Thursday, October 01, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: South Roanoke neighbors ready to get grilling
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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Read Dan's blog
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers paid a personal visit to a certain house in the 2300 block of Jefferson Street on Sunday afternoon.
It's the place where Kyle Frazier, who is fast becoming known as "the grill guy," rents an apartment.
Frazier wasn't home, so Bowers left his card there with a scribbled note: "Welcome to Roanoke!" Frazier told me he found it on his mailbox when he returned home that evening.
The affable mayor, who lives in the 24014 ZIP code, was one of many struck by Sunday's column about the haughty and anonymous letter Frazier received that chided him for grilling on his front porch. It was signed "Keep South Roanoke Beautiful, Inc.," an organization that doesn't exist.
"He didn't get a real rosy welcome to Roanoke," Bowers told me Monday. "I wanted him to know that he was welcome in Roanoke. I almost broke out my grill yesterday and started grilling burgers in my own front yard."
Almost everyone who has called, e-mailed or posted comments on my blog felt bad for Frazier, who is 24 and is one of the young professionals this city has worked hard to attract.
But some correspondents took the column to task. They argued it cast a false impression upon an entire neighborhood by highlighting the actions of a single nincompoop.
One colleague told me he'd received a similarly nasty anonymous letter after moving into a Northwest Roanoke neighborhood. Another said the column called to mind her favorite line from the movie Steel Magnolias: "An ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure."
First up was South Roanoker Katie Mckernan, who clearly loves living in her neighborhood.
"You cited one incident, albeit a disgusting and highly inappropriate incident, and then proceeded to paint an entire community with the actions of one person," she wrote.
"But to print this story was to imply that this is not an isolated incident and perpetuate the myth that we are a hamlet of snobs."
Doug Jessie, who also lives in the neighborhood, called both the anonymous letter and the column "inflammatory."
"I would like to apologize to Mr. Kyle for the incident and invite him for some beverages and grilling in my garden," Jessie wrote.
But another South Roanoker said the letter's author deserved to be singled out for shame.
"To the extent that South Roanoke has (deserved or undeserved) a reputation for snobbery, specific acts of snobbery should be called out and their practitioners embarrassed," Jeremy Holmes said.
Tom Roberts, who has lived with his wife Robin in the well-to-do neighborhood for 24 years, came from the same Lynchburg neighborhood that Frazier lived in before he moved here in July.
"I have found the folks here as warm, caring and polite as I did those I knew in Lynchburg. I am certainly not sorry, and do not apologize, for where I have lived nor live now," Roberts wrote.
"What concerns me is the overall continuing perception that all South Roanokers are snobby. It is the actions of the few that cast a shadow over the rest of us. I apologize for them and urge all of my neighbors to continue to strive for actions, words and deeds that paint us in a way that I know is representative of us."
Aubrey Hicks, who has had his own run-ins with former neighbors in the Old Southwest neighborhood, called the letter-writer a "gutless wonder."
"I say let's do a bigger BBQ and to the writer of that letter, if you don't want someone grilling GET PACKING," he wrote on my blog.
Mckernan echoed that thought. Several of her friends suggested "a massive front lawn BBQ just to irk that [anonymous letter writer]. Now that is my SoRo!" she said.
That sounds like the Roanoke I know and love, folks.
Let me know the date and time of that barbecue.
The charcoal's on me.
