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

DATE: TUESDAY, August 16, 1994                   TAG: 9408160075
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-3   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: New River Valley bureau
DATELINE: PULASKI                                LENGTH: Medium

COUNT PULASKI DAY INVITATIONS GO OUT THIS WEEK

A planning committee outlined a variety of possible activities for the festival at its first meeting Monday at the Colony of Virginia store. The center of the activities will be moved from Jackson Park to downtown Pulaski, particularly along several blocks of Main Street, which will be closed to traffic.

Mailing labels are being prepared for volunteers at Pulaski's RSVP Senior Center to put on envelopes for the mailings. Pat Gooch, co-owner of the new Casimir Company framing store on Main Street, is running off the labels on her computer. She is also supplying a drawing of Count Casimir Pulaski, the Polish nobleman who sided with the Colonies in the Revolutionary War and for whom both her store and the town and county are named.

Debbie Jonas, owner of Colony of Virginia, said she had gotten positive responses about Count Pulaski Day from more than 30 crafts people she had contacted over the weekend at the Virginia Highlands Festival in Abingdon. She and Marlys Flynn, owner of the Upstairs/Downstairs store, also recruited antique dealers from a show at the Roanoke Civic Center.

Activities being considered for Count Pulaski Day, which will run generally from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., include live music and radio broadcasting of the event, a bike rodeo, hayride, bicycle races, pumpkin-carving contest, horse and buggy rides, tours of the Old Courthouse, a tug-of-war between employees of the town and county, a Count Pulaski look-alike contest, and people in Revolutionary War period dress.

Jonas said the committee is still open to more ideas, which can be brought to her or Flynn.