ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 4, 1996 TAG: 9611040104
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: & now this...
There were 500 competitors from 35 countries at the Virginia Beach Pavilion for the World Arm Wrestling Federation championships last month. All were there hoping to be crowned world champion. But most figured Marsha Eanes, a former world champion from Martinsville, was there as a ceremonial gesture.
Eanes was one of the few who didn't think that way. The mother of three who put a debilitating stroke deep in her past beat seven right-handed competitors in the women's masters division to win her third world title Oct.21.
Eanes defeated Japan's Tokuko Saito in her final match. ``Everybody was trying to scare me about her," Eanes said. ``All the people from the United States hadn't seen me for a long time. I shocked some people."
Eanes was making her first world championship appearance since winning the title in 1990, just months before her stroke.
As if her performance wasn't enough, the biggest test of Eanes' arm strength came in the trophy presentation, when her friends and fans screamed for her to lift her trophy over her head. It weighed 18 pounds and featured a life-size pair of arms.
Despite their cumbersome requests, she didn't mind all the people in the crowd.
``I was surprised how many friends I had," she said. ``That was the biggest thrill for me."
- DANIEL UTHMAN
Violin costs big bucks
Worried how you're going to pay for the kid's new $800 violin? Cheer up! You could be Cenovia Cummins, who will bring her recently acquired 18th century instrument to a concert Sunday at Greene Memorial United Methodist Church.
Price tag: $150,000.
The violin was made about 1716 by the Italian instrument maker Giovanni Grancino in Milan. The home-grown Cummins, who now lives in the New York City area, came across the instrument while shopping for a new one for a friend, said her father, Greene Memorial music director Richard Cummins.
She tried it and fell in love.
"She said, `How much?'" her father recalled. "He said, `It's appraised at $150,000.' She said, `I don't think so.''' The shop owner encouraged her to take it with her for a tryout, however, and Cenovia was soon hooked.
The violinist bought the instrument by liquidating assets, cadging a few bucks from sympathetic friends and family members and taking out one whopping 10-year loan, her father said. "She has to make some sizeable payments."
Cenovia and her sister, cellist Stephanie, play in Broadway musicals and with New York area orchestras. The sisters will present a program of Bach, Handel, Ravel, Gershwin and an original piece by Cenovia on Sunday. The free concert begins at 4 p.m.
- KEVIN KITTREDGE
Playing it safe at stadium
Relax, sports fans. Although it may look like it, Victory Stadium is not falling down.
The city has roped off some areas at the 53-year-old landmark sports venue and is asking fans not to sit in the stands near portions of the brick facade. Five decades of freezing and thawing have loosened some of the mortar between the bricks.
But to date, no bricks have fallen and the damage is cosmetic rather than structural, said Lynn Vernon, the city's parks planner.
"It doesn't affect the structural integrity of the stadium. It's just in the parapet walls," Vernon said. "Just on the precautionary side, we're trying to keep people away from those areas."
The extent of the damage and cost of repairs is undetermined, he added. By today, the city hopes to have a better idea how long parts of the stands will remain roped off.
- DAN CASEY
Building rescuers rewarded
Years of hand-wringing over the fate of three threatened historic buildings downtown have ended with the new owners, David and Helen Hill of Hill Studio, winning a Virginia Preservation Award for buying and fixing up two of the structures.
The Hills, owners of 120 and 122 W. Campbell Ave., won the award last month from the Preservation Alliance of Virginia at a ceremony in Middletown, Frederick County.
With help from the state Department of Historic Resources, the city of Roanoke bought the turn-of-the-century buildings in 1988 to keep them from being torn down for a parking lot. They are on the National Register of Historic Places.
David Hill, a landscape architect, and his wife, Helen, a preservation planner, bought the buildings last year, restored 120 and 122 and moved their architecture and design firm there this summer. Two upstairs apartments are expected to be finished within the next few weeks.
This summer, they sold 124 W. Campbell to D. Baker & Co., a local historic renovation contractor that restored several old structures on the City Market. President Doug Baker says he has a retailer interested in opening a two-story shop in the building.
- MARY BISHOP
LENGTH: Medium: 96 linesby CNB