Sports |Page 1B |Bears beat Richlands in another thriller. Homespun |Page 11| Rue Gembach honored. T U E S D AY
the
September 8, 2015 Vol. 104 • No. 72 16 Pages
A Progressive Newspaper Serving Our Mountain Area Since 1911
PROGRESS
NORTON, VA 24273 USPS 120-120 $1.00
Empty spaces Downtown businesses concerned JEFF LESTER NEWS EDITOR
A packed house u The crowd was standing room only Friday night with nearly 6,000 spectators in Central High’s new Warriors Stadium, as Central defeated Ridgeview High 21-0 on Tommy McAmis Field. The $2.5 million stadium includes an 8-lane track and a field house. It will also be home for Central’s track and soccer programs. r RODDY ADDINGTON PHOTOS
Retired judge authors book of poetry JENAY TATE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER When he retired from the bench 10 years ago, Judge J. Robert Stump planned to write a book about his experiences. A trial and chief circuit court judge in Wise County for 28 years and a litigator, arbitrator and mediator for five decades, “I’ve got a thousand stories out there,” Stump reflected Sunday afternoon. “I’ve divorced 15,000 couples. That’s 30,000 people. If you don’t think that is the good, the bad and the ugly. There’s nothing I haven’t heard.” Stump chuckles but turns serious as he reflects on the trials of murders and killings of every sort, on cases of malpractice, the errors and accidents that left people killed, maimed and paralyzed. “It wasn’t a pretty sight,” he said. But he loved the profession, he said, every day a new experience and
Stump takes only partial credit for the book. ‘I had Him, my partner, looking over my shoulder. I believe that . . . We wrote this.’
SENSE OF URGENCY In separate interviews last week, Caruso and Jones laid out their concerns. Caruso said that while city staff works very hard, he wants to see members of council and appointees to Norton Industrial Development Authority and the city’s tourism board become much more active in helping to generate interest in downtown business growth. NIDA includes a lot of good people with knowledge of the business community, but that board only meets for about one hour per month, he noted. As he understands it, Caruso said, the authority — whose members include his mother, Barbara Caruso — spends much of each meeting acting on the details of maintaining and operating the business-housing properties it owns, and acting on ideas or initiatives that Ramey brings to the board. The tourism board — whose members include Jones and Carol Caruso — has a lot of good ideas and has developed a set of objectives for the city, he said. But both boards could spend more time working to come up with ideas and strategies for implementation, Caruso believes. Also, council and the two boards should hold some joint meetings to plot strategy and
something new learned. “And every day, I practiced law,” the judge continued, speaking of his love for trying cases, the excitement, the drama, the emotion that filled a courtroom. Seriously, Stump stressed, he really wanted to write a book about it. He really did. But Stump also enjoys a round of golf and when he first retired, he’d play five and six days a week, he said, calculating “that’s 250 times a year.” Well, he’d go home intending work on the book “but I was too tired to write it,”
STUMP, PAGE 3
u Judge J. Robert Stump
INSIDE: S U B S C R I B E R I N F O R M AT I O N H E R E
r Author nominated for state award. r Comments
DOWNTOWM, PAGE 3
sought on R.J. ROSE PHOTO
trout plan. r Arts as community
Rally revelry
development. r Take survey on region’s health.
NORTON — Councilman Mark Caruso looks at downtown and sees a crisis. During council’s meeting last week, Caruso urged fellow members and others in city government to take note of 25 empty business properties along Park Avenue, with more vacancies in the shopping center anchored by Magic Mart and in the Norton Commons center anchored by Walmart. Caruso, who owns Pathfinders Outdoor Adventures with wife Carol Caruso, was joined in expressing alarm at the downtown business decline by Chris Jones of Vic’s Decorating. Mayor William Mays and City Manager Fred Ramey agree that the decline of downtown commerce is a tough challenge, but they say behind-the-scenes activity by city leaders and staff to improve Norton’s economy is never-ending. Also, Mays and Ramey note that the city’s challenges are far from unique — they reflect much larger damage inflicted on the national economy by a devastating recession and on the local economy by the loss of coal industry jobs and revenue.
u Coeburn Fire Department’s Brian Rose, left, and Chief Cliff Hawkins man the booth for the annual Guest River Rally duck race. See more photos from the Rally, which took over downtown during the weekend and concluded Monday, on Page 2.
‘If I had the right answer, believe me, I would put it out there. You have to have people who are willing to invest.’ Mayor William Mays