ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610220120
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
EXPLORE PARK has made it out of a wilderness of opposition, ridicule and dried-up funding sources by being adaptable, both in concept and leadership. One of the leaders who lent a guiding hand just when his skills were critically needed was Norman Fintel.
Fintel recently retired as president of The River Foundation, a nonprofit group of private supporters of the living-history state park that naysayers said would never be built.
Explore has taken firm root and continues to grow along the Roanoke River gorge just 15 minutes from downtown Roanoke. For that, the region is indebted, in part, to Fintel, who generously assumed leadership of the foundation the day after he retired as president of Roanoke College.
That was in 1989, soon after the Virginia Recreational Facilities Authority had taken over day-to-day administration of the park, leaving the foundation with oversight of the master plan and responsibility to raise money for capital projects in an unusual public-private partnership.
Fintel already had made a considerable contribution to the Roanoke Valley with his successes as a college president. During his 14 years at Roanoke College, he had taken a small, insulated campus and made it an integral part of the community. He had overseen improvements in curriculum, faculty, student body, physical plant. And he had raised money. Under Fintel, the college's endowment fund increased fivefold, from $4.6 million to almost $25 million.
His mature and experienced judgment are of a sort that the leadership in our region needs more of, as it does the willingness to contribute that he has exemplified.
Fintel's willingness to give so much of his time to The River Foundation, just as he entered his retirement years, lent needed credibility to the project as a community asset worth cultivating. He played an important part in gaining champions for the project beyond the handful of businessmen who had launched it, but could not remain its sole support indefinitely.
Fintel helped to win over private funders and, most important, the Virginia General Assembly. He can step down from the foundation post assured that Explore will survive. He has left another job well done.
LENGTH: Short : 44 linesby CNB