ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610280017
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: new river journal
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY
It takes a deluge to build a library.
At least in Blacksburg.
When the assorted muckety-mucks, pooh-bahs and other less-celebrated library patrons gather today at 2 p.m. to dedicate the Blacksburg Area Branch Library, they'd do well to look skyward and say thanks to the Great Librarian in the Sky.
For it was a timely summer downpour - and an equally timely late-Friday-afternoon phone call to two ink-stained wretches at the New River Current - that may be partly responsible for the shining new branch library along Draper Road, which opened in August, ending 16 months of construction and years of anticipation.
The Aug. 27, 1993, downpour dumped 2 inches of rain onto the infamous zigzag roof that used to rest atop the former Blacksburg branch library, a building that in a previous incarnation had served as a hardware and building supply store. The roof had failed two years before that '93 storm; this time, though, nearly 400 volumes were drenched, despite the frantic efforts of librarians to fling them to a drier part of the cramped library.
What made this drenching noteworthy, though, was that it occurred just four days after the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors had deadlocked on putting a $1.88 million library bond referendum on the November ballot. Three years before, county voters had defeated a similar effort wrapped into a larger bond package. And two years before that, another library-motivated borrowing effort had likewise failed before the voters.
The board deadlocked because of resistance from its main fiscal conservatives - Henry Jablonski of Riner, Ira Long of Prices Fork and Joe Stewart of Elliston - and also because a key pro-library voter, Jim Moore of Blacksburg, was out of town.
The matter was due to come up for another vote, with Moore back, the following Monday, just three days before the deadline to get it on the November ballot.
After the deluge, Virginia Hummel picked up a phone.
Hummel is a well-known retired schoolteacher who is a dedicated library volunteer. It was Hummel who called The Roanoke Times. Reporters Greg Edwards and Robert Freis were there.
Now, it's a fact of journalism that reporters dread Friday-afternoon surprises. But such late-breaking news stories are inevitable. So Edwards and Freis followed a time-honored journalistic procedure: They flipped for it.
Freis lost, and turned out a story for the next day's Current, "Volumes of rain hit books."
Three days later, a front-page story by Edwards reported, "Vote puts bonds on Montgomery ballot."
Library supporters, learning the lessons of past defeats, went to work selling the bond issue between August and November. They held forums; they produced pamphlets; they came up with a catchy red bumper sticker, "Vote for library bonds or bring your umbrella"; they made sure the bond issue included money for a new automated checkout system that would benefit the Christiansburg library, too. They also didn't complain when the word "Blacksburg" mysteriously didn't appear in the actual wording of the bond question, and they helped keep the bond total below the politically palatable threshold of $2 million (one of the reasons a fund-raising drive to finish furnishing the library continues to this day).
They rejoiced when 62 percent of county voters voted yes.
The path from that Election Day to the groundbreaking ceremony in April 1995 to the Aug. 19 completion of the expanded and renovated library building was still a long one with many twists and turns of politics and engineering and construction.
But they've all been overcome, and residents of Blacksburg and northern Montgomery County join Christiansburg and Floyd in having a public library of which they can be justifiably proud.
In coming years, there will be a push to build a public library in the Shawsville and Elliston area, and perhaps in Riner, too.
It will take political organizing by residents of those communities and their supporters in Blacksburg and Christiansburg and a willing Board of Supervisors.
And, who knows, it may take another timely deluge, too.
Brian Kelley is assistant editor of the New River Current.
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