
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990                   TAG: 9005090111
SECTION: DISCOVER THE NEW RIVER VALLEY                    PAGE: DIS/NRV4   EDITION: NEW RIVER 
SOURCE: JUDITH SCHWAB SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: PULASKI                                LENGTH: Medium

PULASKI RESIDENTS LIKE VIEWS, NEIGHBORS

Nelson Boan was out driving with his wife Jan one day, just admiring the view, when they got lost and had to stop and ask directions. The house where they stopped had what Boan calls "a calendar view."

When he commented on the wonderful view to the woman who answered the door, Boan said, "she looked, then she jumped, and said, `Gosh, I hadn't noticed it in 20 years.'"

That view, and the people who populate it, are the New River Valley's most valuable assets, according to many who live here.

Boan understands the newcomer's appreciation for the area, as well as the old-timer's ability to take it for granted. He never paid much attention to the scenery as he grew up in Pulaski. Then he moved away and was gone "the better part of 30 years."

Those three decades provided comparisons between the New River Valley and such places as tiny Moncks Corner, S.C., and New Orleans.

It was no contest. The New River Valley won, hands down.

"The seasons are perfect," Boan said. The valley has all four seasons but no extremes.

Once, in 1959, it snowed so much in Pulaski County "the cars got lost," he said, "but once in memory doesn't count. . . . I lived in hurricane country for awhile. That's an extreme."

Even with Boan's appreciation for the "5,000 different shades of green in the spring here," it was his Arkansas wife who brought him back home. She fell in love with the place when they came for a visit.

"She wanted me to go off and get my ducks in a row and come back," he said. They did and opened the Renaissance Restaurant on Main Street, its name symbolizing Boan's belief in the new life Pulaski County is headed for.

Boan described the present Pulaski as a "way different town" than when he grew up there. The old Pulaski was a dog rolling over and giving up the fight, he said. Now, despite the closing of AT&T and other economic setbacks, he thinks the people's new optimism will get them through.

It's the people in the New River Valley that grab the newcomer's attention as soon as they stop staring at the mountains. Boan describes the people as "delightful - brighter and more friendly than anywhere else. A lot of places, [the people] seem to be half-way hypnotized or something, here they have a spark of life.".

Boan sums it up this way: While driving through New England on a business trip he noted, "This is all perfectly nice, but it doesn't equal Southwest Virginia - it just gets more publicity."

by CNB