Friday, August 21, 2009
Progressive dinner helps others at a bargain price
Ardelia "Dea" Smith
Priscilla Richardson is columnist The Botetourt View. You can contact her at 981-3430 or via e-mail.
Priscilla Richardson
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The Buchanan church ladies -- plus a man or two -- have banded together for their second annual progressive dinner to support the Botetourt Resource Center. Ninety percent of those the Center serves live at or below the poverty line, so the Center's help for them makes a big difference.
The group doing the dinner, made up of Presbyterians, both those in Buchanan and the ones out on Pico Road, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, and New Beginnings people, elected Laurie Rhodes, the office manager for James River Realty, as their chair. Her committees have things well under way.
This is how it works. You show up at Trinity Episcopal at 6 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 28, for an appetizer, then move across the street to Trinity United Methodist, assisted by the New Beginnings folks, for your salad. After that, you go about a half a block to Buchanan Presbyterian, helped by the Pico group, for the main course: ham, sweet potatoes and rolls. Are you getting hungry?
You top it all off with dessert at Buchanan Baptist, down the street near the theater. Starting at 5 that evening and ending at 8:15 on the dot with Ray Sloan's order, you also have the opportunity to bid on great merchandise in a silent auction. It will be displayed in the fire house, handy to the various participating churches. These churches are all so close together on Main Street you can walk easily between them.
As you might expect, your four-course dinner is a bargain at $10 for adults and $5 for children under 10. And also as you might expect, you need to buy tickets in advance from any committee member in the various churches, or Ardelia "Dea" Smith.
You can call her if you can't catch her at town hall, at 540-254-3064, and she'll get tickets to you. She reminds everyone that checks should be made out to BAMA, the Buchanan Area Ministerial Association. Also, if you want to donate merchandise or a service from your business, for a tax write off, call Smith.
As go-to person for tickets and information about the auction, Smith carries on the tradition of her mother, Dorothy Smith. Dorothy spent her life in Buchanan, working at the garment factory on Lowe Street and raising her three sons and two daughters. She became well known in her later life as she worked in senior day care and served on the town's council.
Ardelia Smith, 72, known to most of Buchanan as "Dea," went off to Madison College, now called James Madison University. While there, as a basketball player, she set a college record for the number of points earned. "The record still stands," she said.
If there had been professional women's basketball back then, she would have turned pro. "I would have loved to have done that." But instead, she took her degree in health and physical education to Arlington to teach high school there, adding a master's from the University of Virginia later on.
She coached sports and with a group started the gymnastics competition in Virginia. "My gymnastics team won the state team championship in 1976 and I had state champions in track." Smith wrote the SOL's (Standards of Learning) for the state in health and physical education. And "in 1975 I was recognized as the health and physical education person for the entire state."
Smith retired in 2001 and moved back home to Buchanan. Her 2005 election to town council carried on the Smith family tradition. Helping with this dinner carries on another Smith tradition, that of caring for all of Buchanan's folks.
For more information, tickets, or to arrange a donation, call Dea Smith at 540-254-3064.
