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The Roanoke Star-Sentinel
October 28 - November 3, 2011
Happy Halloween
NewsRoanoke.com
[Folk Life Festival]
Traditional Power Keith McCurdy
Perfectly Average P4– Keith McCurdy says that we’re undermining our children and our culture when we give them awards they haven’t earned.
A team of draft horses from the Healing Harvest Forest Foundation line up for the horse pull, with Jason Rutledge at the reins. Record crowds attended this year’s Folk Life Festival in Ferrum.
F
Top Scout P6– Emily Heymann educates users of the Roanoke River Greenway and earns the highest achievement given by the Girls Scouts USA.
errum College’s 38th annual Blue Ridge Folklife Festival presented a variety of new workshops as well as the Ferrum museum’s new operating moonshine still. The festival - a Crooked Road Music Trail “Major Venue” featured four stages of the region’s best fiddle-and-banjo, bluegrass, gospel and blues music, as well as storytelling. The festival also featured more than 50 old-time crafts, two dozen country foods, hundreds of show cars, horse pulling, mule jumping, coon dog racing, farm machinery demos, heirloom apples and vegetable judging in celebrating the rich heritage and traditions of the region. “The Blue Ridge Folklife Festival is the largest event of its kind in Virginia, and there’s nothing like it in the Commonwealth,” said Roddy Moore, director of Ferrum College’s Blue Ridge Institute & Museum. “The festival features performers, artisans, foods and activities not found at typical craft shows, fairs and festivals. Our festival participants are the real thing, sharing folk traditions that have been a part of their families and communities for years. ”
3 and October 15, 2011. The poll has a margin of error of +4 percent. The survey asked residents of the Old Dominion about their beliefs, practices, and views of the afterlife. Basic Religious Beliefs An overwhelming majority of Virginians (94%) believe in God, and 72% of the believers see God as a person with whom people can have a relationship. A large majority of respondents are Prot-
> CONTINUED P2: Elmwood
estant (68%) or Roman Catholic (13%). More than 90 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Christian. The largest Protestant denominations are Baptist (42%) and Methodist (17%). More than half (57%) of the Christians are “born again” or evangelical. The percentages of the religions in which respondents were raised when they were children track very closely with their current faiths in overall numbers,
but there is some fluidity in affiliation as 24 percent report that they practiced another religion between childhood and the present day. More than two-thirds (69%) are official members of a church or house of worship. Most respondents (58%) would like to see their religion preserve its traditional beliefs and practices while 22 percent > CONTINUED P2: Religion
Marching Virginians Remember One of Their Own
Long Journey P8– Thomas Becher made the rounds in the airline industry and newspaper business before taking off for the world of media and public relations.
Photo by Gene Marrano
Jeff Lenofsky showed off his trick bike skills at Roanoke’s Outdoor Circus.
A Circus Like No Other
P9– It’s never too late to fulfill a lifelong passion just ask the members of Roanoke’s Dave Porter Band.
What do Roanoke City residents want Elmwood Park to look like after its proposed multimillion dollar makeover? What should the redesigned amphitheater look like? Do they want more places to sit and reflect, or fountains to cool off in during the long hot summers? The city has held several public meetings at the downtown library to get feedback; over the next few months the landscape architect firm it hired (David Hill, Hill Studios) will put together a rendering of a plan to be delivered to City Council for consideration. Hill, who calls himself the project manager for the Elmwood Park master plan, describes it as “a beautiful green square in the center of the city. But a lot of people don’t know it’s there, [or] they don’t go there often.” The city does host over 140 events a year in the park, Hill noted. He wants to make Elmwood Park, at one time a private estate, “more successful for everybody” on a daily basis. While some parts of the park are overused – “trampled” is the word Hill chose – others see little use at all. “There are some places in the park that nobody ever goes. We want to make it more lively and available to Roanoke citizens.” A relocated amphitheater that would include a terraced seating area for 1500, and room for more on a grassy hill above is part of the proposed master plan. Water fountains that people can play in have come up “over and over again” in discussions with the public. “They want a
Poll Reveals Religion is Integral Part of Virginians’ Lives
A Roanoke College Poll conducted by The Institute for Policy and Opinion Research has found that religion is an integral part of the lives of most Virginians. Daily prayer, frequent attendance at services, and reading scripture or holy books is common for Virginia residents. In addition, clergy are regarded highly in comparison to some other professions. The poll includes interviews with 600 Virginia residents between October
For The Music
Elmwood Park Master Plan Starts to Take Shape
The first annual Roanoke Outdoor Circus last weekend demonstrated all things outdoors. “We pretty much planned this from start to finish,” said Joe Hanning, an Outdoor Event Specialist for Roanoke City. A few “short months ago,” sitting around a table, it was decided that the valley needed its first ever outdoor sports festival, said Hanning, who is a transplant from Ohio and new to the position. The Roanoke Outdoor Circus featured bicycle shops, information on local trails, gear from outfitters, trick bike demonstrations by Jeff Lenofsky, plus live music, food and a traveling eco-tour, “The Sustainable Living Roadshow.” Hanning was pleased with the attendance figures at the three-day, free admission event, which was blessed by exceptionally good weather. Expect more – and bigger – outdoor happenings in the future. “Our goal is to get people off the couch, get them out and recreating,” said Hanning, “having fun in the outdoors.” “There are a number of private organizations that can help a person > CONTINUED P2: Circus
Mary Osburn had ing band, and Virginia always sat in the stands Tech football. Chris with her husband as received his degree in the Hokies stormed the environmental science field at Lane Stadium. and engineering from At the Miami game on the College of EngiSaturday, Oct. 8, 2011, neering in 1998 and his however, she was on the MBA from the Pamplin field with the Marching College of Business in Virginians jumping fu2000. riously to the Hokies’ Chris caught a cold iconic entrance song, just after Christmas in Metallica’s “Enter Sand2010. It wouldn’t go man.” And she says she away, so he went to the knows that’s what Chris doctor and was diagwould have wanted. nosed with bronchitis. “Being on that field, His symptoms worsI believe it was Chris’s ened into pneumonia, way of letting me be a "Christopher Neal Osburn so he went to the emerpart of Tech football the 1975-2011 - Leader to Many, gency room with his way he was. It was so Friend to All, Hokie in Every wife and was admitted much more than I ever Way." to the hospital. thought it would be.” “I was sitting there Chris Osburn, a two-time Virginia with him,” Mary recalled. “He told me Tech alumnus, loved Virginia Tech and to go home and get some rest and that he loved the Marching Virginians, for he’d hopefully be able to come home the whom he played trumpet during his next day. His parents were with him, years in Blacksburg. And when he met so I left around 7 p.m. that night and his wife, Mary, a Longwood University told him, ‘I love > CONTINUED alumna, it was clear that to love Chris, you!’” P3: Marching was to love his alma mater, its marchChris died un-
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