ROANOKE TIMES

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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990                   TAG: 9006060148
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE                                  LENGTH: Medium


SHELTER DIRECTOR LEAVING

David Coe, director of a regional spouse-abuse center based here since mid-1988, will be leaving June 22 for a new job as executive director of the Patrick Henry Drug and Alcohol Council in Martinsville.

His new job starts June 25, and covers the counties of Henry, Franklin and Patrick.

The Family Resource Center, a spouse-abuse shelter for women and children from Wythe, Carroll, Bland, Smyth and Grayson counties and the city of Galax, already has advertised for a new director and received nine applications before the deadline.

"There are some tough decisions that the board of directors is going to have to make, and they're going to have to take a few chances because the year coming up is going to be crunch time," Coe said.

The center opened in 1983 in a town-owned building, and moved to a larger permanent site in 1988. But payments on the new building and associated costs are keeping the shelter constantly on the edge of financial shortfalls, and continued donations are needed to keep it going.

This year, the Wythe County Board of Supervisors denied the center's request for $3,580 in the 1990-91 fiscal year, prompting an angry letter from Coe in the local newspaper chiding the governing body for its lack of support.

Coe said the number of people served by the center has been setting new records each year. It sheltered 188 and provided services to more than 500 last year, he said.

It has served more than 230 already this year, he said, and, at that rate, he projects that the numbers will reach 700 by the end of 1990.

Coe was the first, and so far the only, man to be director of a spouse-abuse center in Virginia.

"There were a few instances where a client would come in and they would kind of shy away from me at first," he said. "I don't know whether or not I would recommend another male. . . . That's a tough call."

Coe, who grew up in Ridgeway, graduated from Liberty University in Lynchburg in 1984 with a degree in psychology. He earned a master's degree in counseling there in 1988.



 by CNB