March 23, 2007Video: Miss America trains in Bedford
Between customers, Danya Zierhart, owner of Bedford Barber Shop, sat and gazed out her window Thursday at the city's sleepy Main Street. Zierhart said she had no idea Miss America was due to arrive in minutes just up the street at the Bedford County Courthouse. Bedford doesn't pull in many celebrities, she said. Basketball star Shaquille O'Neal has been in the neighborhood. Zierhart said she never saw him. But Miss America 2007, Lauren Nelson, 20, came to Bedford to learn from law enforcement officials how to keep young people safe from sexual predators operating online. As a result, she, like Shaq, became an honorary member of the Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and an honorary deputy sheriff. Nelson, an Oklahoma native, said that she, as a teen, and friends had a close call with an Internet predator. As Miss America, her "personal platform" focuses on Internet safety for children. March 22, 2007Video: Walkin' trash
Imagine an archaeologist or anthropologist 500 years from now studying artifacts excavated from what will be known as The Interstate 81 Trail. They'll wonder about that Rubbermaid tote top and a host of other plastic paraphernalia that survived a global heat wave and a mini Ice Age. Staff writer Duncan Adams went trash prospecting this week along I-81 and I-581, a venture cut short when a state trooper pulled up behind Adams' vehicle near the Hollins exit. March 20, 2007Video: A rude awakening
Dean Blevins, 58, woke up pinned to his bed by a wall and a Jeep. Police charged the Jeep's driver, Wesley Dewayne Smith, 34, with driving under the influence. Blevins' jarring introduction to Tuesday began around 2:30 a.m. Smith apparently lost control of his Jeep, bounded over at least one traffic island and humped up a hill before crashing into Blevins' ground floor bedroom in an apartment building along Brandon Avenue. Hours after being rescued and treated and released by a Roanoke hospital, Blevins said he felt sore in more ways than one. He said Smith is lucky that his being pinned beneath the Jeep kept Blevins from meting out some old fashioned justice. Blevins acknowledged luck also favored him Tuesday. Might be a good time to play a lottery ticket, he said. Video: Let it be spring
If you were spring, you'd be exhausted. Not from all that seasonal budding and blooming and germination. No. You'd be dead tired because, for centuries, you've been wrung like an old dishrag by poets seeking metaphors for fresh starts. And don't even mention T.S. Eliot and April. That cruel quote has been milked more often than an aged Guernsey. In his song "Jungleland," Bruce Springsteen, a working class poet, included this lyric: "And the poets down here don't write nothing at all/They just stand back and let it all be." They were clipping and pruning, sawing deadwood, delivering mail and washing cars. March 19, 2007Video: Cops seek better pay, benefits
Police Officer T. M. Mealey brought his children to the demonstration, a protest organized Monday by the Roanoke City Police Association. Mealey said he has a family to support. Other officers pushed strollers or simply walked the line in front of city hall. The mood seemed upbeat. But Mealey and others said they believe the city of Roanoke must increase pay rates for police officers and provide relief for rising costs of health insurance premiums. Sgt. Scott Altizer, president of the Roanoke City Police Association, said police exhausted all efforts to negotiate better pay and benefits through official channels before taking the association's cause to the streets. Roanoke City Manager Darlene Burcham has acknowledged that compensation for city employees lags behind comparable cities in Virginia. But she has cited lower costs of living in the Roanoke region and previous efforts to recruit and retain police officers as factors influencing the pay and benefits offered by the city to law enforcement officers. March 16, 2007Video: A rainy day in Roanoke
Elvis grieves and the Roanoke River roils. A child scampers to school holding her father’s hand. Like morning glories, umbrellas open and close. The bright-striped ones, the pink and blue and flowered ones, dispense antidotes for the glum, grey sidewalks and melancholy skies. A man, clutching plastic grocery bags, walks home alone as Franklin Road traffic streams by and tires seem to spit. A construction site mound requires shelter too and working men wrestle with heavy plastic, cinder blocks and pallets. A downpour Friday in Roanoke challenges and feeds, nags and nurtures. On St. Patrick’s Day eve, the grass greens. -- Words by Duncan Adams March 15, 2007Video: Changes in the City Market
Center in the Square, a cultural organization in downtown Roanoke, played a key role in the revitalization of the City Market. Now, with the Art Museum of Western Virginia set to depart for new quarters in 2008 or so, Center in the Square officials believe the Center itself needs a rebirth. But retail merchants along Market Street are concerned that renovations for Center in the Square might displace their businesses, which are tenants in the Center’s building. Center board members already have said changes to the building’s street level spaces might require moving the landmark Roanoke Weiner Stand. Tom Brock, board chairman for Center in the Square, has emphasized repeatedly that the organization is considering a number of options that could help provide it greater visibility. “At this point, we’re in the planning stages,” he said. -- Story by Duncan Adams March 14, 2007Video: A day at the hardware store
Charles Overstreet is owner of Northwest Hardware on Williamson Road in Roanoke. Although a new Home Depot is being built on the other side of town, Overstreet feels that his business works in conjunction with the larger chain stores and shares customers. Concentrating on customer service, Overstreet will do whatever needs to be done to get any type of special order item for a customer to make them return to his store for their hardware needs. March 13, 2007Video: Tornado drill in Bedford
March 12, 2007Video: A run with the big dogs
All of the talk about moving the Roanoke Weiner Stand finally got to Cornell "Dee Cee" Jones. It seemed like every story in the newspaper and on TV had the stand's fans raving about its dogs. Jones called me up and left a message. "I believe I've got the best hot dogs in town," he said. Jones operates Dee Cee's Deli on Orange Avenue in Northwest Roanoke. March 9, 2007Video: Morning fire in Salem
No one was home Friday morning when fire broke out in the basement of a small rental house on Tennessee Street in Salem. A public safety dispatcher in Salem, on the way home after a midnight shift, noticed smoke coming from the house and alerted colleagues. Firefighters responded shortly thereafter, around 7:30 a.m. No one was injured. The house's tenant, Roger Shrader, watched dejectedly from across the street as firefighters hosed water into the house and used axes to access the attic, where the blaze continued to smolder nearly two hours after the firefighting began. He described feeling devastated and said everything he owned was inside the house. Shrader was eating breakfast at a restaurant down the street when he heard and saw a commotion on his block. He walked to the scene and saw firefighters at work on his house. Fire Capt. John Prillaman said efforts to knock down the fire were complicated because the house had two attic spaces, with one above an addition to the house. The fire was ruled accidental by Salem Fire & EMS investigators, and was found to have been started by a gas furnace located in the basement. Damage to the building was estimated to be at $80,000. March 8, 2007Video: Coming to TMEIC GE from China
Tricia Downie, an employee of TMEIC GE in Salem, has escorted Chinese trainees who’d never seen snow to a ski resort in West Virginia. No one was injured. Engineers for TMEIC GE design industrial drive systems for steel manufacturers and other heavy industries. One engineer said the systems might aptly be called “the world’s biggest, baddest robots.” TMEIC (pronounced ‘T-Mike’) GE is a joint venture of Toshiba, Mitsubishi Electric and General Electric. Operating a big, bad robot designed by TMEIC GE requires training. So, from South America, China and even Alabama trainees travel to Roanoke and stay for weeks and sometimes months of tutoring. Even Chinese trainees sometimes check their e-mail during class. During free time, they explore the Roanoke Valley. And they seem to like what they see, especially when visiting from Benxi, China, an industrialized city renowned for its pollution. -- Story reported by Duncan Adams March 7, 2007Video: Renovated rest stops open on I-81
The rip-roaring, skin-rippling hand dryers impress people most. They could dry a dripping sheepdog in record time. The water-free urinals are a close second, though one rest area visitor said he wasn’t sure how he felt about the high-tech basins. The newly-refurbished Interstate 81 rest area at milepost 158 has gone from nasty to nice. One long-haul trucker, who admitted his colleagues rely sometimes on milk jugs for relief, gave the facility an A-plus. Site Supervisor Terry Arrington and about a dozen other employees of DTH Contract Services of Dunn, N.C., say they’re dedicated to keeping the place clean. -- Story by Duncan Adams
March 6, 2007Video: Reaction to Bassett Furniture's factory closing
Pastor Ted Turner said the furniture plant closing in Bassett might prove to be a blessing in disguise for workers whose faith is deep and strong and for those whose faith is newly born. Bassett native Mozelle Stone visited Young’s Barber Service and sang a gospel tune. Bassett barber Coy Young cited former presidential candidate Ross Perot’s famous prediction about “the giant sucking sound” that would accompany jobs leaving the U.S. because of a free trade agreement. Young said he was not surprised when Bassett Furniture Industries announced Monday plans to shut down its hometown plant in the months ahead. But he said he had hoped the plant might survive a little longer. The company said it will focus more on selling lines of furniture imported from China, Southeast Asia and offshore suppliers in other low-wage countries. See a photo gallery. -- Story by Duncan Adams March 5, 2007Video: Searching for the Candlelite sign
Some obsessions defy explanation. Bob Howell can’t quite articulate why he’s so focused on trying to find the sign and marquee for the Candlelite Club, a night spot in Roanoke County that burned to the ground in 1963. As a teenager and a student at Roanoke College, Howell heard good music there from local bands, including the Divots, but doesn’t recall having an especially strong emotional attachment to the place. Yet an old photo recently hooked him and sparked his quest. He ran a classified ad Saturday and Sunday, hoping someone would respond and tell him what became of the sign. If he finds it, Howell said he might install the sign in his secluded back yard on the slopes of Sugarloaf Mountain. -- Story by Duncan Adams March 2, 2007Audio: Preview to 'Beyond Borders' story
Karla Benitez, 14, cries in this file photo while living in Sauta, Mexico. This photo and the accompanying story moved Giles County resident Doug Turner to give the teenager a home. Read the complete "Land of Opportunity" series on immigration. March 1, 2007Video: Paying respects to George Preas
George Preas, 73, died Saturday. (Read the complete story) Don Divers came too. He and Preas were teammates at Virginia Tech, where Divers was a halfback and Preas played tackle. Both played for Tech in 1954, when the team was undefeated. Preas also played tackle for the Baltimore Colts during an era when every pro football fan in the nation knew the names Unitas and Berry but might have been stumped by Preas. |
.....Advertisement.....
|
...Advertisement...
...Advertisement...
