CASEY: After 30 years in the Star City, can I call myself a Roanoker? (2024)

One day late in spring 1994, a moving truck parked outside a modest home in Grandin Court. It was the first week of June. Huge peonies bloomed brilliant pink in the front garden of the brick foursquare along Tillett Road.

Two anxious little girls – Caitlin Casey, then 6, and Erin Casey, almost 4 – climbed out of a tiny red Subaru station wagon displaying Maryland tags. They were excited to explore all the nooks and crannies of their new house. Their younger sister, Anna, then 11 months, couldn’t quite walk.

It was a heady moment for their parents, too. For the previous eight years, Donna and I had rented. On a reporter’s salary, we couldn’t afford any house in Annapolis, much less one with four bedrooms.

But in Roanoke, we could. We felt like proverbial kids in a candy store as our real estate agent, Linda Cummings, led us around town, showing us different neighborhoods and homes on the market – all of which were within our means.

Remember those days? It was the era that saw football legend O.J. Simpson arrested for the stabbing death of his wife, Nicole. The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia was still alive (though not for much longer). Bill Clinton occupied the White House. Future U.S. Sen. George Allen was Virginia governor.

Back then, Salem’s most popular restaurant could accommodate 230 diners. Today, Mac and Bob’s on East Main Street is even more popular. We know, because it now sports 330 seats.

Carilion Clinic – now Roanoke’s largest employer, by far – didn’t yet exist. The same goes for the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute. And the Roanoke River Greenway, Hidden Valley High School and many, many other things.

Remember Ruby the Tiger? She died in 2006. In 1994, the huge Siberian feline was the marquee attraction at Mill Mountain Zoo (following the tragic death of Frump-Frump the Elephant, who kicked the bucket in 1970).

Plans to relocate the zoo to Explore Park – as part of a 1,000-acre American history-themed amusem*nt park by Disney – were really big news. Of course, Disney never quite materialized here. But all the hot air surrounding it consumed acres of newsprint in the years before it finally died.

In 1994, The Hotel Roanoke was closed and undergoing a massive renovation. The Patrick Henry Hotel offered the best temporary accommodations downtown. Its basem*nt sported a quiet hole-in-the-wall bar, too. (That was a perfect location to meet news sources. Now the whole building is downtown apartments.)

Directly across Jefferson Street, and adjacent to Roanoke’s Public Library, was a scummy motel. And over on Campbell Avenue, Chico & Billy’s Pizza had one of the most popular stalls in Roanoke’s City Market Building. Remember their pies?

Back then The Roanoke Times was part of a small chain of daily newspapers owned by Norfolk-based Landmark Communications. Our third-floor newsroom at 201 W. Campbell Ave. was so packed, there weren’t enough seats for all the news staff, which numbered about 125.

The newsroom had a shortage of desktop computers, too. Then-reporter Todd Jackson (he’s now The Roanoke Times’ metro editor) and I shared one, which on deadline was often a pain in the you-know-what.

In 1994, Todd covered Franklin County; I covered Roanoke city government. David Bowers was mayor back then. Bowers is still running for mayor now. A few things never change, eh?

I’ve worn different reporting, editing and business hats for The Roanoke Times since then. And, for the past 15 years, I’ve been writing this column three days a week.

Today, your local newspaper is owned by Lee Enterprises, a big chain based in Davenport, Iowa. And these days, we’re no longer located on Campbell Avenue.

Classified ads, which once consumed a dozen or more pages daily, have shrunk almost to nonexistence. Some would say the newspaper has, too.

The newsroom is no longer packed, not at all. In the post-pandemic 2020s, it sports a glut of unused desks, chairs and computers.

If you recall 1994, you might have considered Boones Mill the worst speed trap in Western Virginia. That’s because the radar adventures of the town’s lone cop made for many entertaining headlines.

Today, many think of Boones Mill as the worst tourist trap – thanks to Whitey Taylor, and his efforts at The Trump Store to fleece suckers with overpriced Donald Trump gimcracks along U.S. 220.

Meanwhile, you’re still reading this newspaper – either the dead-tree version or online. I wish I could say that hasn’t changed, but that would be untrue. Change is one of the few constants in life.

Donna and I had two weeks to get settled in before I my first day with The Roanoke Times, on June 20, 1994. Eight days it published my first Roanoke byline. “Good news, bad news for Roanoke bus riders,” the headline read, about a 25-cent Valley Metro fare increase.

My, the decades have passed quickly. And looking back on those early days in town, I can recall one question that seemed to be on the lips of everyone I met. It was, “Why did you move to Roanoke?“

The emphasis was on the final three syllables, as if the Star City was a place nobody would move to willingly. Like, it was a backwater where dreams went to die. It almost seemed like folks were suffering a massive, valley-wide inferiority complex.

Every time I heard that question back in 1994, I’d think “Why not?”

After I’d heard it about three dozen times, it occurred to me that, “Perhaps Roanokers don’t grasp how good they have it.”

It seemed like folks here took a lot for granted. Like the awe-inspiring Blue Ridge mountains, the affordable real estate, low crime, good schools and 10-minute commutes back and forth to work. Those are all key quality of life measures. So is having a church on nearly every streetcorner.

The askers didn’t seem to realize that in 1994, just five hours to the north, people were happily paying $300,000 for homes from which they’d have only a 60-minute commute, one way, in Washington-area traffic jams.

Thirty years later, Donna and I have zero regrets.

The kids are grown and gone, mostly. Caitlin’s 36, and lives outside Austin, Texas with one of our darling granddaughters, Sadie Strayer – she’s seven. Erin, 34 and her husband, Eric Trinh, live outside Richmond with their two-year-old, Aria.

Anna, who turned 31 last week, recently moved back to town, bringing her fiance from Reston. And Zach, 25, our youngest, is a research scientist in Berkeley, California. He’s the only native Roanoker in the brood.

All of us, grandchildren included, gathered together last week in Ocean City, Maryland, where my in-laws live, for a vacation.

Last fall, Donna wrote the final mortgage check for our place on Tillett Road, where we still reside. It turns 100 next year. We’re already planning a centennial house party.

In June, Donna retired from her job as a retail manager just before her 61st birthday. Later this month I’ll turn 66. And these days, the question I get most often is, “When are you going to retire?”

And I always respond, “Why would I ever do that?”

The peonies in front of our house now bloom the first week in May (thank you, global warming). Maybe when they start blooming the first week in April, I’ll reconsider the question.

Right now, the job is too much fun.

Thanks for reading!