Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 28, 1995 TAG: 9505300013
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Standing at my kitchen sink this morning, looking out at the beautiful greens of spring around the lovely old home of the late Mrs. Fanny Jamie Dickey, I cried bitter tears into the dish water, saying to myself: "How can they? Why? Why destroy something so old and lovely, that has been cared for and loved by those who have lived there? I will no longer see the beautiful trees that bloom in spring, or the colorful shades of fall. I will stand at my sink and see a home destroyed for asphalt and every kind of vehicle that the human engineer has concocted.
It takes a Town Council to perform these unthinkable and disastrous decisions. We, the citizens on West Main Street, taxpayers of the community for many years, who have kept our homes in the best of condition, have to stand by now and watch this maniac destruction.
So for 41 years I have watched downtown bulldozed, botched up for the mall conglomeration, and a traffic nightmare and now West Main Street.
Why? It's called money - and so called progress.
Rosalie Jurisson
Christiansburg
Editors note: The house is being torn down to make way for the widening of Depot Street. Town Council approved the $6 million project in February 1993, saying it would ease downtown traffic problems.
Route, not concept, is problem
I was struck by Elizabeth Obenshain's May 14 Current editorial, "Public should be involved in highway planning." Of course it should. It is law. But the column virtually capitulated that the "smart" road and the [U.S. Sen. John] Warner concept for Interstate 73 are virtual certainties, and that all the public can do is possibly help shape these roads.
Therefore, why should the public bother when so many such projects are done deals, as surely is the present route for the smart road. Public hearings seem little more than mockeries of the democratic process. Each smart road hearing was dominated by people who opposed the proposed route - not the idea.
Opponents have a burning question about the smart road that seems never to get answered: Aside from being the shortest distance between Blacksburg and north-bound Interestate 81, what is so sacred about the route selected to charge through beloved Ellett Valley? Is there no alternative route everybody can get behind?
There surely is. It would combine the smart road with the new Bypass 460 connector, which is the next major highway construction to be undertaken and which is clamored for by business, government and commuters. Combining two major projects ought to save a bundle of bucks - de riguer these days. No one can object to combining the smart road with another highway project since Warner's plan would have combined it with the I-73 expensive dogleg.
There are few out-and-out objectors to the smart road as an idea; only to bone-headed insistence to the present damaging route.
Leonard J. Utta
Blacksburg
Food drive a success
Many, many thanks are due to all the caring and generous residents of Montgomery County who on May 6 and May 13 set out food supplies by their mail boxes for the Blacksburg Food Pantry. Some gave cash and $60 was collected. More thanks to the postal carriers who picked up those donations on these two dates, and not only took them to the post office but helped with the large job of getting it all to the Food Pantry.
The total of food collected was 7,750 pounds - or 31/2 tons! At a time when stocks are usually low, this means the pantry is now well supplied for the summer months. For the hundreds of people who took part in this act of generosity, the Food Pantry is very grateful.
Alice Willis,
Coordinator,
Interfaith Food Pantry
of Montgomery County
Blacksburg
by CNB