ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 10, 1996 TAG: 9606100059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on June 11, 1996.
The Mayors Monument in Elmwood Park is near Williamson Road and Elm
Avenue. An item in Monday's paper listed an incorrect.
Erstwhile V Magazine editor and publisher Jim Cubby is alive and living in Miami Beach.
Cubby, who vanished in February just as staffers were gearing up to put out the March issue of V, is listed as fashion editor in an alternative weekly newspaper there called Wire.
A phone call to the magazine's offices turned up Cubby himself.
"I just had to, like, walk away," said Cubby, when asked why he left V so abruptly. V had been a Roanoke fixture since 1990. Cubby had moved the magazine's headquarters from Roanoke to Richmond last fall, although the magazine was still distributed here.
"It was just a combination of things," he said of his disappearance. "It was just - I had a partner [former V associate publisher Ross Breitenbach] who left. And the weather. It was something I couldn't deal with, so I turned it over to my attorney to deal with."
Asked about the $30,000 or so worth of debts his magazine's demise left hanging, Cubby said: "I have an attorney who's trying to sort all that out. I'm not sure where that stands now."
He declined to give the attorney's name.
Cubby said he has been in Miami Beach for about two months. He also said he has no plans to resurrect V.
The ex-publisher, who has family in Roanoke - in addition to a number of unhappy creditors - said he will come back to the Star City someday, but does not know when.
Does he miss Roanoke?
"I miss the people, yes," Cubby said.
He also said he was happy in Florida. Who's the mayor?
By now, most people in the city of Roanoke know the answer to the question. It's David Bowers, of course, who's set to begin his second four-year term as mayor July1.
But forgive outsiders who visited the recent Festival in the Park in downtown's Elmwood Park if they got the idea that former mayor Noel Taylor still reigns.
After all, it's engraved in stone.
The Mayor's Monument is a large obelisk set in Elmwood Park near the intersection of Franklin Road and Elm Avenue. Etched into granite blocks surrounding its base are the names of mayors of the town of Big Lick, the town of Roanoke, and, since it was granted a charter in 1884, the city of Roanoke.
Except one.
The listing ends with Taylor, listing his tenure as ``1975-.'' Actually, Taylor served until 1992, when Bowers was first elected.
John Coates, manager of Parks and Recreation for the city, says his department is aware of the lapse.
"It's a good question. It's simply a matter of somebody needing to pay attention to it," Coates said.
During research on the monument, the city discovered that Bowers isn't the only mayor who has been left off the list. The other one is Cephas B. Moomaw, who served from 1913 to 1915. Coates says the oversights will be corrected in the next 90 days.
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