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Looking back: May 27, 2013

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The Roanoke Times | File 1988


Wilson Pickett performs at the 1988 Festival in the Park.

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The Roanoke Times

Monday, May 27, 2013


1988 (25 years ago)

  • “A Japanese restaurant is working its way through a bureaucratic maze as it fights to stop the federal government from deporting Southwest Virginia’s only sushi chef.”
  • “Boddie-Noell Enterprise Inc. will close its Hardee’s restaurant in downtown Roanoke at the end of business Saturday.”
  • “The shares of ETS International, a Roanoke-based air pollution engineering company, are now quoted over the counter in the United States.”
  • “Roanoke’s own stock car racing team had an inauspicious debut Friday at Charlotte Motor Speedway.”
  • “The Wicked Pickett had folks climbing trees in Elmwood Park Saturday night. That’s because they wanted to get up high enough to possibly sneak a peek at the legendary rhythm and blues singer, this year’s headline attraction at Roanoke’s Festival in the Park.”

1963 (50 years ago)

  • “A crowd estimated at about 600 people filled the First Baptist Church at Jefferson Street and Gilmer Avenue, NW, Saturday night to celebrate a Negro victory on the closing of the Washington Park dump and to call for the elimination of racial segregation here.”
  • “Johnson-Carper Furniture Co. is the first Roanoke Valley firm to announce leasing of space in the New York world’s Fair 1964-65.”
  • “ ‘We hope to totally desegregate Roanoke,’ the 17-year-old leader of the Roanoke Student Movement firmly stated in an interview Saturday afternoon.”
  • “Oral Roberts — on opening night of his first crusade in Roanoke in 10 years — took off his coat, seated himself on a chair in front of the microphone and began to pray for the sick. Six thousand came to the big tent at Victory Stadium for the first night of the six-day campaign.”
  • “Increased tourist business and new industry were cited Thursday as possible results of the creation of Roanoke’s new Transportation Center and Railroad Museum in Wasena Park.”
  • “A showing of watercolors and oils spanning the last ten years of the work of Walter Biggs, nationally known Salem artist will be a special highlight of alumni weekend activities at Roanoke College.”
  • “Memorial Day may be observed as a holiday by grocery stores in Roanoke next year.”
  • “ ‘Twenty-two years superior theatre,’ reads the trophy presented to the William Fleming Drama Department, along with the citation by the National Council of National Thespian Society at the annual awards assembly held at William Fleming this week.”

1938 (75 years ago)

  • “For the first time in the history of Botetourt county — as far as courthouse attaches knew today — negroes have been added by jury commissioners to the venire list.”
  • Nine homicides were reported in Roanoke in 1937.”
  • “Roanoke needs a new public library built with a view to serving a metropolitan area of 150,000 people and in a much more accessible spot than the location of the present building.”
  • “With considerable fanfare and band music, night softball will be inaugurated into the sports program of Roanoke and the recreation department a week from tonight.”
  • “Climaxing an undercover campaign conducted by crack investigators over a period of about six weeks, enforcement agents of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board and Roanoke city police yesterday afternoon struck out at the illegal liquor traffic here in what officials termed the biggest raid in Virginia since the days of prohibition, arresting 83 persons.”
  • “A mobile first aid unit designed to meet emergencies on the highways has been organized by the Roanoke division of the Kroger Grocery and Baking company, the first such in the Kroger system, and the third in Virginia.”
  • “The Fat Men have found a sponsor. Last night Fats Dalton, organizer of the Fat Men into a baseball team, announced that a soft drink concern had agreed to sponsor them, buy them uniforms and scheduled a number of games over the section.”
  • “The Roanoke area is getting its first bit of concrete highway paving outside of towns in the widening of the Lee highway between Cloverdale and Waskey’s Mill.”
  • “An ordinance regulating and restricting the use of fumigants and requiring persons engaged in the work to obtain permits at $1 each, was adopted on its second reading by city council yesterday.”
  • “It was Leon Daniel Boone (Whiskers) Eddie Civil Savage’s time to go wild in the main event of the weekly wrestling show, a role for which he is peculiarly fitted what with his flowering growth of face spinach.”

1913 (100 years ago)

  • “There was much doing in Judge Berkeley’s court yesterday, almost half a hundred names appearing on the police docket since Saturday.”
  • “With Bert Gardin going in his best possible form, the Tigers had an easy time taking the first engagement from the Colts, who have been hovering around with the Tigers, trying to wedge into second place.”
  • “Two merchants on the Market Square were before the court on a charge of fighting. Evidence was somewhat tangled as to what happened when the two had a fisticuff Saturday evening and the court dismissed them.”
  • “Forty-eight acorns of Roanoke burst into bud last night at the Academy of Music to the accompaniment of deserved applause from relatives, friends … [at] the graduation exercises for the class of 1912-13 of the Roanoke high school.”
  • “Today, Memorial Day, will be observed generally as a holiday by banks and city offices in Roanoke.”
  • “We’ve all read about ball games lost through a ‘comedy of errors’ but a ‘comedy of errors’ would not be a fair description of yesterday’s annihilation.”
  • “The Hotel Stratford, one of the oldest in the city, probably will close to the public at 7 o’clock tonight.”
  • “The original ‘movies’ will be here Tuesday — Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and its only Pawnee Bill’s Far East.”
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