THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 2, 1996 TAG: 9608300013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 60 lines
The Iris Society in Roanoke has lost its president to prison.
Victor Layman, 41, combined his talents in real-estate sales and horticulture in the wrong way. He obtained at least 13 houses, and inside them he grew marijuana with buds reportedly 10 times normal size. People paid him franchise fees to peddle his product.
Last week Layman was sentenced to nearly five years behind bars.
If he has any brains, he'll form an Iris Society in the prison and later claim to have rehabilitated hundreds of inmates through growing and arranging flowers. Then he'll sell the movie rights to his story - ``Saved by a Flower`` - for a small fortune.
That's assuming he's assigned to a prison with dirt and the warden lets prisoners dig in it. West Point located - correctly
Last Monday we said West Point was the county seat of New Kent County. Actually, New Kent is the county seat of New Kent County. West Point is in adjoining King William County, whose county seat is King William. West Point, in other words, is not a county seat and is not in New Kent County.
Everything else in the piece was correct. Skunks did invade West Point several years ago. We saw them. We smelled them. We just misread the map. Applause for a young volunteer
Many a youngster was bored this past summer, but not Melvin Elliott, a Ruffner Middle School eighth-grader. Six hours a day, six days a week, he helped elderly residents of Norfolk's Sentara Center as a volunteer.
Staff writer Nancy Lewis reported that Elliott got the idea to spend time with the elderly after visiting his grandmother in a Chesapeake nursing home.
With school starting, he still plans to visit his elderly friends at the Sentara Center after classes and on weekends.
Hampton Roads needs a thousand Melvin Elliotts. Landscape ordinance - sense and scents
Suffolk has unveiled a proposed landscape ordinance that's partly borrowed from similar ordinances in the other four South Hampton Roads cities.
Among other things, it calls for trees to screen businesses from roads and subdivisions, vegetation along public roads, plants around signs and parking lot landscaping to shade vehicles and help direct the flow of traffic.
Plants makes even a cityscape look and smell better. The more of them the better, though we recommend against huge bushes at intersections. Better late than never
Last week, the Chesapeake City Council unanimously approved a program to prominently mark commercial buildings that have truss construction, which, by design, causes roofs and floors to collapse when exposed to high heat and fire.
Such construction was partly blamed for the death of two Chesapeake firefighters in March, when a roof collapsed after they'd entered the building. Buildings with truss construction will be marked with stickers bearing bright red ``T''s on a white background.
Portsmouth and Suffolk already have similar programs. Every city should. by CNB