Mount Pleasant in eastern Roanoke County is quite the peaceful community place nowadays – but it wasn’t always that way. More than 20 years ago there was a rash of burglaries that prompted the formation of a Neighborhood Watch organization by then-deputy-sheriff Gerald Holt (now Roanoke County sheriff) and local citizens.
The organization has been a constant fixture since then and celebrated its 24th annual National Night Out event August 4 on Ellington Street in Mt. Pleasant. The event, one of several National Night Out events held across the valley, attracted a wide range of attendees, including hunting safety organizations, local politicians and Civil War re-enactors. National Night Out events across the country are community gatherings, designed to demonstrate that criminals and crime will not rule the day (or night).
It was 1985 when people in Mount Pleasant started noticing a series of break-ins in sheds and residences in the neighborhood. As Holt put it last Tuesday, “people would go looking for their lawnmowers and find them gone.” He got together with local residents Marie Ham and Joyce Heath at community meetings and set about training local residents in how to note and report suspicious activity.
Within a few weeks, residents had recorded the burglar’s license plate and he was arrested. Holt says that Mt. Pleasant is now, “one of the most successful communities in solving their crime problems [regarding] intruders coming into their community,” and he’s “been very proud of these people and what they’ve done.”
Marie Ham and her husband, Jeff, have been hosting the National Night Out (NNO) event since the Neighborhood Watch’s inception with Marie Ham, describing the event as a “going away party for crime and drugs.”
Rather than a drab informational meeting, the event has a laid-back community festival feel, with streets closed off to allow safe passage between information booths and seating areas. Attendees brought lawn chairs and sat in the Hams’ front yard listening to old time music and a number of speakers.
Among those speakers was Neighborhood Watch member Rod Carter, who asked others to “have an active role in keeping [their] community safe” and spoke on the subject of personal defense, gun safety and firearms.
Ralph Gamble, a hunting educator, spoke about classes on hunting safety and Hunters for the Hungry, a program where hunters harvest and donate deer to processors, who then distribute the meat to local food banks.
Local politicians also took the stage. Republican Delegate candidate Bill Cleaveland (17th House District), who was attending the NNO event for the first time and had an information table set up, said what attracted him to the event was the spotlighting of “self-protection”, something “near and dear to my heart.” In a brief speech to attendees, Cleaveland said the NNO event was critical because people were in “charge of taking individual responsibility.” Local school board candidate Jason Peters (Vinton District) also spoke.
Local pickers Bluegrass Inspirations played standards to an appreciative crowd and after all of the speakers were finished, members of the 51st Company D Civil War re-enactors group staged a small-scale battle on the hill between Ellington St. and Mt. Pleasant Elementary School, as they have done in recent years.
The annual event has become increasingly popular, with an estimated 150 people present this year including Roanoke County Police Chief Ray Lavender, County Supervisor Mike Altizer and members of the Mount Pleasant Fire Department and Rescue Squad.
By Aaron Layman [email protected]