Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 17, 1990 TAG: 9005180044
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHERYL ANN KAUFMAN SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
At 71, she's still a member of the Williamson Road Action Forum Inc., despite a string of debilitating ailments - including pneumonia, staph infection and injuries from an auto accident - that have kept her bedridden since last June.
She's still the editor of the forum's newspaper, even though her fingers, responsible for penning two books, are crippled by arthritic pain.
She's even considering writing another book.
"It's important to me to continue working for the betterment of the community, as long as I am physically and mentally able," she said.
Prillaman feels a special obligation to the Williamson Road area.
"She is a great lover of her city and the neighborhood where she grew up," said Charles Minter, president of the Williamson Road Action Forum.
Prillaman was born on a dairy farm in Botetourt County in 1919. She came to the Williamson Road area with her family in 1922. It was the second move to the community for her father, Tyler N. Prillaman, who bought and sold land for a living.
"My father was very industrious," said Prillaman, adding that he also ran a sawmill. "He'd do anything he could to make a dollar."
Prillaman, who would much rather talk about the history and the progress of Williamson Road than about herself, said that Williamson Road had already been built when her father first moved to the area in 1911.
The community "was a very rural area - people had small farms," she said. Williamson Road had been "built around fence rows, so [the road] wouldn't get into the fields."
Prillaman attended the Oakland School at Williamson Road and 10th Street. She was a member of the second graduating class of William Fleming High School.
She worked briefly in retail management in Martinsville and Pulaski before accepting an office job with the Farm Credit Administration in Pulaski in 1940, and another in Roanoke in 1943. Later she worked for Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co. in West Virginia as an office manager and service director.
A transfer in 1954 brought her back to Roanoke and her parents, who had moved into the house on 10th Street where she lives today.
Prillaman said all was well with her neighborhood until the mid-1970s, when she thought it had "deteriorated greatly."
Concerned that Williamson Road itself was on the road to ruin, Prillaman helped found the Williamson Road Action Forum in 1980, three years before she retired from the insurance industry.
The forum was established as a non-profit organization working to reinstate community pride, improve area property and promote the people and area of North Roanoke.
"Getting rid of the massage parlors, the X-rated Lee Theatre and adult bookstores" was a major project, she said. But the mission, however taxing, proved successful. Williamson Road was free of what Prillaman called its "undesirable businesses" by the mid-1980s.
Prillaman also credits the forum with initiating the area's nearly $20 million storm-drainage project. The endeavor, approved by Roanoke City Council nine years ago, is near completion.
Other projects have included: the million-dollar renovation of the Oakland School, which will reopen in September; building Gateway Park and Andrews Park; restoring the iron bridge and Tinker Mill wheel near Blue Hills Golf Course; upgrading the Williamson Road Apartments complex; revitalizing the historic Harshbarger House; and saving the historic Huntingdon House, one of Prillaman's favorite projects.
"I personally got more satisfaction out of that than anything," she said.
She said forum members hope to preserve the land surrounding the old William Fleming plantation at Monterey Golf Course, part of a parcel Roanoke has purchased and allocated for an industrial park.
Prillaman credits the city for improvements. It was the city that established the Roanoke Neighborhood Partnership, which made grant money available for Williamson Road revitalization projects.
The Williamson Road forum was one of the first neighborhood groups to join the partnership, inadvertently leading to Prillaman's first book, "A Place Apart . . . Brief History of the Early Williamson Road and North Roanoke Valley Residents and Places."
In order to receive funding through the partnership, the forum had to give city planners a history of the Williamson Road area. Prillaman was the most likely candidate for the project, since "I'm interested in history to begin with," she said. "I love the area, and of course, I did it because my roots are here."
"It never occurred to me to be anything more than a little booklet about the history of Williamson Road," she said.
That "little booklet" turned out to be a 182-page documentation of the history of North Roanoke. Prillaman has sold about 2,000 copies.
In 1986, published an even larger volume on the history of North Roanoke County and the communities of Amsterdam, Trinity, Daleville and Cloverdale in southern Botetourt County. "Places Near the Mountains" was double the size of her first work.
She hopes to write another history, on the rest of Botetourt County - "where `Places Near the Mountains' left off," she said.
Prillaman also loves to write for her neighborhood newspaper, The Forum.
With her as its editor, the paper has flourished from an eight-page tabloid to a 16-to-20-page publication that boasts a circulation of nearly 7,000.
The monthly newspaper is run by a core of 20 volunteers who sell advertising space and help Prillaman write articles about area commerce, residents and civic events. The paper is financed by advertisements from North Roanoke businesses and other clients outside of the community.
Prillaman describes The Forum as "a tool to pull people together."
"It's used as a piece of communication to get support from our residents," she said. "It's created pride in our neighborhood and brought the history of the area to their attention."
From her bed, Prillaman is "still the backbone" of The Forum, Minter said. She makes most all of the paper's editorial decisions by telephone or during consultations with volunteers at her home.
"It's amazing that she does what she does," said Minter.
But rather than draw attention to herself, Prillaman would rather talk about other forum volunteers.
Eighty-two-year-old Jeannette Bryant, for example, "does more work than anyone. She gets more advertisements than anyone else," Prillaman said.
Prillaman shies away from taking credit for her accomplishments because "If you try to be a big shot, people get disgusted with you."
Her only regret?
"I wish I could have done more," she said. "I should have been a little more aggressive."
by CNB