ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996 TAG: 9608080081
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-4 EDITION: METRO
10 Years Ago (1986)
Aug. 5: Salem High School now requires athletes and cheerleaders to sign a pledge, to be approved by their parents, that they won't use alcohol or illegal drugs. Those believed to have violated the pledge will be required to have a urinalysis. If the results are positive, they can be suspended or dismissed from the squad or team.
Aug 12: Proxy is the first llama known to be born in the Roanoke Valley. Proxy is part of a herd owned by Roanoke County residents George and Debbie Peoples.
Aug 25: "I just really wanted to be a dad and to be there with my son," country music singer Ricky Scaggs says after spending a week in Roanoke with his 7-year-old son, Andrew. Andrew was admitted to Roanoke Memorial Hospital Aug. 17 after being shot in the mouth when his mother tried to pass a trucker who had cut her off on Interstate 81 outside Troutville. The trucker, Edward Dean Duehring, of Germantown, Md., was sentenced to 40 years in prison on charges in connection with the incident and for drug possession, and with colliding with the back of another car on I-81 shortly after the shooting.
25 Years Ago (1971)
Aug 6: Speaking to the Military Order of World Wars, Dr. Harry H. Andrews, chief of staff of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salem, says the Vietnam veteran is "probably the least known person in the nation today," and receives no recognition from his family, friends and society in general. Andrews said that the Salem VA Hospital has begun treatment and vocational guidance programs to help Vietnam veterans.
Aug 12: The Mill Mountain Star is "standing in the way of progress," says M. Carl Andrews, retired newspaper editor and chairman of the Roanoke Mill Mountain Development Committee. The star is located where a restaurant and tourist information center are meant to be as part of plans to develop the mountain. "Prayers that lightning would strike it [the star] and that the wind would blow it away have been to no avail," Andrews jokingly tells his audience, the Rotary Club.
Aug 15: Noman Cole, chairman of the state Water Control Board, believes that Roanoke's unwillingness to solve its own water pollution problems is adding to the pollution of other Virginia rivers and streams. "I've done just about all I can manage about the Roanoke situation," he says. "I don't live there. If the people who do don't care, why should I?" The improvement of Roanoke's sewage treatment plant has taken up so much of the control board staff's time, Cole says, that it's affected its other work.
Aug 30: The main problems on the first day of court-ordered elementary school desegregation in Roanoke are motorists failing to stop for school buses loading or unloading children and misplaced students in the wrong schools. "It will take a day or two for children to become familiar with bus routes and schedules, but all in all, the first day of school was exceptionally smooth," says Roanoke School Superintendent Roy Alcorn.
50 Years Ago (1946)
Aug 10: Effective today, four Roanoke physicians will handle medical care for Roanoke's indigent citizens. The program, says John H. Falwell, head of the Department of Public Welfare, will replace the former system of having a full-time city physician.
Aug. 15: J. Fred Douglas, city clerk of markets, concedes that crowding is a problem at the Roanoke City Market. "When the market is crowded," he says, "I rent a space to two persons if the first one there has no objections. They usually don't." Other complaints about the market are the shortage of parking space, untidiness and the toilet facilities. Douglas says that drunks and "bums" drinking whiskey in the toilets are the big problem.
Aug. 19-20: Owing to unsanitary conditions, the pond in Elmwood Park in downtown Roanoke is drained and will remain dry, says T.S. Jenrette, director of the city Department of Parks and Recreation, until a way is found to keep it clean. Jenrette would like to see the bottom of the pond cemented, transforming it into a shallow wading pool.
Aug. 30: The Roanoke Police Department finally has enough pairs of handcuffs for all of its officers. Capt. R.S. Hough, the department's executive officer, announces that 35 nickel-plated pairs have come from Pittsburgh. Until now, a handcuff shortage and the wartime problem of acquiring new cuffs had forced the police to use a "seniority" system, assigning cuffs to officers based on their length of service.
- MELVIN E. MATTHEWS JR.
LENGTH: Medium: 81 linesby CNB