Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 12, 1990 TAG: 9006120061
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It will lose their wives, who are among the leading lights of the cultural and civic community, and the loss is being ruefully noted.
"I just hate it," said Mona Black, administrative director of Mill Mountain Theatre. "We're talking about two women who are quiet, gentle achievers. They get things done."
"I won't say it's catastrophic, but it's devastating to the arts community that these two women are moving," said Gerald Carter, the president of Mill Mountain Theatre. "When people like that leave, it's a void, and I see it as a cry to the community for others to get involved."
Carter was to be succeeded in October by Susan Goode, who is the theater's vice president and president-elect. Dixie Wolf is president of the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts. Both women also are involved in a long list of other community activities.
So are their husbands, for that matter. The transfers have stirred an exceptional degree of notice because the Wolfs and the Goodes, as most anyone who knows them will tell you, have been exceptional citizens.
"Hank" Wolf is Norfolk Southern's assistant vice president for tax counsel. He's a past director of the Roanoke Valley Chamber of Commerce and the N&W Federal Credit Union. He was on the city government's Employee Retirement System Advisory Committee. He is director of the Roanoke Valley Golf Hall of Fame and chairman of its scholarship committee, and for 16 years he has taught business law as an adjunct professor at Roanoke College.
Wolf also is an amateur authority on oriental rugs.
David Goode, vice president for taxation at Norfolk Southern, is himself a cherished arts resource in the valley. He is treasurer of the Western Virginia Foundation for Arts and Sciences (governing board of Center in the Square), past president of both Mill Mountain Theatre and the art museum, and past chairman of the Virginia Commission for the Arts. His advice is cordially given and greatly valued by arts managers and policy-makers in the area.
The Vinton native returned to the Roanoke Valley and joined the then-Norfolk & Western Railroad in 1965 after graduating from Harvard Law School. With him was his wife, Susan, whom he had met while both were undergraduates at Duke University.
She became a teacher in Roanoke County. After the birth of their first daughter, Christina, 3 1 ARTS Arts now 20, she began expanding her civic involvement to include the League of Women Voters, the Junior League and Bethany Hall, a halfway house for alcoholic women.
The Goodes have a second daughter, Martha, 8. During the past year, her mother has been a Brownie leader in addition to her other activities.
During her work with the League of Women Voters, Susan Goode developed an interest in planning and preservation. She has pursued it as a member and past chairman of the Roanoke Planning Commission and as its representative on the Roanoke Architectural Review Board. She is believed to have been the first woman to chair the planning commission.
In the arts, Goode has been both participant and policy-maker. An alto, she sings in the choir at South Roanoke United Methodist Church and is a member of the Roanoke Valley Choral Society.
The Goodes are said to be among the Roanoke Valley's most knowledgeable art collectors. Hand-in-hand with collecting has been their steadfast support of the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts. David Goode went on the board of the then-arts center in 1974 and served two terms as president before leaving in 1980. He returned to the board in 1989.
Susan Goode was on the board from 1981 to 1987 and served two terms as its secretary.
There was a similar pattern at Mill Mountain Theatre. David Goode joined the board in 1969, served as president in 1972 and remained a member until 1984. Susan Goode is in her second year on the theater board.
Executive director Jere Lee Hodgin said she is "a voice for the artistic side of theater." Other admirers say she's equally effective at raising funds.
"I love the theater," Goode said. "Raising money comes with the territory."
"She listens carefully and absorbs everything," said Mona Black. "After she has gleaned all she can, she will quietly proffer a suggestion or comment and you do well to listen."
"Its my nature to want to be involved in the community," said Goode, who is a native of Wilmington, Del. "It was part of my upbringing. I was taught that you go out and you vote and you take part in the community."
With Dixie Wolf, who happens to be a close friend of Susan Goode's, community service is partly a matter of reciprocity.
"The community has been good to me," she said. "I feel fortunate to do something in return. I also do it because it's interesting. It's satisfying to me personally."
Wolf has served on the boards of the Roanoke Symphony Auxiliary (now the Roanoke Symphony Association) and has chaired two symphony balls, which are major fund-raising events for the orchestra. She has served on the board of the Virginia Museum of Transportation and of Mill Mountain Theatre. She has raised money for the Red Cross, the United Fund and the Roanoke Valley Horse Show.
She is president of the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts, and on May 20 she was installed as the first woman president of Temple Emmanuel.
"Temple Emmanuel is fortunate to have many devoted members who serve as volunteers," Rabbi Frank Muller said. "But when it comes to pure dedication and commitment, there are few like Dixie Wolf. Over the years, Dixie's energy and efficient manner of getting the job done have made a big difference in the congregation."
Of all the things she does, Wolf said, her work for the temple and the Roanoke Jewish Community Council is the most satisfying.
"She loves people and has a strong commitment to humanity," Ruth Appelhof said. "Her days are filled with helping people."
Appelhof knows first-hand of Wolf's humanitarian impulses, having benefited from her help while recovering from a recent injury. As executive director of the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts, Appelhof also has worked closely with Wolf on behalf of that institution.
"I really took this job because I had such faith in Dixie," said Appelhof, who recently completed her first year with the museum.
This year, the women landed a matching appropriation - the museum's first - from the General Assembly. Appelhof gives the credit to Wolf.
"She articulates her position straightforwardly and people appreciate that," Appelhof said.
Wolf is a native of Chatham and an alumna of Louisiana State University, where she majored in history. She met Henry Wolf while her family was living in Williamsburg and he was in law school at the College of William and Mary. The couple have one son, Richmond, a student at Princeton Unversity.
Wolf, who was raised a Catholic, is a convert to Judaism. She was among the first group of Jewish women to be admitted to the Junior League of the Roanoke Valley. Today she is co-sponsoring the woman who is expected to become the organization's first black member.
"It's important to me that people be accepted for what they are" Wolf said. The aim of the Junior League is to promote volunteerism, and in Wolf's view the woman who wants to serve as a volunteer should not be impeded by factors such as race or religion.
Mill Mountain Theatre's Mona Black has watched a number of young civic leaders leave the valley in recent years, and she sometimes worries that the pool will run dry.
"I almost find myself resenting these transfers," she said.
Dotsy Clifton, a longtime member and a former president of the theater board, shares Black's concern.
"It's frightening and frustrating to lose these people who have built up a record of service and who know what's going on," she said. Though there are new leaders to replace them, Clifton knows from experience that it's best to keep the old hands too, for balance.
"I want it all," she said.
by CNB