As a young adult living in Richmond, I well remember the newspapers being full of the horrifying stories of the Lee Scott murder case. It put Roanoke on the map for several weeks in the summer of 1949, four years before my husband and I moved here to work for the daily afternoon paper.
Recently I renewed my acquaintance with the event by reading of it in “Hidden History of Roanoke” published last year by Baptist minister/ local historian Nelson Harris. It’s one of 15 remarkable tales of the Star City–there’s also one on how the famous Mill Mountain symbol came to be–that Harris collected and which fills in the gaps that don’t quite fit into formal histories, but are essential to understanding our community.
Now the long-time pastor of Virginia Heights Baptist Church, Harris is a former mayor of the city and served on the City Council. I first got to know him about 20 years ago when he became one of the youngest presidents of the now-defunct Roanoke Valley Ministers Conference. A native of Roanoke, he’s had many distinctions since.
In his book Harris recalls the murder of a high school student, Dana Marie Weaver, on a Sunday afternoon in a local church which horrified the community. A 16-year-old friend Lee Scott, the kind of teenager parents could be proud of, was shortly thereafter tried for her murder and, being found guilty, was sentenced to 99 years in prison because his strangling of the girl was judged to be an act done in the heat of passion and not premeditated.
Following up on Scott, Harris discovered that he did not serve his 99 years but was paroled after 20, moved west, married and became a father. He died in his 60s.
The people involved in Roanoke government and the trial were still active when Charlie and I arrived, and the locale Harris describes became very familiar to us.
I was also intrigued by the account of the great “Spanish Flu” epidemic of 1918, of which my mother had told me, and which comes to mind as people worry about such possibilities as the deadly ebola virus spreading around the world. Could it ever happen again? Medical science tells us not likely. Other things have taken its place.
And then there’s the sad story of “The Children of the Mill.” On coming to Roanoke, we rented an apartment not far from the Norwich industrial bottom in the West End where people from the early days of the city lived in abject poverty. It was a blighted neighborhood long after the time about which Harris wrote, but I had not realized that children as young as seven toiled six days a week in a twine mill for a few dollars to help support their families.
Harris makes no bones about laying blame on the industrial pioneers of the city who for decades blocked legislation to outlaw child labor in the dangerous factories.
There’s also the interesting, though sad, story of Mark Chapman, who as a young boy lived in a rented South Roanoke house and was befriended by folk at the adjacent First Presbyterian Church. His dysfunctional family left its legacy, and years later the young man, now mentally ill, took out his lifetime of bitterness on Beatle John Lennon in New York. He shot the singer dead and is still serving a term in prison.
Harris recently made news as he led his congregation in Grandin Village into re-naming the church he serves Heights Community Church to give it a more contemporary image for young adults.
In his little book, which contains a dozen other fascinating tales carefully researched through the newspapers of the time and the public library, Harris has made the past relevant.
– Frances Stebbins
