Warren County Report

H.N. Funkhouser and Co. President Bob Claytor.

In-depth with H. N. Funkhouser President Bob Claytor

Transcript by PAULA CONROW
Warren County Report

Dan McDermott:  With me is Bob Claytor.  He is president of H.N. Funkhouser and Co.  They operate the Exxon, Shell, and Texaco  plants in Winchester, Woodstock, and Front Royal and they operate Napa Wholesale Auto Parts Stores, Handy Mart Convenience Stores, and sell industrial and automotive lubricants in the Northern Shenandoah Valley.  Mr Clayter, how in the world did you find the time to be here today.  You’re a very busy man.

Bob Claytor:  I appreciate the sales pitch very much but I also appreciate that this is a very sensitive subject and people are very concerned about it.  I’m here to try to give a few facts and figures to you.

Dan McDermott:  Let's start off with the obvious questions.  Gas is almost at post-Katrina levels.  What’s the reason?  Whats going on?

Bob Claytor:  There are two reasons.  One factual and one not factual.  The easy answer is the oil companies are taking advantage of us.  That’s very popular but not supported by fact.  The other is that internationally there is tremendous demand  in growth for petroleum and that we cant keep up that capacity to meet that demand.  And the supply and demand issue, economics 101 is taking place.  So as the demand dramatically goes up and the supply stays the same price goes up. 

Dan McDermott:  Now you gave me a statistic about Asia and I remember about  10 years ago the Internet became popular.  When you go to Wal-Mart and get your taxes done they are sending them to India and E-mailing them back. And you don’t even know it. And when you call Dell you get an Indian or Pakistani.  I’ve lived in both those countries and I applaud those folks and they are highly educated.  But the problem is that people who used to walk or ride a bike can now afford a car.  The energy demands .  Why don’t you tell me that statistic that blew me away about China’s and India’s energy.

Bob Claytor:  I tried to pick an airline ticket with United and I called United help line and talked to a person in India, so they are doing a lot of things.  India and China, I think we lose grasp of how big they really are.  China is about 1.4 billion people.  America for example is about 280 million, so they are about 4 ½ or 5 times our size.  India is over a billion people.  Those two countries today are using more energy than the whole world used a little over 10 years ago.  And they are not producing oil, they are net importers of oil.  So you take 2 countries and dramatically increase consumption more than 10 years ago total world and you can see where some of our problems are. They’re affecting not just the energy market.  They are affecting the gold market.  They are affecting the concrete market, the steel market.  You see gold going up a lot.  People say why is that?  Well because these developing countries now want to buy jewelry for their girlfriends and they’re so many of these folks over there gold is in strong demand right now so that price is going up as well.

Dan McDermott:  Well they’ve been introduced to the concept of disposable income for the first time.

Bob Claytor:  Their gross income for the year used to be in the two to three hundred dollar range.  That was their total income.  Now their up to about thirty five hundred dollars a year.  Still pales by our comparison, but  a lot of those people are getting up to five or six thousand a year and can start affording cars, houses and other consumable goods that we’ve been used to over the years.

Dan McDermott:  I lived in India as a kid and it was a country of beggars, basically, not the whole country but you would see them everywhere.  Just dirt poor. Poverty, heartache, tragedy everywhere, people dying of starvation, and that’s all changing.  I think I contribute the internet to a lot of it because its breaking down the geographical borders that separated prosperity from destitution.  It’s kind of leveling the playing field.  It’s a fact of life and we’ve about tripled our energy in 10 years.

Bob Claytor:  China last year was building a huge dam project and they were using about a third of all the concrete in the world.  Because of that the concrete prices almost tripled.  They were using almost half of all the rebar in the world,  the metal that goes in the concrete.  So those prices went up dramatically.  It's just not the petroleum industry,  its all commodities being consumed by these developing nations.

Dan McDermott:  I think this dam was on the great wall of china scale.  It’s a huge engineering feat.  They are very proud of it but have used a lot of resources to do it.  What was the reason the gas went up so quickly after Katrina.  I think I saw some oil executives who said in order to prevent hoarding they deliberately raised the price right away.  And it seems to me... I just want to punch them in the nose.

Bob Claytor:  I never heard that.  If that’s the case someone ought to punch them in the nose.  We had three storms in a row that dramatically upset the petroleum industry, but Katrina was the worst.  Katrina singlehandedly shut down about 600 oil producing platforms in the gulf of mexico.  It singlehandedly shut down about 15 refineries and 2 if those refineries took over 2 months to restart. One was the big refinery in Pensagola, Mississippi which was gigantic, produces 400,000 barrels a day and was down for 2 ½ months.  It also disrupted supply for about 3 days to the pipeline that comes up in Louisiana and Texas was closed.  I know when you go to a pump you expect the gasoline to be there but it has to get there by a certain mechanism.  We get all our  product out of a pipeline that comes out of texas and Louisiana goes all the way up the East Coast and actually ends in Baltimore.  So when that pipeline is sufficient we can barely keep up,  when it is shut down for a day or two it takes a very long time to catch back up.  These refineries they were down to the extent that they were bringing product in the New York harbor in order to get product down to us.  A lot of our terminals were totally out of gasoline for weeks at a time.  We hauled lots of product out of Pennsylvania because it wasn’t available here.  The consumer doesn’t see that back all that disruption, all these pipelines going empty drives these prices up high, and it certainly did.

Dan McDermott: It we tripled our demand for energy, gas, oil, and other forms of energy in 10 years.  I’m guessing its about triple.

Bob Claytor:  Let's deal with America now.  I have the facts and figures for that.  America grows about 2 to 2 ½ percent a year.  And our gasoline isn't our only demand…energy is a lot of things.  It's gasoline, its diesel fuel, its jet fuel, its kerosene, heating oil, chemicals, plastics.  But gasoline, this year, the '05 over '04 grew by 300,000 gallons a day.  So that’s our growth for one year in America.

Dan McDermott:  So as the need for energy is growing very rapidly in certain parts of the world and pretty conservatively here only by comparison to there, our refinery growth, the number of refineries which take 10 years to build has not kept up.  Correct?

Bob Claytor:  A refinery costs about 4 to 5 billion dollars, that’s with a 'b.'  And we haven’t built a refinery in America…I think the last one was built in 1973.  I read some articles where the last one was built in 1976.  I don’t know where that refinery was, but I do know where the ’73 was.  Now with either one of those numbers its been 30 years since we built a refinery in America.  So we can buy crude oil from a lot of different countries, Mexico, Venezuela, certainly all the Saudi countries, but if we cant refine it into a usable form it does us no good.  We desperately have got to start thinking about energy independence, and with that we have to refine our own product.

Dan McDermott:  I want to move on to that when we come back.  First I want to ask you another refinery question.  I guess they switch blends in certain parts of the country to introduce more ethanol for pollution reasons.  That was a noble goal in the ‘70’s, but today when every refinery is at peak capacity and we’re not really meeting demand or at least we’re barely meeting demand to the point where prices have skyrocketed, are we unnecessarily inconveniencing consumers to the tune of a buck a gallon extra for a relatively limited gain in the environment, or is it worth the cost?

Bob Claytor:  There's certainly a lot of that going on in the pipelines coming up in the east coast they were designed for three products.  They were designed for leaded regular, leaded super,  and diesel which was also fuel back in those days.  We now have 35 different blends of product coming up those pipe lines.  We’ve gotta somehow,  it’s called boutique gasoline,  we’ve gotta take away the states rights to personally blend all these gasolines and have different specifications.  Efficiency comes with running the same thing a lot.  When you have to stop refineries, change blends, read vapor pressures and volatility points, and blend 35 different blends, that’s very inefficient.  It causes a lot of transportation problems.  And with all of that there is a cost associated with it that the consumer has to pay. 

Dan McDermott:   I imagine if they said I’m going to cut the power to your business for three days because we’re going to have a 3 percent decrease in pollution by switching blends and we’ve got to clean everything out, you wouldn’t stand for that. 

Bob Claytor:  And this recent blip in prices, you know we talk about the oil companies and shipping and transportation, but the government every may the first for the last five years has required that every gas dispensary in Virginia go to a lower re-vapor pressure gasoline.  It’s a gasoline that doesn’t evaporate quite as much in the summertime.  Well that requires that every tank farm empty their tanks and put in this new product by May 1st.  We’ve got to do the same with all our tanks in the month of June and get it done by the end of june.  So every tank in the whole eastern United States has to be emptied and refilled with this new product and then, again, this causes disruptions and shortages and it does have a price associated with it.  I think it’s probably a good thing to do, but then it does cause peaks and valleys around the May-June frame because we are having to change all these tanks over.

Dan McDermott:  Next we’re going to talk about moonshine, and can I go to McDonalds and get the fryer oil and stick it in my diesel engine like Rudolph Diesel said we could when he introduced the diesel engine at the Worlds Fair back in the day.

Dan McDermott:  We're back.  I see in brazil they have gone from 85 percent imported oil to almost zero reliance on foreign entities for energy and they have done it by growing a lot of sugar. This is not something they have done in the last year, its something they’ve been working on for 20 years I think.  In the United States we are paying farmers to grow certain crops.  I don’t know if we’re still paying them to plough under certain things and subsidizing this and buying food from them because they cant get enough profit.  Should we switch all this to corn?  Is that the answer?  What is the solution?  What else can we stick in our cars once you consider all the facts to stop having to burn liquid, decaying dinosaurs and plants?

Bob Claytor:  You mentioned moonshine before the break, I thought you would come back with that.  Moonshine is ethanol.  Ethanol is a c2h50h.  It is a thing you drink, so corn, George Bush said the other day, not only do you have to raise corn for this, but you have to feed corn to animals and not all corn goes to this purpose.  You also have to compete with, when you buy a bottle of Jack Daniels at 20 some dollars a pint or a quart I guess it is or a fifth.  Are you willing to pay that much for gasoline and the answer is no.  There is no question that Brazil has gone this direction.  The problem with alcohol, and certainly..i just cut a couple of articles out of Forbes.  You know currently we are using about 4 billion gallons of ethanol in this country right today.  And just recently all the reformulated gasoline, that is that which is used in the cities, in the high density populations, they had an additive called MTBE that was found out to be a carcinogen and just this year that was taken out and ethanol was put in most of those products.  So if you buy gasoline in Washington, DC it has a 10 percent ethanol mix.  Ethanol is very popular. It is grown in America.  It has all the grandma and apple pie type things that people love.  However alcohol does not burn as efficiently as does gasoline.  This article in Forbes says if you are using alcohol today it would equate to about $4.50 a gallon of gasoline.  So you don’t want to put 100 percent  alcohol in because its expensive.  Also alcohol is a very dry product so unless you have a flex fuel vehicle you can burn your engine up.  So right now 10 to 15 percent is about all the alcohol your car can stand unless it’s a flex fuel vehicle.  Alcohol made from corn is pretty heavily subsidized.  Right now all the corn growers out in Kansas and Nebraska are getting about a 54 cents a gallon subsidy.  About 40 percent of their income comes from government subsidy, not from selling the corn, so its not without some federal cost to it.  Also if you burn alcohol in your car you get about 24 to 30 percent less energy, so your gas mileage will go down about that amount.  It is not a utopian type of thing, but it does decrease our dependency, but it does have a price associated with it. 

Dan McDermott:  I think you said we would have to virtually plough down every crop in America to grow enough corn just to support the United States energy demand if we switched to alcohol.

Bob Claytor:  This article said if the fuel demand continues into 2050 it would require 1.4 billion acres to eliminate importing gasoline.  That would be every square inch in this country for a total of 1.4 billion acres.  There would be no room left for building homes or food crops. 

Dan McDermott:  Wow if we could buy Australia, I think its about a billion acres. 

Bob Claytor:  Another thing about alcohol, we can raise it from corn, but we can also buy it from Brazil.  Right this moment there is a 54 cent tariff.  That is to say if we buy from Brazil again the taxpayer pays a tariff to the government because they want to make sure they protect local homegrown corn.  So all these things have little strings attached and price points attached through taxes. Not that they can’t be eliminated.  You can make alcohol a lot of ways; you can make it out of hay, you can make it out of anything that’s biodegradable.  So alcohol is not just a corn crop.  I think brazil gets most of theirs from sugar cane actually. 

Dan McDermott:  If corn is not the answer, or if ethanol is not the entire answer,  what do you think is going to be the crop or what will be the crop or product that will be a renewable source of energy to try to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil?

Bob Claytor:  Surely alcohol is one way.  If we can take 10 percent of all our total gasoline demand away from importing it that’s 10 percent we don’t have to buy.  You can make ethanol from a lot of different things.  You can make it from seaweed, from sugarcane, you can make it from hay.  There are lots of different ways to make it.  There is lots of crude oil around.  In fact just recently, you probably read in the news that our representatives again voted down oil exploration off the gulf coast, even though there are known oil wells that have been capped in recent years.  There are known oil wells off the coast of California, known oil wells off the coast of Florida that have already been drilled and are capped because of environmental reasons.  Again we have not had a major leak, there is so much technology with cameras and maintenance issues, that it really doesn’t create much of an environmental issue anymore.  We’ve got huge reserves up in Alaska.  We can become pretty self sufficient if we can just bring up this oil we already know exists and open refineries so we can put it in a usable form for ourselves.  I think we’re going to be always importing product.  Right now we’re importing about 62 percent.  We certainly have to get that down below 50 percent.  You know alcohol, conservation, certainly conservation is a big issue too, more miles per gallon, bringing up our own oil, building more refineries,  more efficient distribution systems, getting all the boutique gasolines out of the system.  All of those are important steps towards the independence issue.

Dan McDermott:  I think both parties are to blame.  The Republicans haven’t spent what we need to spend to try to find other sources of energy and the Democrats don’t want to drill anywhere.  So I think both parties are to blame.  What about vegetable oil?  I heard you can go to McDonalds, drain their tank and stick it in a diesel engine.  Is that accurate?  Is that another solution?

Bob Claytor:  You’ve gotta be careful because those products will solidify pretty easily.  You have to make sure you put something in there.  Back to the political issue.  It is not a political issue at all.  There has not been a long term energy plan in America for over 30 years.  And no one is going to build a refinery at 3 or 4 billion dollars and not know what the outcome is going to be at the end.  You could build that refinery and they could change the specification as they have in the last couple of years, and your refinery was built to produce a product that’s no longer allowed to be sold.  So we have to get some long term, ten year energy plans out there so everybody can focus on that and build refineries, build specifications, have a direction and not have it change every couple of years.

Dan McDermott:  Real quick answer to this.  Coal…I forget what state, west Virginia, one of those states, they want to take coal and turn it into diesel and use the waste product to shoot in the oil wells to bring the oil up.  It’s wonderful they say and they say we have 40 times the coal reserves compared to the world's oil reserves.

Bob Claytor:  That’s a great question.  There’s coal shale, there’s coal itself.  All this can be made into energy.  You know we’ve kind of gotten away from nuclear energy, but if we put a couple of nuclear power plants in and took a lot of our, energy dependence on electricity for example, and took it to another fuel.  A lot of our plants are using fossil fuel oil to produce electricity.  If we took that use to nuclear energy, we could take 15 to 20 percent need off line and not have to import that oil because nuclear would make that power.  It was very popular about 25 to 30 years ago.  No nuclear power plants in the past 20 years.  You’re seeing now that even Green Peace is saying that’s a good direction to go.

Dan McDermott:  I think Three Mile Island didn’t help the whole nuclear power cause.

Bob Claytor:  Well there was less release there than when you get a dental X-Ray.  But I think it was blown a little out of  proportion but then again…certainly all of these issues have hot button issues for some people. 

Dan McDermott:  300 million bucks for the president of Exxon.  You run an oil company.  When you retire are you going to get 300 million and go to Disney World?  Will you take me with you?

Bob Claytor:  Lets talk about profits of oil companies and I’ll back into that answer.  First of all that was a stupid bonus to give anybody.  You know if I had thousand dollars and I invested it today at 5% interest I would get 50 bucks a year.  If you had a million dollars and invested it you would get 50 thousand dollars.  Well Exxon has 380 billion dollars worth of moneys.  That’s what their assests were the last time I looked.  So 380 billion dollars at 5% gives them about 18 billion dollars a year.  So we’re dealing with a huge gigantic company that’s international.  Conoco Philips was 183 billion, they made 13 billion last year. Exxons return was about 10.7 %.  The reason they made so much money, and all the oil companies,  if you own oil wells you made money in the last couple of years.  Oil used to sell for 20 to 25 dollars a barrel, now its selling for 70.  So if you own oil wells, the mercantile exchange sets that price.  It's an international price.  The oil companies do not control it. If you own oil wells that’s the price that you sell for and you make huge sums of money when the price is up.  Back as late as 1998-99, the barrel price was 18 dollars a barrel.  They were losing money on that.  That 10% return sounds like a lot.  Chevron and Texaco were 7% return.  If you look at other industries, like Yahoo!, they have a 45% return, Bank of America had a 26% return, Merk 19, IBM 13, most banks make about a 16% return.  So it’s not a huge return, it’s just such a gigantic huge company.  Keep in mind too that in Exxons case, 70% of that profit was made overseas and in America they made money on natural gas, chemicals, asphalts, plastics, jet fuels, kerosenes, heating oil, diesel fuel, and gasoline was only about 9 or 10 % of that profit. You know we can yell and holler about gasoline, but it’s pretty efficient.  You go overseas you pay about 6 or 7 dollars a gallon.

Dan McDermott:  I want to thank Bob Claytor, president of H.N. Funkhouser.

[This interview originally aired on The Valley Today talk show, heard live daily on Oldies Radio 95.3 and Real Country 1450 at 12:30 P.M., following the News at Noon.] 

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Leslie Gardner, with pom poms, proprietess of The Meeting Place on Main and Special Love, Inc. Executive Director Dave Smith were among locals getting into the spirit of the coming football season along with visiting Redskin Hogettes on Aug. 10. Jack Evans Chevrolet provided transportation for a portion of the Hogettes tour of downtown Front Royal and the Hogettes walked some Meeting Place treats off by hoofing it up and down East Main Street. From left, are Hogettes "The Brave," "Sunshine," "Howiette," and "Hollywood Hillbilly" flanking Gardner and Smith. The Hogettes were scheduled for a stop at Camp Fantastic on Monday, Aug. 14, Smith said. 

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Hupp labors over civil commitment case decision

By ROGER BIANCHINI
Warren County Report

On Aug. 4, the full weight of the law fell hard in Warren County Circuit Court.

However, that weight did not fall on either a defendant or a failed prosecution team. It was 26th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Dennis L. Hupp upon whom the legal hammer fell that day.

“I appreciate your patience – I hope you understand how weighty this is,” Hupp told both state and defense attorneys at the conclusion of nine hours of testimony and legal argument over whether Timothy K. Walsh should remain incarcerated indefinitely for a crime he hasn’t yet committed.

Earlier in what has been a three-phased civil commitment case that began on May 11, Hupp ruled that the 34-year-old Walsh fit the definition of a Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) under new Virginia law. Under a statute passed by the General Assembly in 1999, but only funded for enforcement two years ago, the Commonwealth can seek the indefinite civil incarceration of those judged to be an ongoing threat to society and its children as sexually violent predators.

While deemed violent under the new statute, Walsh’s crimes skirt that definition in the traditional sense of the word. His crimes usually involved masturbatory touching of six to eight-year-old boys and testimony indicated Walsh ended his sexual advances if the children expressed discomfort at the situation.

With new legislation and even newer standards of enforcement meeting legally ambiguous language, all sides are feeling their way along a new legal path, Hupp made a point of saying in front of state Delegate Todd Gilbert, also an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Warren County, who was present at the start of the Aug. 4 hearing.

Nine hours later Hupp said, “Public safety and certainly the safety of children is of great concern to the court, but so is fairness and justice. He’s served his time,” the judge noted of Walsh’s completion of a nine-and-a-half-year sentence for probation violations for earlier sexual predatory crimes against young children.

“There are programs out there that were not available a couple of years ago that could justify conditional release . . . the bottom line is I truly understand the significance of my decision . . . Quite frankly I need more time,” Hupp said.

Due to conflicting vacation schedules of both the judge and attorneys as summer’s end approaches, Hupp will render his decision in Shenandoah Circuit Court in Woodstock at 4 p.m. on Aug. 29.

Hupp began his comments around 7:25 p.m. by saying he had fully intended to render his decision at the end of the Aug. 4 hearing, the fourth on the matter since May 11. “It’s gone on long enough,” he said. However, Hupp acknowledged that compelling closing arguments from both State Attorney General’s Office prosecutor Thomas E. Kegley and defense counsel Edward S. Rosenthal had given him pause.

“I listened to Mr. Kegley and I said ‘that makes a lot of sense’ and I listened to Mr. Rosenthal and said ‘that makes a lot of sense.’ All three attorneys have represented their respective parties with professionalism Hupp said, including defense co-counsel Lana M. Manitta in his commendation for the way the case had been handled.

His last and best chance

The decision Hupp faces in the Walsh civil commitment case hinges on two primary factors, how much of threat Walsh will present to the Commonwealth’s children as a conditionally released outpatient and whether or not the new Vasavor outpatient treatment program gives Walsh his best hope for overcoming his pedophile tendencies.

Testimony has indicated the Vasavor program, while relatively new, has achieved an astonishingly low one to two percent recidivism rate. Expert witnesses in clinical psychology and program administrators pointed out that Vasavor, in conjunction with the Sex Offender Containment Model, stresses tightly imposed behavioral restrictions that make it difficult for patients to follow through on aberrant sexual impulses. Among the tools utilized by the outpatient program Walsh is seeking release into are real-time Global Positioning and other electronic monitoring equipment, halfway house living situations with restrictive curfews and travel parameters, job supervision, intensive parole and treatment monitoring, and regular lie detector tests.

While the identification of the pedophile impulses by the patient is part of the treatment, both prosecution and defense expert witnesses in psychology pointed out the tight control of the patient’s movement, behavior and social opportunities was the main thrust of the program, rather than seeking a “psychological cure.”

“This is his last good chance. Rosenthal told the court. What is at stake is the rest of Tim Walsh’s life.” Rosenthal argued that the Vasavor/Sex Offender Containment Model treatment plan Walsh would have access to as a conditionally released outpatient if paroled to Fairfax County where his parents live, far surpassed the quality of treatment he was likely to receive in the Virginia’s newly created, prison-like Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation.

“If he is not released now he probably never will be,” Rosenthal told the court.

However, Kegley said that was overstatement by the defense. He noted that the law required annual reviews of civilly committed SVP patients.

“What they are asking is for you to let him out and subject the public to risk in order for him to prove himself. Let him prove himself inside the center for behavioral rehabilitation, then come back and ask to be released,” Kegley said in arguing the state’s side.

Rosenthal countered that both side’s experts testified if Walsh failed in outpatient treatment, it was likely to be by breaking the very restrictive rules of coming and going or by seeking out an opportunity “to groom” or get to know a potential victim. Testimony in earlier hearings indicated Walsh views himself as establishing emotional bonds to the children he later molests.

But Kegley argued the risk of escalating offenses was too much of an unknown factor.

“Could an abduction be next? We don’t know,” Kegley said.

The defense argued that court-imposed parameters, including being housed in the Fairfax County Jail the first 45 days of his entrance into conditional release, would adequately safeguard the Commonwealth’s children.

Walsh’s separated parents have attended each of the civil commitment hearings. The defense team cited the family’s support and understanding of their son’s situation and problems as a key factor in creating the kind of support group that could help Walsh succeed on conditional release in Fairfax County.

The draining emotions of hearing several days of testimony in recent months about their son’s condition and future prospects seemed to tell at the end of the Aug. 4 hearing. Walsh’s tearful mother was allowed to embrace her son before he was returned to the Warren County Jail for transport back to the Brunswick Correctional Facility. Walsh’s own eyes glistened as he waved to his father, a retired corrections/parole officer, as he gathered up notes he had kept during the day’s hearing.

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Locals, survivors of 1967 attack react to Israeli military offensive

Analysis and opinion by ROGER BIANCHINI
Warren County Report

Throughout much of the world the Israeli attack of Lebanon launched on July 12 resulted in an outcry against what was seen by critics to be myriad Israeli violations of international law and human rights standards against the “collective punishment” of an entire population over the actions of one minority political Party.

However, here the U.S. media and government continue to portray Israel as a victim in a defensive posture, simply asserting its right to exist. But with an Israeli military estimated by some as the world’s fourth most powerful, and a nuclear arsenal believed to be the planet’s sixth largest – both built largely at the expense of $15 million a day in American taxpayer money – others ask if it is Israel’s existence that is now at stake in the Middle East?

For many Americans of Middle Eastern descent it is the survival of the nations of their ancestors, rather than Israel’s, that appear to be at risk. With escalating reports of the daily destruction of Lebanon’s ability to provide power and other basic essentials to its routed population, as well as international agencies warning of both looming humanitarian and environmental crises that a belated ceasefire would not prevent, the fear and anxiety of many Lebanese-Americans has been accentuated by a feeling their countrymen are unsympathetic, even hostile, to their distress. If such indifference or hostility exists, many feel the American media’s reporting of the Middle Eastern situation is one root cause.

One American view

“The media perpetuates many myths about Israel and the Arabs and the media has quickly established a myth about the beginning of the current fighting,” Warren County resident and second-generation Lebanese-American Betty Molchany said of the story being told to the American public. “Yes, Hezbollah took two Israeli soldiers as hostages, a strategy Israel has also used for many years, as in its recent kidnapping of many elected officials in Palestine. Hezbollah’s stated intention was to trade the captured Israeli soldiers for Lebanese already kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel. But who in America has heard the first part of that story? The mainstream U.S. media always describes Israeli attacks as responses, the American public never gets both sides of the story, so it is little wonder people here have a distorted perspective about what is happening in the Middle East.

“The headlines are ‘Israel strikes back’ or that Israel is ‘defending itself’ against rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which crossed into Israel to ‘kidnap’ Israeli soldiers. The Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel were a response to the Israeli choice to bomb all of Lebanon, rather than negotiate a prisoner exchange,” Molchany says.

Molchany explains her connection to the region.

“My father was born in Feah, Syria, which is now a part of Lebanon, and came to the US around 1912 and my mother was born in Pennsylvania but her parents immigrated in the late 1800's from Zahleh, Syria, which also became part of Lebanon.”

Molchany said that since her parents, as a Greek Orthodox (father) and Roman Catholic (mother), disagreed over the role of the Vatican, she was raised as a Protestant. Molchany also said that in the Syrian/Lebanese-based, mixed religious household she was raised in, religious tolerance was the norm.

”My parents were both very religious, but never at any time reviled another religion,” she says. However, she believes such religious tolerance and mutual respect has disappeared from the American media in its reporting of the Middle East.

“Never is the Arab or Muslim view presented in an op-ed piece and the sky would fall if such a person were permitted to have a running column. When there is a conflict in any Middle Eastern country, the U.S. news channels call on experts, often Jewish-Americans notorious for their hatred of Arabs and Muslims. Rarely is an Arab invited, and rarer still a Muslim, certainly not as experts.”

Molchany also points out there is a large Jewish peace movement both inside and outside Israel that is virtually non-existent in mainstream American reporting about Israel and the Jewish perspective. In fact, she noted that the Israeli mother of one of the two Israeli soldiers being held by Hezbollah publicly criticized Israel’s attack on Lebanon and said war was not the way to secure the safe return of her son, Israel’s stated aim at the outset of its most recent attack on Lebanon.

“Only one side of the raging debate in the Jewish community is heard in America. It would be wonderful to hear both sides of the Jewish perspective, but one side’s voices are stilled because they do not support the atrocities which Israel commits daily against the Palestinians. And there are many such alternative Jewish voices, including Jewish Voice for Peace, Allison Weir of www.ifamericansknew.com, Norman Finklestin, Noam Chomsky, Norman Solomon, and Joshua Frank.

"And over 1,400 Israeli military personnel have been imprisoned in Israel for refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories because of the daily brutality they are ordered to inflict on innocent Palestinians,” Molchany added of another side of Israeli dissent largely unreported in the U.S. "The [U.S.] Congress recently passed a resolution, which said that Israel is careful not to kill civilians. Really?” Molchany asks. “Is dropping a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in a crowded urban area in Gaza in an effort to kill one man they could have easily arrested, care not to kill civilians? Not only have they killed civilians, including many children, but even the UN Secretary General has raised questions about Israel’s claim its attack on the UN peacekeeping headquarters in southern Lebanon was an accident.”

Distant echoes?

Alleged distortions in the reporting and official explanation of another supposed Israeli “mistaken identity” attack, this one 39 years ago against a U.S. target, has led another Warren County resident, Tito Howard, to both produce a documentary film, “The Loss of Liberty,” and spearhead an organization, “The Liberty Alliance.” The goal of both projects is increasing public awareness about the Israeli attack on the U.S. intelligence ship USS Liberty during the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six Day War.

The Liberty’s crew became the most decorated in U.S. naval history as a consequence of their actions during what former two-time Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer described as one of the most vicious and sustained attacks upon an American naval vessel in history. That two-hour-and-12-minute attack by Israeli air and sea forces, Howard points out, was against an essentially unarmed ship and lasted as long as the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that resulted in America’s entrance into World War II. The official line, accepted without public hearing for 39 years by the American government, is that that attack was, as Israel claims, a case of mistaken identity.

Liberty’s late Captain William L. McGonagle, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient for his actions that day, and his crew have disputed the mistaken identity explanation to this day. Yet their government has refused to give them the objective, public inquiry they have sought.

“A 10-year-old wouldn’t have made that mistake,” Howard says of the Israeli explanation. “As the most sophisticated intelligence ship in the world Liberty’s profile was highly distinctive and the well-identified Liberty was four times the tonnage and over twice the length of the 45-year-old, rusted Egyptian freighter, the El Quseir, Israel said it thought it was attacking.”

Israel’s self-described “accidental” attack on the UN headquarters in Southern Lebanon in July, which resulted in the death of four UN peacekeepers, stirs unpleasant memories among Liberty’s surviving crew.

“What the Israeli military did to the UN peacekeepers is the same as they did to us, they shot first and asked questions later – it’s called ‘Mistakenly on Purpose,’ ” Liberty crewman John Hrankowski, says. “I am reliving my nightmare all over again and I feel so sick for the people caught up in this new nightmare.

“I hope our government tells both sides to stop the killing,” Hrankowski told Warren County Report. “There has to be a time for serious talk and compromise. It can’t keep going on like this, the little people are the ones getting hurt, they suffer and for what?”

Thirty-four of Hrankowski’s shipmates died and 172 more were wounded, many seriously, out of a ship’s company of 294 as the Israeli attack left over 3,000 armor-piercing .50-caliber machine gun and 821 rocket and cannon holes in the Liberty, along with one of five torpedo strikes, from the attack occurring 13 miles off the coast of el-Arish, in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

The state-of-the-art U.S. intelligence ship was clearly displaying U.S. naval markings and the crew has insisted that a large American flag was also being flown at the outset of the attack, which occurred after several leisurely flyovers by low flying Israeli surveillance planes.

As with the recent attack on the UN headquarters in Lebanon, one might ask what could be the motive for Israel attacking either an important ally or neutral peacekeepers?

“Evidence indicates Israel believed the Liberty had accumulated electronic surveillance evidence of its starting of that war, as well as of war crimes its army was committing in the Sinai, including the murder of Egyptian POWs,” Howard explained while discussing his film and the Liberty Alliance membership.

That membership, Howard notes with pride, has included many high level retired U.S. military officers, including the late Admiral Moorer, 4-Star Marine General Ray Davis, former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke and retired U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General Merlin Staring, as well as a number of Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. Why the interest of high-ranking and decorated U.S. military personnel in the Liberty story?

Perhaps because as the chief counsel to the original U.S. Naval inquiry into the Liberty attack, retired Captain Ward Boston, told this reporter and the Navy and Marine Times, his immediate superior in the inquiry, Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, was under orders “from the highest levels” of American government “to fabricate the mistaken identity conclusion” of that inquiry.

“I remember Ike (Adm. Kidd) saying, ‘the murderous bastards, they knew what they were doing.’ That was his and my opinion,” Boston said after 36 years of silence. Boston explained his and his superior’s compliance with their orders to fabricate a military inquiry’s conclusion – “We were military men, when orders come in from the secretary of defense and President of the United States, we followed them.”

Can it be surprising, Howard asked, “that if the horrendous circumstance of an Israeli attack upon a U.S. ship has been hidden from the American people for 39 years, that the true nature of current events on that same Middle Eastern battlefield are also being withheld from them?”

Molchany noted in early August that The Jerusalem Post reported Israeli military officials told the paper the Bush Administration was encouraging Israel to expand its offensive into Syria. On Aug. 11, Molchany added that noted Jewish-American author Noam Chomsky stated in a recent interview that Iran’s ruling cleric Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated in June of this year an offer first made in 2003 that would recognize in principal Israel’s right to exist in return for Israel’s return of territories it has occupied since 1967. Khamenei, Iran’s highest ranking official, also set the stage for on-site inspections of his nation’s uranium enrichment facilities, Chomsky said. Those offers have yet to be publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or media, Chomsky told a Jewish interviewer.

“If Chomsky’s assertions are correct it is very disturbing,” Molchany said. “I believe a truly informed American public would not tolerate the kind of foreign policy their nation is pursuing in the Middle East.”

Concerning an Aug. 11 UN ceasefire resolution Israel may adopt early this week, Molchany added, “Israel should not be permitted to walk away without punishment for its targeting of an entire civilian population, the destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure and a consequent oil spill along the Lebanese and Syrian coasts, which could take as much as 20 years to repair. If Iran had done such things to a neighbor what would our reaction be?”

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A. S. Rhodes Elementary School, Front Royal, VA  22630

School board recommends A. S. Rhodes remain elementary school

By ROGER BIANCHINI
Warren County Report

Growth and how it is expected to impact the county’s public school student population in coming years is a current topic of discussion between the Warren County School Board and Board of Supervisors.

The school board has viewed each phase of that plan as a necessary chronological step toward readying the school system for the increased student populations anticipated as growth pressures from the Northern Virginia area continue to push into the Northern Shenandoah Valley.

In July, Warren County School Superintendent Pamela McInnis told the school board updated county population projections indicate that a planned new northside elementary school housing 650 students, Phase Three of the 20-year plan, may not be enough to meet the county’s needs over the next 14 years. The system’s capital improvement plan initially called for the existing A.S. Rhodes to be converted into an alternative education facility following the opening of a new northside elementary school in 2010.

The space for the extra 250 elementary school students A.S. Rhodes can house is now believed to be necessary through 2020, McInnis said.

Phase one of the 20-year capital improvement plan will end with the fall 2007 opening of two new high schools (see related story). Phase two is envisioned as a remodeling of the old WCHS and Warren County Middle School to serve as two, updated middle schools feeding the high schools. The two new, 9-12 grade high schools are scheduled to open with eighth graders at the those facilities as part of the plan to begin the Phase Two renovations in late May of 2007.

However, some supervisors have wondered if enrollment and financial circumstances might not require a new elementary school to be put ahead of the middle school projects.

Cost factors, initial estimates made nearly two years ago were around $25 million for the middle school and old WCHS renovations, have also been cited as a potential delaying factor as the county heads into the full payment years of the $86-million capital improvement bond issue. That bond, which will peak at around $5 million in annual payments, is paying for the new high schools and the Bing Crosby Stadium renovations. Both high school baseball teams will use “The Bing” as their home baseball field.

Rising oil price crisis have sent construction costs skyrocketing beyond initial estimates over the past two years.

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Courtesy of A. S. Rhodes Elementary School.

Abraham S. Rhodes was born on January 14, 1858, in Middletown, Virginia. He moved to Warren County in the latter part of the nineteenth century and settled in the Rockland area. During the time that Mr. Rhodes lived in Warren County, he was very interested in the community. He was a justice in the Warren County court system, a member of the Warren County Electoral Boards, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Warren.

Mr. Rhodes died on October 24, 1930. He never saw the school built in Riverton but because of his interest in the concept of consolidated schools, the School Board voted to honor him by naming the new school in his memory.

A. S. Rhodes was the first school in the county to be named for a person. It opened for the first time for the school year 1936 - 1937. There were only four classrooms then for grades one through seven. During 1951 - 1952, two wings were added. Now there are twelve classrooms for kindergarten through fifth grade, a library, cafeteria, resource room, computer lab, and music room. A multi-purpose building was added in 1999.

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Environmental groups are suing a chicken waste treat plant for exceeding discharges into the Shenandoah River by 6,000%, the Possum was a little grumpy at first, and it was one hot July.  Here’s Dan McDermott’s take on the news.

“I don’t believe this is a smoking gun, I don’t want to relate it to the fish kill,” Shenandoah Riverkeeper Jeff Kelble said in the wake of the Aug. 11 filing of an intent to sue Valley poultry business Sheaffer International, L.L.C., for numerous violations of environmental laws at its wastewater treatment facility in Timberville, Virginia. “But we have a river that has got a lot of problems and we feel compelled to address each and every one of them in the hopes of eliminating all of the issues that we see. And if you push at all the problems the river faces, it should eliminate what’s hurting the fish.”  Kelble also stressed that he does not view Schaeffer International as a villain in the story of what is affecting the river.  “The Schaeffer concept is a very strong concept of recycling nutrients within the agricultural community and were this system to be operating at full capacity and full functionality, I would be a great supporter and I hope that our involvement, that of the Shenandoah Riverkeeper, Potomac Riverkeeper and the Waterkeeper Alliance, will insure the fastest resolution to eliminate any roadblocks that currently exist [to full implementation of the Shaeffer plan] because it does appear that there are roadblocks coming from multiple places.   “We can’t wait for the fish kill task force to give an opinion about what they feel is killing the fish, that likely could be years off,” Kelble concluded of why the decision to file against Shaeffer was made.

Rosie Lee McCloud, 25, and Catherine Antoinette Pena, 19, plead guilty in a Front Royal vandalism spree.

The Warren County portion of Adelphia Cable, which was used by it’s founder as a piggy bank, was bought by Comcast.  In it’s first week, the new Comcast system suffered a lengthy outage and told customers that it was scheduled maintenance.

Travis Tritt played at the Warren County Fairgrounds in July at the site’s first non-fair week concert. The fair association made lots of money--but not as much as Travis Tritt.

George Jones played a wonderful concert during this year’s Warren County Fair. He showed up 45 minutes after the stated 7:00 PM concert time and fussed about the sound through several songs. “Two much echo...”  But once he got into his groove, all was forgiven. He played all the hits that made him famous over 50 years. Some folks felt the show could only have been better had the fair sold beer--a topic of some of Jones’ better work.

Ashely Brooke Ballentine and Heather Elaine Pond were crowned Miss & Jr. Miss Warren County Fair 2006. Last year’s winners, Lacey Lancaster and Chelsea York, got a hug from George Jones before his show.

Kimberly N. Klotz was indicted for not returning a rental car to Virginia Auto Group.

Warren County sued the town of Strasburg for not notifying them about a proposed housing development located within a half mile of the Strasburg/Warren line before holding a public hearing on it and approving it.  One of the project’s supporters was voted out of office and three chose not to run for re-election.  Warren dropped the suit after determining it would have no adverse effect on the county.  Taking a page from the Save the Gateway playbook, two of the projects remaining elected supporters walked out of a Strasburg Town Council meeting to deny a quorum to the majority who wanted to reconsider it.  The developer is threatening to sue if the project is revisited for “frivilous reasons.”

The Town of Front Royal is paying an unprecedented sum of money and making other concessions to a prospective planning director from Prince William County hoping she won’t leave as quickly as many other top level town officials have.  Outgoing Vice-Mayor Daniel Pond, III insinuated that micromanagement could be an issue between town council members and senior staff.

John Martin Delarosa, 22, was arrested and charged with robbing the 7-Eleven on John Marshall Highway. He was easy to find since he was in jail for allegedly getting drunk after the robbery.  He admitted to the robbery but told the judge that he was stoned when he did it.

A lot of local folks are worried about the housing market--especially those who recently bought a home that had almost doubled in value in 5 years.

Jessie L. Shifflett was indicted for stealing from Foodway.  If convicted, it would be his third larceny.

Wanda A. Brown, 58, was accused of pretending to be a Hurricane Katrina victim to get money.

Senator George Allen questioned his opponent Jim Webb’s lack of support for the war in Iraq. Former Reagan Navy Secretary Webb responded by calling Allen a coward who sat out Vietnam on a dude ranch in Nevada while Webb’s aid repeatedly referred to Allen as “Felix,” the middle name Allen hates and never uses.

July was really, really hot.

Quelman Quiroz, Jr. was indicted for robbing Rick Phillips.

Rappahannock resident Thomas Edward Lee III went to trial for trying to steal a $1,200 parrot from Noah’s Ark Pets and Aquarium.  Unfortunately for Lee, an off duty Fairfax cop and Warren County Magistrate Leilani Monahan were in the store shopping that day. The two’s trained legal eyes sensed something was up when Lee allegedly stuffed the bird into his backpack.  Lee said he was just testing the bird out. Judge Dennis Hupp didn’t buy it and convicted him.

A lot of folks went to Front Royal stores on Virginia’s first sales tax free holiday for back-to-school shoppers. The state says they think it was a success but aren’t sure since the stores didn’t have to report anything.

A lot of restaurants and other businesses are slow. Most folks think it’s because gas prices are so high. You can’t spend the same dollar twice.  Oil producing  countries aren’t complaining.

Someone vandalized the new and improved Bing Crosby Stadium right before it opened. The police offered a reward. Apparently in the 4+ million dollar renovation plans, no one thought to buy some hundred dollar cameras and a VCR.

Someone did $5,000 worth of damage to townhouses that are being constructed on Kerfoot Avenue.

H. N. Funkhouser President Bob Claytor said the big BP Alaskan oil pipeline shutdown won’t effect gas prices here much since most of that oil is sent to Japan anyway because the U.S. hasn’t built a new refinery in thirty years.

Christopher Nelson Munday was indicted for possession of heroin.

Mason Dixon spent a bunch of money polling Virginian’s and discovered that most of us don’t support new taxes but wouldn’t mind some shiny new roads.

A Gold’s Gym is opening next to the new BB&T bank in Royal Plaza Shopping Center.

Former Front Royal Town Manager David Reynal, who was forced out by Town Council before his first anniversary, got a job running West Melborne Florida.

Timothy Duane Hall was sentenced jail with all but two years suspended for assault and battery of three people: Terry Daniels and Front Royal Police officers D.L. Fogle and J.A. Grohs.

Excavation continues on 522 north of I-66 at the Riverton Commons and the Crooked Run retail centers.  Warren County will be the new home of a Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes, Cracker Barrel , and other stores, restaurants, and banks.

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Incoming town councilman Tom Sayre (white shirt) attempts to get outgoing Vice Mayor Daniel Pond's attention following the June 26 council meeting as Mayor James Eastham appears to be checking the WCGC roof for leaks in the wake of severe June thunderstorms.  WCR Photo by Roger Bianchini. Copyright 2006, Warren County Report.

By ROGER BIANCHINI
Warren County Report

Outgoing Vice-Mayor J. Daniel Pond III had some pointed advise for his soon-to-be former colleagues and soon-to-be successors on the Front Royal Town Council on June 26.

Sitting next to Mayor James Eastham during his final meeting after choosing not to seek reelection after four-and-a-half years on council, Pond cautioned against too hard a line being taken by either pro or anti-growth public officials.

Noting that by-right development will always lead to a certain amount of residential expansion in a municipality, Pond cited the need for the town to acquire proffers in exchange for some concessions to developers in order to pay for infrastructure improvements including roads, schools and other services that will eventually be strained, even through by-right development.

Pond said, “Everyone is a loser, except possibly for the developer,” when cash or infrastructure proffers are totally lost by drawing an inflexible line against any increased residential buildouts.
Perhaps the vice mayor was recalling a potential hard lesson learned by his vote with a 4-2 council majority that rejected extended discussion with developer Centex on a proposed 300-unit cluster housing, rezoning proposal that resulted in the national developer’s withdrawal of its $2.4 million on the table, and a potentially doubled, proffer proposal. Since council rejected the developer’s request for an additional month to negotiate terms on that development proposal, Centex has indicated it will build 100 by-right homes of a higher value as a means for acquiring its profit margin.

However, Pond also cautioned against blind acceptance of developer requests for increased build-outs made by dangling insufficient cash proffers to compensate for the total social impacts of their proposals.

“If you allow developers to maximize the amount of housing that is developed on their parcels, then the magnitude of those developments will alter the character and charm of Front Royal that we who live here love.

“You guys only have one chance to get it right,” Pond cautioned in suggesting compromise toward a middle ground that achieves a balance between the interests of developers and the existing community.

“You, the new council are mandated by the people who put you in office to find out [the] answers . . . If you don’t make [developers] pay their fare share, then you do nothing more than give away existing citizen’s assets and put a terrible strain on the residents of Front Royal who entrusted you to look out for their interests. 

“Be open minded . . . please for the sake of this community don’t limit yourself,” Pond said. His audience included not only to incoming and incumbent councilmen, but also several planning commissioners. With three recent appointments the town planners have taken an increasingly hard line against developer requests for increased buildouts.

 “There may be alternatives, where land is preserved, density is reduced, but the developer pays for the projects’ impact,” Pond said.

The outgoing vice mayor also took a parting shot at the current town administration’s track record on maintaining key staff positions.

 “I am confident that you will find a good fit for town manager and planning director . . . if you can fit those last pieces in the [staffing] puzzle and leave them alone and let them manage, the town will flourish.”

This council majority swept into office in 2004 in the midst of the Wal-Mart location controversy has been through four town managers, including two interim appointments in two years and appointed a fifth, and third interim, town manager, Robert S. Noe Jr., on June 26. The town was also without a planning director until the appointment of William Shelly on June 5, to a three-month term, following the firing of Brevetta Jordan in late 2005. The town has since hired Nimet Soliman, from Prince William County (see related story) to take over the planning director’s role on Sept. 15.

Pond cited increased family responsibilities surrounding the birth of he and his wife’s two children during his council tenure as the primary reason for his decision not to seek reelection.

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Bing Crosby Stadium. Photo by Roger Bianchini. Courtesy of Reginald Cassagnol / CassAviation. Copyright 2006 Warren County Report

Community raises the bar for youth athletics facilities throughout the Valley

By ROGER BIANCHINI
Warren County Report

“It was 53 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play,” or more appropriately on this occasion, “the Bing to croon.”

Okay, okay, paraphrasing the opening line from The Beatles summer of love – 1967 for you youngsters – landmark Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album is probably a bit obtuse but we are taking artistic license due to the musical Bing Crosby connection. Yes Virginia, the stadium is named after Bing Crosby, the late crooner/actor, because he donated $4,000 to the community’s youth recreation programs that put the stadium project in motion after coming to town to premier one of his films in the early 1950s.

But back to basics – I know where the heart of a story lies and this one’s is in a community’s commitment to its future and its children.

It was, in fact, 53 years ago that Front Royal’s 11-12-year-old, 1953 Little League All Stars, the first to play in the original Bing Crosby Stadium, made it to Williamsport, Pa., where they finished a gutsy third place in the Little League World Series following an untimely, freak injury to one key player. In 1953 that team played in a $10,000, concrete wall-encased “Bing” that was state of the art for youth athletics at the time.

But over a half-century later that facility had aged, deteriorated and was passed both in appearance and amenities by newer high school and even some Little League complexes throughout the Shenandoah Valley. As went “The Bing” it seemed, so went the community as it battled hard economic times and occasionally itself, in the wake of the loss of its major employer of nearly 50 years, the American Viscose, then FMC, then Avtex rayon manufacturing plant.

Does “The Bing’s” resurrection point to the successful culmination of another rebirth, that of the American Viscose site as both business and recreational parks? With the same commitment and forward-looking perspective of local government, one can certainly hope for a similar conclusion.

“Build it and they will come,” a line from the baseball fantasy film “Field of Dreams,” seemed an appropriate reference to the vision and commitment leading to the July 22, 2006, grand re-opening of Bing Crosby Stadium. It was a reference and a theme returned to often by speakers during that Saturday morning ceremony.

Two of those speakers, Warren County Board of Supervisors Chairman Richard Traczyk and Vice-Chairman Ron Llewellyn were part of the county governmental team that dared to dream this community would support a $3 to $4-million athletic investment in its children and its future. And while that nearly $4-million expenditure has been an ongoing topic of debate for some, on a recent Saturday such grumbling faded like the shadows driven from the Bing’s field by an emerging late morning, July sun.

“This new ballpark is, indeed, a field of dreams for virtually every child coming through its gates . . . What child does not dream of the opportunity to play in a Camden Yards or a Yankee Stadium?” Llewellyn asked in recounting his own childhood here, which he noted included “over 100 games in the original Bing.” But while, like himself, most of us aren’t destined to attain the dream of baseball’s big “Show,” Llewellyn pointed out that the new Bing is a viable working alternative for the community’s baseball playing youngsters.

And while questions remained that Saturday about the immediate playability of rain-soaked sections of infield sod (only four Front Royal Cardinal home games remained that day in this lost gypsy Card season before eight months of undisturbed sod setting and field manicuring can occur), and some final necessary construction tweaking was apparent to the close observer, the focus on July 22 was on the stadium’s long-term potential as a baseball and community facility.

Several speakers noted that Front Royal has always been known as “a baseball town.” And now it seems that youth baseball and its modernized centerpiece have the opportunity to help reunite a community as it comes to terms with change and the parameters of the change that will define it and its future.

Perspective, traditions

The focus on pride gained from tradition, effort and the achievement of “being the best YOU can be,” may have been best expressed by 1953 Front Royal Little League All Star Sam Cooksey, who appeared with former teammate Warren Miller at the opening ceremonies.

“I played at Bing Crosby when I was about 10 years old and it’s amazing what they have done here. I take my hat off to the people that got together and got this stadium rebuilt for the kids. The money is well spent, there’s no doubt about it. And the kids playing high school ball now, they’re going to have kids someday and they’re going to be playing here and then someday their grandkids will be playing here too. So this ballpark carries it all into the future.

“We’ve got another team here going to the World Series, the Challengers,” Cooksey said when asked about his own childhood exploits leading to Williamsport’s own legendary field of dreams. “There’s only two teams in the whole world going to play in the World Series in that group, and they are one of them and that’s amazing.

“So they’re taking our banner away from us, they’re carrying it on,” Cooksey said of the Challengers ending his team’s distinction as the town’s only Little League World Series participant. “And they have no idea what they’re getting into when they get up there, they’ll get caught up in it because they love baseball just like the rest of us. And if you ever come and watch them play, you’ll fall in love with them like I did,” Cooksey said of the Challengers.

He then noted that the Challenger League All Stars are in the process of conducting a variety of events to raise the money necessary to make the trip to Williamsport and urged the community’s support of that effort.

Included among speakers representing future users of the stadium on Saturday were Front Royal Little League President Bryan Helmick, American Legion Post 53’s Jody Lee, Front Royal Cardinals President Linda Keen, Warren County High School Athletic Director Buck Smith and baseball coach Todd Miller. Smith was also representing Skyline High School, scheduled to open in the fall of 2007, along with the new WCHS. Both high schools will play their home games at The Bing (Smith’s stirring remarks are reported elsewhere in this issue).

Members of this year’s WCHS team that shared the Northwestern District Title with Sherando and fell one game short of a state playoff berth also participated in a mass, first-pitch ceremony. The Col. Wesley Fox Jr. Marine Honor Guard presented federal, state and Legion Post 53 colors as members of the WCHS Band played the renovated stadium’s first National Anthem.

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Bing Crosby Stadium. Photo by Roger Bianchini. Copyright 2006, Warren County Report.

Warren County High School Athletic Director Buck Smith visited baseball’s long-time connection to the American spirit in his July 22 remarks at the reopening of Bing Crosby Stadium. His words and the words he referenced, from Walt Whitman and W.P. Kinsella, harkened back to our collective past, to lost innocence and the deep pull of memory that transcends generations and virtually any other boundary that separates us from our hearts, our dreams, our neighbors and ultimately from ourselves. We gratefully reprint a portion of those remarks here:

“Baseball holds a special place in the hearts of Americans. Walt Whitman, the great American poet of the mid 1800’s, wrote, ‘Baseball is our game, that’s the chief fact in connection with it, it’s America’s game, it has the snap, the go, the fling of the American atmosphere. It has also been said that whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball. The very values of our lives, families, and communities are symbolized in the sport. Baseball reminds of a time gone by. It takes us back to our childhood. A time when thirty seemed old and innocence was high. The terms used in baseball are a representation of those values, words such as a sacrifice bunt, courtesy runner, or an error.’

“A book entitled ‘Shoeless Joe Jackson’ by W.P. Kinsella was the inspiration for the Universal Studio’s 1989, film ‘Field of Dreams’ starring Kevin Costner. The film and its plot are well known. Co-starring with Costner was James Earl Jones. Jones played the character Terrance Mann, a retired beat writer of the 1960’s. In a scene, Mann describes why Americans are attracted to baseball and will come to the stadium Costner’s character has built in a cornfield in the middle of rural Iowa.

“ ‘People will come. They'll come to this stadium for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up in the parking lot, not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at this park as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, we'll say, it's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it, for it is money they have and peace they lack.
   “ ‘And they'll walk out to the bleachers, sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters.

“ ‘The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come. The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again but baseball has marked the time.

“ ’This field, this stadium; this game: it is a part of our past. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh, people will come. People will most definitely come.’”

In closing Smith said of the new Bing Crosby Stadium, “This field, this stadium is a glowing tribute to all who dare to dream. If we believe the impossible, the incredible can come true. Without the commitment and support of our citizens. Without the visionary planning of our leaders, without the cooperation and flexibility of agencies involved, this Field of Dreams would not exist.”

At one point Smith listed the anticipated users of the Shenandoah Valley’s new flagship Youth baseball facility, including, “the Warren County Wildcats, Post 53 American Legion, Babe Ruth, Little League and the Front Royal Cardinals—to name a few. In the spring of 2008, another team will call the Bing their home—The Skyline Hawks. The opportunity for our young student-athletes to play in such an outstanding facility is remarkable. As a representative of the Warren County Public School System, I applaud and extend our appreciation to the citizens of Warren County for supporting this project and the building of the two new high schools.”

- comments edited and introduced by Roger Bianchini

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Federal job restrictions could again impact district’s board seat

By ROGER BIANCHINI
Warren County Report

South River District Supervisor Scott Weinberg recently acknowledged that Hatch Act restrictions on partisan political activity by federal employees would not allow him to run for reelection in 2007.

However, Weinberg explained he is considering options to move into private sector employment because he considers service in local government more important than a place in the federal bureaucracy.

"It's way more important than the working in the federal government," Weinberg said of his role as South River District supervisor. "I haven't made any decision but if I decide to run again, I'll have to move into private sector employment." Weinberg said he has had such offers in the past.

Weinberg is a native Canadian, who became a U.S. citizen after attending Christendom College and marrying a U.S. citizen. He got his job in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administrative Division for Children and Families, after the 2003 South River District race to replace retiring and long-time Supervisor Stuart Rudacille. The Hatch Act allows federal employees like Weinberg, elected before their federal employment began, to serve out their elective terms in office. However, a run for reelection is prohibited.

Weinberg declined to specify his federal salary but joked, “it’s more than $10,000.” County board members make about $3,000 less than $10,000 annually.

According to the federal website, the Hatch Act impacts the political activity of executive branch employees, District of Columbia government, and some state and local employees who work in connection with federally funded programs.

State Department employee George Glavis abandoned a planned 2003 run for office due to the Hatch Act. After his withdrawal from local politics, the South River District resident’s wife, Linda, ran a write-in campaign that garnered 279 votes in the 2003 South River board election. Weinberg defeated former county airport commission chairman Charlie Brown by 12 votes, 557-545 in that race. Weinberg stressed fiscal conservatism, a hallmark of Rudacille’s tenure as South River supervisor, in his campaign.

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Within 30 seconds of entering the maze, I was lost. But luckily our guide knew enough to get us back out. The walls are incredibly clean mirrors in sort of diamond pattern where you can't really tell if it is a pathway or a mirror until you almost bump into it. This leads to an amusing sort of cautious gait normally seen only when a nightclub is closing.

The mirror maze occupies a building that formerly housed a general store. And according to Skyline Caverns manager Brooks Bolen, it has been a great success from the start.

"We opened the mirror maze on black friday, the day after Thanksgiving. And it is a real hit, especially for groups with kids. We don't know of any other mirror maze anywhere near this area."

The maze was designed by Adrian Fisher Mazes Ltd, an English firm that flies all over the world making memorable and unique mazes. It was built by a contractor out of Florida.

The Enchanted Dragon Mirror Maze is open year around.

Skyline Caverns also features a world renowned cave tour that is also open year around and a new room available for birthday parties and other gatherings. Seasonally, the attraction offers a miniature train ride.

For more information, call Skyline Caverns at (540) 635-4545.

Posted by Dan McDermott at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Developer’s attorney, Strasburg planning chair debate ‘conspiracy’ charges

By ROGER BIANCHINI
Warren County Report

Following a closed session on Aug. 1, the Warren County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0, with one absent, to drop a legal challenge of the Strasburg Town Council’s June 14 Island Farm, or Summit at Ox Box, residential rezoning.

Following the Warren County decision, Madison Development Corporation attorney Clifford L. Athey Jr. called the citizen and grass-root organization, Voice of Strasburg’s, ongoing legal challenge of the rezoning on flawed procedural grounds “a farce” and threatened legal action over an alleged conspiracy to sabotage the former council’s approval process.

However, contacted later that day about Athey’s remarks, Strasburg Planning Commission Chairman Leon Smith denied allegations of a conspiracy, which he said were initially made by sitting Strasburg Councilmen Steve W. Nicholson and Edith R. Wallace following their early departure from a recent council meeting.

“Mr. Athey has been threatening law suits through this whole process, ‘If we don’t get what we want we’ll sue,’ but there is not a bit of truth to these allegations and Mr. Athey better start checking his facts,” Smith said.

Athey confirmed the allegations of possible sabotage of the review process by opponents of the rezoning in and out of the Strasburg town government have been brought forth “by sitting town council members” who voted with the 5-3 majority to approve the rezoning in June. Those allegations include meetings at Strasburg Planning Commission Chairman Leon Smith’s house “in which incoming town council members illegally attended . . . and developed a strategy to try to overturn this particular decision in violation of Virginia law,” Athey said.

Smith said that while opponents of the rezoning had met at his house to discuss the approval process situation, neither he nor any councilmen, incumbent or incoming, attended. Smith said that meeting was hosted by his wife and had been attended by citizens, who opposed the rezoning.

But Tuesday morning, Athey indicated his client is prepared to pick up the legal apple thrown its way by sitting Strasburg Council supporters of the rezoning.

“If [the Strasburg Council] decides to take the unusual step of saying that somehow we’re going to use this spurious argument about notice to try to revoke [the rezoning] then they’re opening themselves up to a number of causative actions that will go to whether or not they had any involvement with the problems with the notice requirements when they were initially published. That would involve the town planning staff, the town manager, the incoming council members, the chairman of the planning commission,” Athey said of a potential suit by the developer. “In discovery we’ll find out who attended what meetings, who did what and to whom.”

Last month members of Voice of Strasburg urged the Warren board to follow through on its challenge of the rezoning due to a being left out of the pre-vote review process. While the Voice of Strasburg contingent said they believed notification omissions by the Strasburg government may have been inadvertent, they reflected a pattern of arrogance by the former council majority.

Warren County filed its challenge of the rezoning on July 13, one day before the deadline to do so. At that time Warren Board Chairman Richard Traczyk said the suit was filed to give Warren County staff time to review the proposed development.

Following the Warren board’s decision to withdraw the suit Tuesday, Traczyk said that in the wake of a county planning staff evaluation of the project it was concluded there would be “no appreciable adverse impacts on Warren County” from the planned 180-home residential development to be phased in at 18 homes per year over 10 years on 61 acres of the property’s 135 acres on the northside of the counties’ border.

Opponents have centered criticism of the project on potential environmental impacts to nearby Ox Bow and Cedar Creeks, two feeder streams to the already environmentally challenged Shenandoah River.

The Strasburg Planning Commission unanimously recommended denial of the Island Farm proposal, which has been on the drawing board since 2002. Athey said his client stood to lose about $10 million if the rezoning was reversed.

Three councilmen who voted with the majority that approved the rezoning on June 14 did not seek re-election in May and another was defeated. It is believed if the rezoning were revisited the new council majority would oppose approval.

At an Aug. 8 meeting of the Strasburg Town Council two citizens, Kim Bishop and Joyce Gary, lambasted Councilmen Nicholson and Wallace for their early departure from the July meeting to prevent a Closed Session revisiting of the Island Farm legal issues. Strasburg Mayor Timothy S. Crisman also read a prepared statement outlining what he believes are elected officials responsibilities of office and suggested the creation of a Vision Committee of public and private individuals to develop a statement of principal dealing with future growth issues.

One new councilman, Donald M. LeVine, said he had had what he termed “fruitful” conversations with both Nicholson and Wallace about the situation since the July incident and believed the council could move constructively forward. Neither Nicholson or Wallace commented on the situation.

Posted by Dan McDermott at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Soliman making $20,000-plus more than other department heads 

View image 

By ROGER BIANCHINI
Warren County Report

Front Royal Mayor James M. Eastham said on Aug. 8, that competition for qualified planners by private industry forced the town to go offer a higher than anticipated salary to the town’s new planning director.

Eastham explained that over the eight months the town attempted to fill the position on a permanent basis it found itself increasingly competing not with other municipalities, but rather with the private sector.

“Private industry has been hiring a lot of the planners out there and they generally compensate at a higher level. So we found ourselves in the position of having to deal with those kinds of numbers to have a realistic hope of filling that position with a qualified individual,” the mayor said.

With the town’s hunt for a new town manager narrowed to two finalists, time will soon tell if employment trends impact that hiring in a similar fashion.

While incoming Front Royal Planning Director Nimet Soliman was hired at a base salary of $100,000 per year, plus benefits, the position was advertised at considerably less.

The town’s website - www.ci.front-royal.va.us - listed the position at a salary range between $48,526.40 and $77,583.48, plus benefits. That advertised upper end salary would have put the new planning director, now called the Assistant Town Manager for Community Development, in the range of existing town department heads as shown in the accompanying chart.

Soliman’s salary averages out to about $48 per hour.

The town has been trying to stabilize key positions after a season of staffing turmoil. The town has had five town managers, including three interim, in two-plus years. Initially Town Engineer Steve Burke helped fill the void left when Town Planning Director Brevetta Jordan was fired near the end of 2005. That position was filled on an interim basis two months ago by William Shelley. Both the public works and finance departments have also turned over at the top in the past year.

Interim Town Manager Robert S. Noe Jr. explained during July 24 discussion of the reclassification and associated benefit package and job requirement adjustments of the planning chief’s position, that Soliman’s acceptance of the job, whatever it’s to be called, was contingent upon council’s approval of the terms of the newly-defined position.

Among the terms approved by resolution of council was a waiver of residency requirements within the community for “up to three years” (Soliman lives in Gainesville), that a severance package equal to one month’s salary for each year of service be given for involuntary separation not due to misconduct, and a town match of 50 percent of the employee’s annual contribution to the ICMA RA retirement fund, up to a total of $2,500.

Councilman Eugene Tewalt, a former town public works director, alone opposed approval of the resolution, saying he did not believe the town needed to make concessions as presented to fill positions. However, the need to fill a crucial hole at a time planning and rezoning have become volatile and legally contentious matters for the town held sway with the council majority.

Meet Nimet Soliman

Soliman will assume her position with the town on Sept. 15. She is a 1969 graduate in Engineering from the University of Cairo, and comes to Front Royal from Prince William County, where she has been employed for 27 years. She has served as Assistant Planning Director there since 1992 and was Deputy Director for Land Development for three years prior to that.

Among the projects Soliman was involved in as Prince Williams’ assistant planning director were the creation of a Rural Crescent Area within the county’s 1996 Comprehensive Plan, establishment of fiscal methods for calculating suggested proffers from developers on rezoning proposals, and 25-year growth projections. Soliman is also Prince Williams’ staff liaison to the Washington Metropolitan Council of Governments and was responsible for developing codes to comply with newly applied Chesapeake Bay watershed regulations.

Posted by Dan McDermott at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Warren County Junior High School - Photo by Roger Bianchini - Courtesy of Reginald Cassagnol / CassAviation - Copyright 2006 Warren County Report

WCHS and WCJHS begin countdowns to new facilities

By ROGER BIANCHINI
Warren County Report

School years come and school years go, but in Warren County this is a landmark season of, if not change, change on the horizon.

Those pending changes are more readily apparent at Warren County Junior High School, where students will be housed in some newly constructed wings, as well as trailers while the school’s seven-year-old, original wings are refurbished for reopening in the 2007-08 school year as the new Warren County High School.

However, the undercurrent of change also pulls hard at students walking the hallways of 66-year-old Warren County High School. For this is that historic community landmark’s final season as what it has been for six and a half decades, the county’s lone public high school. While details and logistics are still being ironed out in the halls of county government, the building occupying the high ground above Luray Avenue is facing future use as a public school, just on a different level as one of two planned renovated middle schools.

For administrators, teachers and the students these are exciting, busy and even worrisome times. WCJHS Principal Andrew Keller addressed the challenges and anticipation of the coming year at his school. One immediate consequence is the temporary return to a post-Labor Day opening to allow more unimpeded summer construction time at WCJHS.

WCJHS evolves

“I think it’s difficult to get the pulse of eighth and ninth grade kids on many levels, and their only association with change last year was that some of their windows were boarded up. But I think the kids on the whole are probably very excited about the fact they’re going to have brand new everything next year. It’s going to be inconvenient this year but I think everybody’s going to accept that inconvenience as a hurdle toward progress.

“It’s going to be a challenge for us this year because we have about 20 trailers around here, some of which are going to be a pretty good distance from our gym. So, we’re going to really have to play around with the time it takes to get from one class to another and routing people through areas to make sure that they can get there not only on time but without having to wear a hard hat. So that’s going to be tough but I think it’s something we certainly can do successfully. Eighth and ninth grade kids are pretty resilient and they will respond to almost anything, really.” Keller said he saw firsthand evidence of that resiliency as an assistant principal at the school seven years ago.

“When we first opened this building up in 1999, we did not have lockers or a gym the first half of the first semester. And teachers and students both responded to that and we really did not have any problems with it. It was inconvenient but we knew it was coming.

“And to be honest, I’m not too concerned about what we’ll face this year. These trailers are pretty nice, it’s not like we’re putting our students in cattle cars, they are good classroom trailers and they’ll have all the things that would have been in their traditional classrooms this year.”

But beyond the transitional use of trailers to house students, portions of the newly constructed wings and facilities, including classrooms, a gym and refurbished cafeteria, will be open for use as other existing areas are under construction. So, at WCJHS it is much more immediately a year of transition, change and a bit more physical turmoil than is being felt at the high school.

Business as usual?

But at both schools to a great extent it must be  business as usual, WCHS Principal Melinda Calhoun points out.

“As excited as we are about the prospect of new facilities, we’ll be in the middle of a school year at a high school, with all the testing requirements, making sure the kids are ready for graduation. That’s all you really have time to focus on and this is going to be an intense year and we’ll have the same requirements on us as we have for the past six years of making those [state and federal] test scores and making sure our kids are getting what they need to get out into the world and go on to higher education or go on to jobs,” Calhoun said.

“We talk all the time about how we’re going to think we’ve died and gone to heaven to have new facilities,” Calhoun says of her school staff’s anticipation of the 2007-08 school year. “How much of that is in the sight of the students, I’m not real sure because students, at their point in life, are not really projecting themselves into the future as much as we older people tend to do. I think as this year progresses I’ll be able to better answer the question about how the students are viewing the changes that are coming,” Calhoun said in her office in late July.

But for one class at the high school there will be no preparation for change other than that faced annually by high school seniors everywhere – graduation.

“We certainly hope to instill the perspective that it is an honor to be the last high school class to graduate out of this building, as it will be an honor to be the first graduating class out of the new buildings,” Calhoun said of her school’s seniors.

One senior, Melissa Fisher, expressed the mixed emotions many seniors may be experiencing about the coming year. “I would have liked to have been in a nice, new comfortable school but not split up from m