Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 22, 1994 TAG: 9407220105
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Neither side opposes the memorial itself. It is a question of whether it should be located in front or behind the Old Courthouse in downtown Pulaski.
Actually, the board approved putting it in front of the restored courthouse facing Main Street at last month's meeting. It would take board action to change it now.
But that is what a group of petitioners hopes will happen. Some of the downtown business people also share that view.
The board has scheduled comments on the matter for 7:45 p.m. and allowed 30 minutes for the discussion.
Gene Nuckols, a lawyer, has been hired to represent the petitioners who want the memorial moved to the front of the brick courthouse now closed for renovations. The brick courthouse is directly behind the stone building, facing onto Third Street.
Bill Manning, a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, will be the spokesman for the group that wants to leave its location as it is.
Dallas Cox, a retired lieutenant colonel and member of a Courthouses Committee, won board approval last month for a memorial complete with an eternal flame, although Supervisor Bruce Fariss expressed concern about that part of the project in particular. Maintaining the flame will cost an estimated $2,000 a year.
A bond issue passed by Pulaski County voters to fund rebuilding of the old courthouse in its present location, after it was gutted in a 1989 fire, included a provision for the memorial.
Manning has said he believes the idea of the memorial gave the reconstruction bond issue the impetus to be passed. He also maintains that the voters believed the memorial would be located in front of the old courthouse.
However, the location is not spelled out in the wording of the bond issue, which also included the money to renovate the brick courthouse.
``First of all, people don't want it on that front lawn,'' said Donald Glenn, a retired veteran. ``They think this thing is way out of line ... . They think it's tacky.''
``It destroys the integrity of the courthouse and the architecture, because your eye will go to that,'' Glenn's wife, Lou, said of the memorial.
Supporters argue that the marble tablets bearing the names of Pulaski County residents killed in action, as well as those missing or prisoners of war, with accompanying benches and flagpoles will not be tall enough to detract from the courthouse front. Some parts of the monument will be below the level of the fence around the courthouse.
Members of the Pulaski Business Alliance and other downtown merchants have another reason for not wanting the monument on the Main Street lawn. They want to use that lawn, as they have in the past, for activities such as auctions during promotional events aimed at drawing visitors downtown.
Gibson Worsham, chairman of the New River Valley Preservation League, has written the supervisors on behalf of his organization noting that the old courthouse is on both the state and national register of historic places. He questions whether the front of that courthouse is the place for a modern war memorial.
Glenn said that he and others who favored a veterans' memorial as part of the courthouses projects had not envisioned what is now proposed. ``We were thinking in terms of a monument or statue or something like that. This is a complex ... taking up the whole yard,'' he said.
He and his wife are among those who have signed petitions now circulating, stating support of a memorial but opposition to it being located on the Main Street side of the historic courthouse. The petitions will be presented to the supervisors Monday night.
by CNB