Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504240062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
\ They looked like giants, all those people towering over Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion.
They ripped up his patio with their bare hands. In minutes, they tore the Roanoke Civic Center off the ground and plopped it down on a new foundation. They knelt, elbows to the ground and rear ends in the air, trimming Elvis' tiny blooming azaleas.
People came by the score Saturday to help Kim and Don Epperly repair Roanoke's most famous homemade exhibit - Miniature Graceland on Riverland Road Southeast.
Don Epperly watched in amazement from his wheelchair on his front porch. "Boy, this is something, isn't it?'' Since he came down with multiple sclerosis last year and his wife, Kim, got sick too, Mini-Graceland's creators haven't been able to keep it up. Vandals had damaged some of the little buildings, too, and stolen things from inside them.
Dozens of employees of Moore's Lumber and Building Supplies - in T-shirts saying "Materials Fit For A King" - proved they not only can point you to a hammer or a weed-whacker, they know how to use them. Moore's brought $200 worth of paint, brushes and other materials for the WSLS-TV (Channel 10) fix-up day at Little Graceland.
The Blue Ridge Meat Co. grilled steaks and chicken, but just so the food would reflect all the King's taste, volunteers used a Kroger gift certificate to bring in jelly doughnuts. "We knew Elvis liked those," said Cathy Jansen with Moore's, "and peanut butter and banana sandwiches."
Pansy Decker needs somebody to fix up a home for her, too - a life-size one.
She and her husband have no home as the result of a Saturday morning fire on Campbell Avenue Southwest. Firefighters say there were no injuries, but the fire left four families or individuals without homes.
It destroyed the house next door at 825 Campbell Ave., where a man lived downstairs and a young woman and two children lived in the upstairs apartment.
Decker, 41, was grateful to the man next door: She heard him yelling about 2 a.m. and got out safely with her husband, Wilson, 42, her sister-in-law, and her mother, who lived downstairs from the Deckers at 827 Campbell.
They're staying with Pansy Decker's daughter. The mother and children next door found lodging through the Red Cross, and the employer of the man who lived there found him a place to stay.
Pansy Decker blew soot off a framed picture Saturday afternoon and peeked in an old wooden wardrobe. She was relieved to find some clothes she can salvage. Her husband has been out of work since he broke his ankle last fall.
Other places around the valley, people were acting as if it were summer. Women in bikini tops and men with no shirts dived for the yellow and white volleyballs out at the Spring Thaw tournament on Salem's Apperson Drive.
Near Towers Shopping Center, Gantner Factory Outlet manager Frederica Weld and her staff sold more than 100 swimsuits Saturday - a surprisingly high number for April, she said
The men of Hollins' First Baptist Church filled a nearby park Saturday with furniture, clothing and baked goods in a church fund-raiser. (They admitted that the baked goods were "donated" - apparently by their wives.)
And people who weren't playing or raising money seemed to be laboring in their yards. Mulch 'n More, with locations in Southwest and Northeast Roanoke, sold more than 300 pickup loads of mulch Saturday.
Downtown merchants were expecting a load of young customers. About 1,800 high school students were at a Future Business Leaders of America conference at Hotel Roanoke. But Burgers in the Square on the Roanoke City Market saw only about five teens all day, and nearby Greenfields, which sells baseball caps, saw almost no teen-agers at all.
However, the parking lot at Valley View Mall was full of school buses; the future business leaders apparently went there, instead.
And the drifter who had his suitcase blown to smithereens Wednesday night by police who mistakenly thought he had threatened to bomb the Poff Federal Building was standing on a highway Saturday, advertising for work. David Noah stood at the Elm Avenue ramp off Interstate 581, holding a cardboard sign saying "Vietnam Vet - homeless - needs help! Will work. God bless. Thanks!''
Noah, 46, said he earned $10 mowing a lawn Saturday morning and had lined up a couple of odd jobs for Monday. He's supposed to pick up his clothes at the police station Monday. He was released from jail Friday.
Noah, who said he came here from Atlanta, got into trouble Wednesday when he called the FBI office here and offered information about the Oklahoma City bombing, which he wouldn't talk about Saturday. Noah mentioned to the FBI he was a fugitive from justice - for "petty theft," his arrest warrant says. Somehow the communication among law enforcement officers got mixed up, and Roanoke police arrested him at the Roanoke bus station. Police detonated his suitcase when X-rays showed suspicious items - steak knives and a hunting knife, as it turned out.
"You know what made me mad?'' Noah asked about the blowup of his suitcase, as traffic rolled by Saturday. "I'd just done my laundry!
"I don't even know where that stupid building is I was supposed to blow up."
by CNB