people.
Starting in April, people in the Saltville region will be able to use computer telephone modems to communicate with the museum from home. The bulletin board, called the Mammoth's Lair, is available after museum office business hours (9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.) by calling 496-7033.
``Also we're hoping to make it available for schools,'' Verner said, ``so they can access it and stay on line however long they need.'' Educators can make arrangements to access it during school hours by calling 496-3633.
``That gets us into the schools. It should help us get up our educational outreach program because I want to introduce our lecture service,'' he said.
He is now collecting names of people who ``are particularly expert on one subject or another'' for groups such as civic clubs who need speakers. Other speakers with national reputations in fields ranging from salt-making to wildflowers or the Civil War would be made available through the museum for a fee.
Verner is juggling many other ideas as he works toward making the museum a reality.
One would be a railroad right through the middle of the museum to a replica of a 19th-century station, hauling people to Saltville from nearby Interstate 81. ``It's very expensive to do, and you've got to do it right,'' he said. ``That's living history to me, and I think it would work.
``There's a constant tug of war between entertainment and education,'' he said. But, ``in my book, you don't distort history in order to make entertainment.''
by CNB