ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609300059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
LET IT RAIN, LET IT POUR. Southeast Roanoke has weathered so much stigma over the years, a little drizzle couldn't dampen its first festival.
It was the oddest sight to the Rev. Sam McPhail: City crews last spring, madly cleaning up Ninth Street Southeast and Jamison Avenue, even raking up months' worth of messes in the alleys.
Then he realized that the Tour DuPont, the international cycling race, star of cable sports shows and pride of Virginia's tourism industry, was pedaling through Southeast.
"Of course, they chased all the homeless people back to wherever they came from," said McPhail, minister of Belmont United Methodist Church in Southeast. "The rest of the time, it is ignored."
Not Saturday, when Southeast staged its first Harvest Festival, the beginning of what it hopes will become a tradition. Rain drove people under tents and shelters at Southeast's Jackson Park, but they stayed for hours to get acquainted and hear gospel and bluegrass bands.
Gainsboro and Old Southwest Roanoke gained historic-district status; Wasena won praise for shutting down a crack-cocaine operation; Gilmer Avenue reaped awards for fixing up old homes; the Grandin Road area landed a new cafe and a furniture store.
"Southeast," said festival chairman Boots Repass, who's lived there two decades, "sort of gets left by the wayside."
But now Southeast wants to pull its many small neighborhoods together and make residents feel as proud of their part of town as anybody else.
"Southeast has been looked down upon for many, many years," said Danny Arnold, formerly of Southeast's Garden City. His gospel and bluegrass band, Southern Tradition, played at the festival.
Years ago, high school boys from elsewhere in Roanoke got in trouble with their parents for dating girls from Southeast, no matter how upstanding the girl or her family.
Southeast's gritty, working-class reputation was the reason, according to people at the festival. Blue-collar workers came from all over Virginia and West Virginia and settled in Southeast to work for the railroad and the old American Viscose rayon factory. Southeast's image darkened all the more when the city's sewage treatment plant was built there.
The snubbing of Southeast still sticks in the craws of many. "Our homes over here are as nice as anybody else's," said a woman who's spent all but one of her 53 years in Southeast but didn't want her name in the newspaper. "People over here care as much about their children as people anywhere else."
"As someone said to me," McPhail recalled, "'We always thought of ourselves as poor folks, but good, hard-working people.'"
But now most of the industrial jobs are gone, many of the old homeowners have died, and renters without deep roots in Southeast have replaced them as old homes have been chopped into apartments.
Saturday's festival was organized as an outreach to the newcomers and a solidarity-builder for old-timers by five Southeast churches - Belmont Presbyterian, Belmont United Methodist, Belmont Christian, Waverly Place Baptist and the Ninth Street Church of the Brethren - along with the Rescue Mission and the Presbyterian Community Center.
"We thought maybe it would make the transient people in the neighborhood know we're receptive to them. Unfortunately, people tend to be a little snooty toward them," said festival volunteer Roberta Kotz, who recently invited an immigrant Haitian family to a church supper.
The five churches, Rescue Mission and Presbyterian Community Center recently organized the Southeast Roanoke Christian Partnership to run a children's medical clinic, parenting classes and a literacy program. Next month, the partnership will announce the appointment of a nurse to advise and consult with elderly residents and families in Southeast out of an office at Belmont Presbyterian.
Sam McPhail, the Methodist minister, said most members of Southeast's churches have roots in the community but now live elsewhere. Even the parsonages of most of the churches moved out of Southeast years ago.
Elmer Fitzgerald, 71, a member of Belmont Presbyterian, said most people at his church are old. "I think the youngest one in there is 51."
"We need young blood. We'll take all the young leaders we can get," festival volunteer Calvin Crane, 79, said of his neighborhood organization, the Southeast Action Forum. It meets at 7:30 p.m. on first Tuesdays at Southeast's former fire station, 1015 Jamison Ave.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff Amy Ellis, 6, thrills to a magic showby CNBat the Harvest Festival on Saturday at Jackson Park in Southeast
Roanoke. color.