The Roanoke Times | File 2004

Bob Dills, the colorful former director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation who was often accompanied by his gregarious white Lhasa apso, Emmy, died last week in Charleston, S.C., according to friends.

Dills, who had battled depression and multiple sclerosis in recent years, died Oct. 27, apparently of a heart attack. He was 65. Dills had gone to Charleston for a meeting with a client, said Kathy Plotkin, a long-time friend.

Dills was director of the museum from January 2004 to July 2006. He also served as a consultant for the city of Roanoke's 125th anniversary events in 2007. He had returned to consulting work in recent years.

"He was keeping busy, I know that," said former Roanoke Mayor Nelson Harris, who said he got an e-mail from Dills less than two weeks ago.

Dills, though short in stature, had an out-sized personality, and liked to talk of parties he had attended with Andy Warhol and of other celebrities he knew. A 2004 profile described him as "a wheeler-dealer and a name-dropper," and quoted one acquaintance who called Dills "a colorful cat."

He was perhaps best-known in Roanoke for his lavish "Wanderlust" fundraisers at the transportation museum, which included appearances by celebrities including Angela Lansbury.

He was as well a sometimes controversial figure who often spoke his mind. His tenure at the museum ended literally under a cloud, as high winds in a thunderstorm blew off a portion of the museum's new roof. Dills resigned the next day, citing health concerns. A local television station report the same day alleged financial improprieties at the museum on Dills' watch. Dills was never charged with any misconduct, however, and museum board members defended him.

He later worked for the city as a consultant for its 125th anniversary fundraising events. His contract was terminated after city officials said he had overrun his budget, though Assistant City Manager Jim Grigsby said at the time, "We were happy with the job."

"Bob just had a lot of creative juice," said Harris, who cited the "Wanderlust" events as among Dills' most memorable achievements here. "He could write, he could put together these events in a tasteful, stylish way."

Dills maintained a house in Roanoke until recently, but friends said he had been making plans to move.

Plotkin, a long-ago host of the WDBJ television show Panorama, said she has known Dills since the 1960s. She and Dills wrote a book together on Appalachian quilts.

"We're all in a state of shock," said Plotkin, who now lives in New York. "We're numb. He had some health problems, but everybody does. None of them seemed life threatening."

A written release put together by friends and provided by Plotkin to The Roanoke Times described Dills as a "project development, events specialist and public relations consultant," whose primary clients included the Hemangioma Treatment Foundation, with offices in Charleston and Washington, D.C. Plotkin said Dills was in Charleston for a meeting with the head of the foundation when he died.

Over the past several decades, Dills also worked for the Smithsonian Institution, the American Craft Museum, the American Library Association, the Spoleto Festival, the Chrysler Museum of Art and Carnegie Hall.

Dills, a native of Tazewell and a graduate of the University of Richmond, has no surviving immediate family. His mother, Phyllis Dills Neel, died in 2001. His beloved dog, Emmy, who often went to work with him and greeted visitors, died of kidney disease two years ago. On a pillow in Dills' transportation museum office were stitched the words: "My goal in life is to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am."

Dills later acquired another Lhasa apso, Sallie, who survives.

Memorial services are being planned for a later date in Washington, D.C., and in Tazewell.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made to animal shelters or the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech.