ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 2, 1996 TAG: 9605020005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Should the Wasena rocket stay put, rejoin the steam engines at the Transportation Museum, or meet some other fate? Give us your opinion by calling Infoline - in Roanoke at 981-0100 and in New River at 382-0200. The category is 7862.
Parks and rec programmer Tom Clarke has thought about painting the Wasena Bridge rocket to look like a giant sequoia.
Pop-culture aficionado Marshall Fishwick has suggested turning the beloved Jupiter missile into a bona fide tourist attraction, similar to the Space Needle in Seattle - only tourists don't ride an elevator to the top, they scale the cylindrical oddity via rope.
Others have suggested that Roanoke's Space Age antique be turned into a giant purple prophylactic and used as a banner for the annual gay-rights gathering, Pride in the Park.
And still, the stoic rocket stands there - its paint fading and peeling, an occasional pigeon lolling on its nose.
Impermeable to flood and fire. Oblivious to passersby.
Stolid, even, to the current movement afoot, which is to do what the flood of 1985 could not: move it from its roost.
It's the question most frequently asked of Kay Houck, the issue that dogs her wherever she speaks. The rocket stole her fire last year when a news conference to unveil the Transportation Museum's $2 million renovation plans contained a footnote calling for a reunion of the rocket with its old steam engine buddies at the Norfolk Avenue museum.
News of the rocket's move made the newspaper headline. The renovation details were submerged deep in the story, like a Wiley Drive bridge under water.
"It's all people ever want to talk about," says Houck, the museum's director. "There is so much nostalgia attached to that rocket, it's a landmark."
A generation of Roanokers has grown up driving by the Wasena bridge rocket, giving out-of-towners directions to "bear left at the rocket" and joking to their kids about "launching off the rocketship bridge."
Most people forget that the rocket was a gift to Roanoke from the U.S. Air Force in 1965, a cast-off blast-off from the space program's infancy.
Few recall that the Jupiter made aeronautic history in 1959 when it propelled two monkeys named Able and Baker safely into space, proving that it might be possible to hurl a live person up there and back - without crash-landing at Valley View Mall.
Fewer still realize that the rocket is 21 feet shorter than our other intergalactic civic icon, the Mill Mountain Star, and more than twice as heavy.
They just know that, like the star, the rocket has become part of our mental landscape. Resistant to Mother Nature. And resistant to change.
"But pleeeease, it needs a ride home." That, according to the man with the sequoia back-up scheme, parks programmer Tom Clarke.
Clarke has grand plans for the old Transportation Museum area at Wasena Park - plans that call for an environmental-education center with flood-prone exhibits (they float!), classrooms, a model of the Roanoke River and hiking trails.
Alas, he has no plans for the rocket, which doesn't have much to do with nature - unless you count the monkeys' journey into space. "The ticket to an environmental education center is ... you've got to transform people into believing they're out in the woods.
"And with the rocket standing there, that makes it difficult," Clarke says.
The Transportation Museum wouldn't mind having the rocket back - though Houck isn't quite sure how they'd get it there. According to preliminary plans for the city's new downtown railwalk, relocating the rocket next to the Second Street bridge would be a "bread crumb" to draw curious tourists from the city market to the museum.
But will Roanokers stand for the change? Will Wasenites sanction the lift-off?
Can we stand to part with such jokes as, "Is that a rocket in your park, or are you just glad to see me?"
You be the judge.
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: color. KEYWORDS: INFOLINEby CNB