Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Editorial: No more suitable memorial
It's fitting that Roanoke's newest park is named for a lawmaker who loved the land and its people.
From the RoundTable blog
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The A. Victor "Vic" Thomas Park is a fairly high-falutin name for a piece of real estate that memorializes so down-to-earth a public servant.
The honor, though, is entirely appropriate.
Thomas, who died in 2006, spent 30 years representing a good chunk of the Roanoke Valley in the Virginia House of Delegates, retiring in 2003. Over the decades, he was a tireless advocate for funding state parks.
He was a sportsman, when he wasn't being a grocer or a lawmaker, who needed no convincing about the value of land conservation nor educating about the pull of the outdoors.
Monday, Roanoke City Council recognized Thomas' dedication by dedicating to him a flood-prone strip of land between Wasena Park and the Memorial Avenue bridge -- once the site of the Hannah Court Mobile Home Park, now the newest link in the half-completed Roanoke River Greenway.
The land is much better suited for its new purpose as a place where people can enjoy Thomas' beloved outdoors practically on their own doorsteps, a lure even for the sedentary to take up a more active, healthier lifestyle.
He would care about that.
The park is well-named for Thomas not only because of his tenacity on behalf of land conservation but because he was a voice of conscience in the legislature for otherwise powerless people, in his district and throughout Virginia.
He probably was most widely known as a defender of gun rights and champion of a state constitutional amendment to protect citizens' hunting and fishing rights -- in the unlikely event any of these would be seriously challenged in Virginia.
This good-hearted man, though, presented a serious challenge to anyone who stereotyped all gun enthusiasts as nuts, all hunters and fishermen as cruel, based on the "bad actors" to be found among responsible gun owners and outdoor sportsmen.
Thomas was as passionate in trying to protect Virginia's homeless, its mentally ill residents, its vulnerable elderly -- so much so that retired Richmond bureau chief and editorial writer Margie Fisher once described him as a workhorse who "takes care of so many needs of so many people in the Roanoke Valley and throughout Virginia that the Democratic lawmaker has earned the nickname of 'Godfather.'"
The kind who watches out for people. His legacy is worth remembering.
