Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 14, 1995 TAG: 9509140069
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But few of them know the story behind it.
The gazebo was the main summer project of the Jamestown Youth Club, a group of of young people who live at the apartment complex operated by the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
From the street, the gazebo is almost nondescript except for the brightly colored posts and blue plastic tarp that serves as a roof.
But a closer view shows that posts holding up the roof resemble totem poles, covered with carved faces of all shapes and expressions.
Although the totem pole theme was the idea of David L. Merritt, he only oversaw the project; club members did the work.
"I was thinking totem poles, and I was thinking clubhouse," said Merritt, youth club director for Jamestown and Landsdowne housing developments.
Although the structure will be a clubhouse of sorts for the youth club members and a distinctive symbol of the Jamestown complex, Merritt said he had had more serious reasons for the project.
"I had two main aims in building it: ... to provide substance abuse and violence prevention," said Merritt, adding that while these are serious problems all over, they are greater in government housing projects.
He said he wanted a project to keep the children busy with something meaningful.
He also wanted to show the young people the difference between "positive risks" and "negative risks."
"There are risks in building a gazebo like this," he said. "But these are positive risks that involved something good. And these are better than taking the negative risks in using drugs."
This is the reason the gazebo has a removable tarp for a roof, Merritt said, adding that a permanent roof would have provided a shelter where drugs dealers could congregate.
lose toof the young people worked on the project, some more than others, Merritt said. It took most of the summer to build, working several hours at a time, two or three days a week, Merritt said.
Before construction began, Merritt said there was about four months of planning and gathering materials. The total cost was about $1,000, which came from a federal Drug Elimination Grant managed by the housing authority.
Carving the faces on the poles was among the challenging parts of the job, because the kids had little or no carving experience, Merritt said.
"I told them to use their imagination - the faces could look any way they wanted," he said.
Using hammer, chisel, drawknife and wood rasps, the children created a hodgepodge of sad and happy faces and faces with no expression at all. There are about 28 carved faces on the four posts.
Lan Nguyen, 13, said the face she created was intended to represent all the people who worked on the gazebo.
Glen Widener, 15, said the face he carved is not symbolic of anything and does not represent anybody. "It's just a face."
Two others who worked on the gazebo also said their carved faces did not represent anything in particular.
Tan Nguyen, 12, and Long Nguyen, 10, said this was their first woodcarving and one of the things they learned on the project is that they could carve faces.
Another worker, Ronnie Mattox, 13, said his main contribution was to mix concrete to anchor the four posts.
Aside from learning how to carve, mix concrete and other construction skills, nearly all of the young people said it taught them the importance of working together.
It required teamwork to move the heavy, 12-foot-long poles that are 8 to 10 inches in diameter, they said.
by CNB