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

DATE: FRIDAY, March 25, 1994                   TAG: 9403300137
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAIN STREET DIRECTOR RESIGNS

Cox, 70, made no announcement about his resignation. He simply told some of the Main Street board members.

He took the job in May 1992, when he and his wife returned to Pulaski after his retirement from Alliance Electric Co. of Aiken, S.C. The program had lost an earlier director when the town cut its funding, but Cox agreed to take the job for 20 hours a week at an annual $7,000 salary.

Cox never counted the hours as he recruited businesses for downtown Pulaski, with a concentration on antiques, collectibles and eating places. More than any single person in recent years, he revitalized the community by filling its empty, boarded-up buildings with new stores.

In fact, he was showing four buildings to prospects Thursday afternoon when the Main Street board was meeting without him.

Alex Rygas, acting board president, said he understood that Cox had not been in the position of Main Street program director since Saturday and asked if that was the understanding of the other board members.

It was. Cox is working with the town at the same salary, however, in preparing for a day of activities surrounding the June 11 train-station dedication.

Rygas said the task of continuing the momentum created by Cox now rests with the board. ``The responsibility for it is sitting right here in this room,'' he said.

But he agreed with other board members that the program needs a director.

``Roscoe's shown that,'' he said. ``You have to have somebody out there just hustling. There's going to be a need for somebody to spend some time doing the things that he was doing.''

But the board also realized it would not get a director for the salary it had been paying Cox. ``We're not going to run across that situation too often,'' Rygas said.

Board member Billy Smith said the time is approaching when someone representing the Main Street program must submit a budget for Pulaski Town Council's consideration.

If the town did not want to fund a director's position, he said, it might consider hiring a public relations director, as Wytheville has done. This director could work with business prospects as Cox did.

Smith said the board should not let the efforts lapse, with ``the possibility of hundreds of new jobs coming to the area if everything jells.''

At the board's next meeting, April 21, it will consider a new slate of officers and filling two board vacancies.

Rygas, the board's vice president, became acting president when Karen Graham resigned. Graham remains on the board and has not said why she resigned the presidency.

Rygas praised her contributions to revitalizing downtown. ``She has nothing but the best interests not only of the businesses but the business people and the community at heart,'' he said.

The board also will send copies of its advertising budget to downtown business people so they can rate what advertising is most useful to them, in case some of it has to be cut.