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

DATE: THURSDAY, June 28, 1990                   TAG: 9006290686
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PUBLIC SERVANTS

TWO VETERANS of Roanoke City Council are in their last week of office. If Robert Garland's and James Trout's passing from the stage doesn't constitute the end of a chapter in the city's history, it at least marks the turning of a page. They are owed a note of appreciation for their work.

For Garland, 67, retirement from council is voluntary. A Republican in a city that increasingly has become a Democratic stronghold, Garland nonetheless was a popular vote-getter. The only election he has lost was a close race in 1972 for mayor against then-incumbent Roy Webber.

This year, if he had chosen to run for re-election, Garland would have faced a strong and united Democratic ticket. Still, if any city Republican could have scored a victory, it was probably Garland. Bow ties are his sartorial signature, but it was his approach to municipal issues - thoughtful, open-minded, low-key - that won him the respect of Democrats and Republicans alike.

For Trout, 60, retirement is involuntary, and there is talk he may run again. The erstwhile amateur boxer has lost elections before, only to recover from the punch and win the next one. In some elections, he has run as a Democrat; in this one, he ran as an independent and finished fourth in the six-man race to the three Democrats.

Trout's political career may have had more ups and downs than Garland's, but like Garland he proved durable. The issues to which he devoted most attention were industrial recruitment and economic development, areas in which he had specialized before retiring from Norfolk and Western.

Both men have been on council long enough to have played roles in the progressive-to-populist, action-to-reaction, businessman-to-workingman dynamic of municipal politics over the past 15 years or so. Garland as a rule was of the progressive-action-businessman outlook, while Trout moved into that tent after earlier identifying with the populist-reaction-workingman bent.

But their careers also suggest the dangers of overgeneralization; one reason for each man's political longevity was his ability, at least until recently, to keep a foot in both camps.

It can be risky, too, to overdo the theme of how burdensome service in local government can be: Nobody, after all, is forced to run for public office. But in this too-cynical era, it shouldn't be forgotten that doing a decent job in the local-government trenches requires a significant investment of time and energy for relatively little material reward.

Garland has served on council for 24 of the past 28 years; Trout for 16 of the past 22. In their differing ways, the two soldiered for what they judged to be the good of the city, and should be credited for it.

by CNB