ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 20, 1996 TAG: 9606200018
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: LETTERS
I AM a patron of the Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium on a regular basis. I've never been so disappointed in the citizens of the Roanoke Valley in all my life.
At a recent ballgame, there was a total of 1,250 fans.
Come on people, wake up! Here we have a state-of-the-art ballpark, which seats 6,000 people, and we can't come up with but 1,200 people on an average night. This is outrageous.
Salem Avalanche baseball is the most affordable entertainment in town on any given night. Try it one time, people, and you might like it.
TERRIE ARGABRIGHT
ROANOKE
Cashing in after a disaster
I READ in the newspaper that the president of the airline that deep-sixed in the Everglades dumped on the market his million-and-a-half dollars worth of shares for profit.
This I presume to be another twist on the famous capitalist saying, ``The buck stops here!''
GRANT HALLOCK
CHECK
A warped view of rally for children
YOUR NEWSPAPER carried a diatribe emanating from a right-wing think (?) tank attacking the recent Stand for Children demonstration organized by the Children's Defense Fund.
Reading the June 9 commentary (``Help kids - end the welfare state'') by Michael Tanner, the Cato Institute official, I noticed that he was awfully nonspecific about what actually occurred at the CDF-sponsored event. Thus the commentary refers generically to ``speaker after speaker'' ``whining'' for ``more,'' but doesn't offer a single name or a single quotation. Similarly, the writer refers to the usual suspects among liberal interest groups, but fails to mention that the total number of organizational sponsors was more than 3,000.
As someone who attended the event, I have a hard time identifying it with the one discussed in the commentary. At the event, most speakers I heard were children. Not a single elected official spoke. There were a number of prayers by religious leaders representing many different traditions.
Contrary to the commentary's assertion, the children who spoke didn't ``whine.'' Mostly they told stories about real predicaments. Sometimes the stories involved great pain; sometimes they told of great triumph.
The commentary specifically claims that those who spoke had nothing to say about the problem of crime and violence. That is false, and further supports the conclusion that the writer is attacking an event that exists only in his head. In fact, one of the most eloquent and moving speeches was given by a gentleman whose 20-year-old son had been killed by a 14-year-old boy. Instead of reacting in hatred to the horror of losing his only son, he told of his efforts to understand - efforts that led him to reach out in compassion and forgiveness to the perpetrator's family.
I understand the commentary was an opinion piece, but I don't think that entitles the writer to fabricate reality. The description contained in the commentary is untrue; the analysis is shallow and misleading.
HUGH F. O'DONNELL
ST. PAUL
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB