ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 9, 1996 TAG: 9604090041
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Reporter's Notebook
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA
I thought I had left small-town hospitality and unity behind in Milford, Neb., when I left my job as a reporter at a weekly paper there nearly two years ago. My first couple of weeks covering the cops and courts beats in the New River Valley have proved me wrong.
Driving into Milford one would see a sign claiming population of 1,886. The City Council challenged census math and said the total was off by at least 115. (The council really felt strongly about having cracked the 2,000 mark.)
It's a town uncluttered by a single stoplight and whose installation of signs for a four-way stop brought angry letters to the editor.
It's also the same community that pulled together to raise money for laser treatments to erase a large birthmark that nearly covers a local girl's face. A local pilot volunteered to fly her to a Mayo Clinic for her treatments.
It's the same place where the mayor paused before a City Council meeting and announced that the members had important business to handle before the regular agenda. On cue, the four council members, the city clerk and the mayor blew party whistles and sang me happy birthday.
I miss the people in Milford. I knew everybody and I knew what it meant to be part of a community and why people from small towns are not small-minded.
Then I moved home to Virginia and got a job in Roanoke at The Roanoke Times. Now, nearly two years later, I am working in our New River Valley bureau.
Three days into my job here, Angie Knowles lost her life and I immediately witnessed the unity of this community.
Everyone knows about the donations of money being deposited at the local bank for the four Knowles children.
What everyone may not know about are the numerous material donations that have surfaced. A family friend said one example is the two month's stay in a town house that has been offered rent-free to the family and a cut rate for the third month. None of the donations are being done for publicity's sake, though, and quietly pass unknown to me until someone calls who has heard it through the grapevine.
I can only say I have been impressed and proud of such a compassionate response. Being new here, I never had the pleasure of meeting Angie Knowles, but I feel as if she is someone who would have energized me. Her humor would have been a magnet and her enthusiastic participation a role model.
I will not forget her caring and her volunteering despite the fact I was not here while it was carried out.
I will cover the cops and courts temporarily as Kathy Loan visits the Montgomery County issues and politics so I am trying desperately to meet as many people as I can.
I have met lawyers, police officers, chiefs of police, dispatchers and campus police and clerks of the court.
I am probably most familiar with the dispatchers because I often called them for my reporting work out of Roanoke.
One dispatcher ends each of our calls with "Take care, darlin''' or some variation. There are a few in Pulaski County who likely were voted class clown; but they get dead serious when there's trouble in the field. Another told me about the unexpected stress of the job like the day she answered 911 to hear her mother's frantic voice. The dispatcher's father had just had a heart attack.
They are simply members of a remarkable crew of emergency workers.
But probably the most telling service I have received so far came from a tax assessment office.
More specifically, the Montgomery County's deputy commissioner of revenue, Claire Booth, who noticed my husband and I had not chosen the most advantageous filing status for our taxes.
A short office visit later, instead of paying more taxes, we were due a refund.
``We just think it's a service we should provide,'' Booth said. ``We try to scan every one of them.''
Now, what's more small town than a tax-collecting office that lets you know when you have overpaid?
I think I'm going to like it here.
Lisa K. Garcia covers law-enforcement and courts for the New River Valley bureau.
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