ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 16, 1996 TAG: 9606180002
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-22 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
Wythe festival goes through June 23
WYTHEVILLE - The Wytheville Chautauqua Festival continues today with the launching of hot-air balloons from Wytheville Community College at 6:30 a.m. and a variety of events scheduled all the way through to 8:30 p.m. when Sammy Kershaw's musical performance completes the day.
Activities at the festival are free, and continue through June 23 for a total of nine days. A complete schedule of activities is available for 25 cents at Chautauqua headquarters on 4th Street next to the Wytheville Recreation Center and the Elizabeth Brown Memorial Park where most of the activities will be held.
Starting next year, the annual festival will pack its activities into five days.
Children's movies will be shown at the Millwald Theatre at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Performances, workshops, games, demonstrations, art shows and sales and other attractions continue throughout each day.
Evening performances include classical guitarist Robert Trent at 8:30 p.m. and the Evansham Players at 9:30 p.m. Monday; Guy Lombardo's Royal Canadians at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday; an American Family Theatre performance of "The Wizard of Oz" at 8 p.m. Wednesday; George Lindsey, who played Goober on the Andy Griffith TV show, at 7 p.m. Thursday followed by the Dixie Chicks at 8 p.m.; the Chairmen of the Board musicians at 9:30 p.m. Friday; and the New Dixieland Reformation Band at 7 p.m. and Purple School Bus at 9:30 p.m. Saturday.
Bikers for Habitat visit New River Valley
WYTHEVILLE - Twenty-seven college students biking 4,000 miles across the country on behalf of Habitat for Humanity visited Christiansburg and Wytheville during their trek and stopped off to work on a Habitat house in Roanoke.
The students have already raised $50,000 for the New Haven Habitat chapter's work in building homes for low-income families. The so-called bicycle challenge, in its third year, is aimed at raising money for such projects and spreading the word about Habitat.
The students stayed overnight last week at Wytheville Presbyterian Church and, after a dinner, gave a slide show to the public on their bicycle program. Matt Harris, a Yale University student who got interested in the bicycle challenge while working on a Habitat house at New Haven, Conn., said various churches are providing food and overnight lodging for the students during their bike trip from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, Calif. The trip started June 1 and will end Aug. 3.
Real estate seminar offered
WYTHEVILLE - An eight-hour real estate continuing education course will be offered from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday by Wytheville Community College, with Charles Rhett as instructor.
The course will be in the Management Training Center in Grayson Hall. For further information or to register, call the Continuing Education Department at 223-4712 or toll-free outside Wythe County 1-800-468-1195.
Dublin student wins Emory & Henry award
EMORY - Whitney Earles, an Emory & Henry College student from Dublin, was judged as having the best poem in the spring 1996 issue of the school's literary magazine, "Ampersand."
April Asbury of Pulaski, editor of the publication and an honor graduate this year, won honorable mention for one of her poems.
Of all the work submitted for the issue, there were 23 poems, two short stories and eight pieces of art accepted for publication. Of those, only seven were selected for honors.
Wythe group looks for new businesses
WYTHEVILLE - An industrial shell building in Wythe County might help attract new industry, a regional marketing consultant has told the county's Industrial Development Authority.
Jerry Brown, executive director of the Peaks of Virginia regional marketing organization covering Wythe, recently met with the authority to discuss ways the state is working to market its various regions to industry.
Authority member Danny Gordon asked whether the lack of a shell building and a large number of potential industry sites "kind of puts us at the bottom of the list?" Brown said it did, but that the education of the labor force also is a key to attracting industry.
"If they can add and subtract, read and write, we can pretty well take them and train them for what we need them to do," he said.
Another plus for Wythe County, he said, is its recent reduction of its machinery and tools tax. "That's really going to be a plus," he said, as industry moves increasingly toward more automated machinery in its operations.
Newport artist's work exhibited
ABINGDON - An exhibit by a Giles County artist is on display at the Arts Depot's Spotlight Gallery in Abingdon through July 26.
Victoria Jordan Stone was raised in the Washington, D.C., area and came to Blacksburg as an undergraduate student. She fell in love with the mountains of Southwest Virginia and stayed. She has a studio in Newport.
She will receive the Virginia Watercolor Society Award today at an opening reception lasting from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. The public is invited to meet the artist during this time.
The exhibit is titled "Into the Light." Stone uses light to produce "healing works" drawing on nature.
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