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

DATE: SUNDAY, February 20, 1994                   TAG: 9402200076
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ADRIENNE PETTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HARDY                                LENGTH: Medium

INSPIRATIONAL OR UGLY, IT'S HISTORY

First, a mouse skittered from under a plywood cloud they'd removed, startling Kelley so much that he ran across the field.

Then, the Ferrum College student stepped on a nail as he tried to drive a line of nails out with a crowbar.

Kelley and eight other students from the Epsilon Society tore down the sign in exchange for a $300 donation to their community service group.

Was taking down the sign a community service?

"It depends on your definition of community service," said A.J. Cesternino, owner of Darlyn Construction Co. who was supervising the young men. Cesternino's brother-in-law, Richard Walters, owned the sign and the property it sat on.

"If you're a person in this community that this sign has bothered, then, yes, this is a community service," he joked.

The sign, 38 feet tall and 180 feet wide, was originally erected to advertise the "Jesus Festivals" which Walters, a Callaway-born evangelist, hosted to raise money for missionary work.

But the event lost money - money his missionary group could have used to drill wells for people in West Africa.

"We had to make a decision," Walters said. "We couldn't do the Jesus Festival and the work we wanted to do overseas."

Walters is selling the 140 acres the sign sat on and plans to use the proceeds to move to Ivory Coast this September.

"There's such a dire need for water and health there," he said. "That's what we really want to do."

Walters says that putting the sign up was a lot more work than tearing it down.

In 1992, volunteers had to make two trips in a flatbed truck to collect the sign's 50 pieces.

Then they had to fit all the pieces together. It took six people to lift each piece.

Tearing it down was a different story. The guys started at about 10 a.m. By 11:30 a.m., they had knocked the sign down to "J," "E," and half an "S."

Aside from almost being knocked down a couple times by the oversized letters, it was easy, they said.

Some people who live in the neighborhood or passed by occasionally will miss the sign. Others see the dismantling as a blessing.

"I think the place for the sign is somewhere off the main highway," said Linda Perdue, who owns the Blue Ridge Grocery with her husband, Mike. "Don't get me wrong, I go to church myself. But that's not the place for it."

Kevin Nunley, one of the guys who took the sign down, used to admire it as he drove past. But now that he's seen it up close, he's less impressed.

"It's kind of inspirational from the road," he said. "But when you get up on it, it's ugly."