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

DATE: SATURDAY, May 6, 1995                   TAG: 9505090070
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

PUBLISHER TO SEEK MONTGOMERY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS SEAT

Mary Holliman, an editor and book publisher, said Friday she will seek the Democratic nomination to run for the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors this fall.

Holliman wants to run for the District F seat being vacated at year's end by supervisors Chairman Larry Linkous, who's running for the House of Delegates. The district stretches from Hethwood to Laurel Ridge and includes part of Virginia Tech.

She's the first candidate to announce in District F. County Democrats will choose their candidates June 3; Republicans choose May 20.

So far, only one of the four board seats up for election has more than a single candidate: District G, where political newcomer Curtis Cox is challenging incumbent Joe Gorman to represent a district that includes central Blacksburg. The state filing deadline for candidates, party-affiliated or independent, is June 13.

Holliman, 65, has owned Pocahontas Press, a publisher of history, biography, memoirs and poetry, for 11 years and has worked as a research editor for Virginia Tech since 1977. But she's accepting the state's buyout offer and will retire from Tech at the end of June.

"I think I have some things to contribute, some ideas or some perspectives to contribute," Holliman said. "I've been involved in education all my life in one way or another. But I'm also a business person. ... I can come to county issues from two or three different perspectives."

Holliman said she has been involved in community issues for more than 25 years. She ran unsuccessfully for the Blacksburg Town Council in 1968 and has served on neighborhood boards and on a committee that studied the future of the Prices Fork Road area.

"I'm very much interested in land-use planning and in conservation, orderly development," Holliman said.

Before working for Tech, she taught English at Radford University, Florida State University and at the high-school level.

Holliman has lived in Montgomery County since 1962. She now lives in McBryde Village in Blacksburg with her parents, Edgar B. Bloom, 95, and Vivian C. Bloom, 92. Holliman raised two sons in Blacksburg. James Holliman of Pennsylvania and Dan Holliman of Richlands both are physicians.

by CNB