ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 14, 1996 TAG: 9610140111
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
THERE WAS A LITTLE MILEAGE left in a junked old bus, Bev Fitzpatrick Jr.'s
friends discovered.
A 50th birthday is a milestone, a half-century mark to remember.
Beverly Fitzpatrick Jr. won't soon forget his.
Family and friends deposited their birthday wishes on the front lawn of his Southeast Roanoke home Saturday - an old bus, rusted to the core, with "Happy 50th Bev!" scrawled graffiti-like all over it in fluorescent orange paint.
Fitzpatrick is a transportation buff - he has been since his appointment to the Virginia Museum of Transportation board at 14.
He drove a dump truck while in college. A certified, licensed bus driver, he drove a Valley Metro bus on special occasions while a member of Roanoke City Council. He's got hundreds of model buses and trains in his basement.
Sunday, he drove a tour bus for the transportation museum's "Rail Fair."
Transportation "is in my blood," said Fitzpatrick, executive director of the New Century Council. "I can't help it."
So what better way to honor the transportation buff on his 50th birthday?
"He's always wanted a bus, so now he has one," brother Eric said.
Fitzpatrick said he knew something was up before he left early Saturday for the Virginia Tech-Temple University game in Blacksburg.
The front yard had been draped overnight with yellow tape, the kind police officers use to cordon off a crime scene. A short basketball hoop was stuck in the ground. There were overturned trash cans and a mock cemetery plot.
"When I got back [Saturday] night, it appeared something had changed," Fitzpatrick said.
Not only was the rusty old bus in his front yard, but enlargements of his high school graduation picture were tacked around a tree. A black 55-gallon drum of "Grecian Formula" sat next to the driveway. Small floral wreaths dotted the lawn.
Fitzpatrick's wife, Shirley, surprised him with a party. The 35 guests included Tech classmate Jim Brooke, who had flown in from San Diego. Gifts ranged from chocolate dentures to petrified shark dung - "something one dear friend thought I needed," Fitzpatrick said.
Clearly, the bus prank was payback for a similar one Fitzpatrick helped pull on close friend and neighbor Eugene Elliott, a Roanoke lawyer, on his 50th. Saturday's prank had Elliott's prints all over it, or the same wooden "yard art" that Fitzpatrick and gang had used to mark Elliott's birthday in August.
"It's a nasty rumor," said Elliott, when asked Sunday of his alleged involvement. But he noted that among a certain close-knit group of old friends "these pranks have been going on for 20 years."
"It's all in good fun," he said. "No one's ever gotten mad."
Except that Fitzpatrick now is left with a big hunk of wheeled junk in his yard.
"That's the great thing," Eric Fitzpatrick said. "[Bev] told us, 'Ya'll better get your bus out of here'. And we said, 'It's been bought for you. You have to find a way to get it out of here.'''
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Bev Fitzpatrick Jr. reacts to the busby CNBin his front yard Sunday. He came home Saturday to discover the
junked bus on his lawn, marking the latest installment in a
long-running tradition of birthday pranks by Fitzpatrick and a group
of his friends. The occasion was a surprise 50th birthday party.
color.