Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 26, 1991 TAG: 9102260315
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Roanoke Valley Troop Support Center has replaced the shop on Lee Avenue and it doesn't sell anything.
It offers a flexible kind of help for families with people in the service in the Persian Gulf.
"Flowing, I guess, is the best term," Ray Sandifer said of the center's way of dealing with worries about the war. He is a businessman who supports the center.
Carolyn Rector, who had the idea for the center, said the hours were changed Sunday when the old 6 p.m. closing time came and more than a dozen people were still inside.
Monday morning, Bea Cundiff was on duty as a volunteer.
Her son, Staff Sgt. Charles Cox, is in the gulf with the Marines.
"Since we opened, it's been a steady stream of people," she said - people who react in different ways to peril for family members.
"If they want to cry they can cry, and laugh if they want to laugh," she said. "If you feel like you need to cry, everybody here understands."
The walls of the center are lined with pictures of Roanoke Valley men and women who are in the service.
It is a brightly lit place, in which a large dove displayed on the wall gets along with less-peaceful sentiments on various signs and posters.
It has a television set, which stays tuned to CNN a lot, and its own microwave oven.
The center can arrange to buy a Desert Storm cap for $8 - which is manufactured locally by M Stitches. But it isn't in the retail business.
"I don't want stuff in here to sell," Rector said. "It's not a gift shop."
Cundiff and Rector represent the 50-50 split in volunteers who serve at the center. Cundiff's son is at war and Rector has no one overseas.
They said the volunteers with no relatives in jeopardy are just as devoted as those with people in the service.
Cundiff, whose husband, Maurice, has donated the old dress shop until it is rented, said she "felt like I had to get involved."
It helps her, she said. "We feel stronger with this."
Her son was 100 feet away from the terrorist bomb that killed 241 Marines in Lebanon in October 1983.
And the hard thing about that, she said, was the media coverage that included pictures of the bodies.
"That was the worst I ever lived through," she said. "You're looking for him all the time.
"You know that he's there, but you don't know where he is."
She said she hopes there is no more coverage like that.
A woman, called "Mama" by Rector, came in and said she didn't want to give her name or her son's name.
She explained she was afraid that her son, a Navy flier, might be captured and anything she said might be used against him by the Iraqis.
Sure, she said, his picture was on the wall, but this "just a little hometown" business and she was afraid of identifying herself "when it can get out to The Associated Press."
"I was doing pretty good until Saturday when the ground war was started," she said. "If he is supporting the troops, he is flying in lower."
She said she cries sometimes, but, "I know of some mothers who are having a much harder time than I am."
Rector showed computerized address labels for U.S. servicemen and -women. The center also has stationery. You pick an address and write.
It's all donated.
"If it hasn't been given to us, basically we don't have it," Rector said.
by CNB