Almost a quarter-century ago on a breezy hilltop in northeast Roanoke two questions were posed:
Whatâs in the box?
Who wants to open it to find out?
The questions were part of an archaeological examination that accompanied the moving of a historic graveyard in order to make way for a construction project. The 1997 exhuming and re-interment of the Oliver family cemetery from the shadow of Read Mountain to Mountain View Cemetery in Vinton was recapitulated here earlier.
Not presented then were details of the event that arrived subsequently by telephone call. Now available is testimony from a participant who was the first to answer both of the questions presented at the start of the current discussion.
By Ray Cox
Special to The Roanoke Times
Humble self-reflection is said to be in decline, so it is with all humility we begin todayâs dispatch with a confession.
Sin seems to have occurred in this space.
In journalism, the sort of malfeasance the following admission addresses hovers under a damning rubric called âburying the lead.â
Sweeping the jargon into a dustbin, what that means is to begin a report with information of secondary importance and thus unforgivably postpone delivery of more essential news.
Before we finally allow late Roanoke County horseman and promoter Yelverton Neal Oliver to rest in peace after a series of semi-biographical columns, it must be conceded that he has not been afforded the respect he is due.
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