They don’t make the headlines. But each of these three has changed the Roanoke landscape – and countless lives – in wonderful, positive ways.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how good people can be.
In this first column celebrating individuals who have made the valley a better place to live, let’s consider the contributions of three individuals who have enhanced our world, opened our minds and hearts and given us a myriad of new possibilities. One in law, another in art, a third in writing. Most admirably, they share a common quality: None is a publicity seeker. No wonder you may not have met them before.
Judge Philip Trompeter
Juvenile judge/child advocate Philip Trompeter
For 24 years, Trompeter has presided over the most intense, high-drama area of the court system: juvenile and domestic relations, where kids go on trial for everything from traffic violations to murder, and adults are thrust into the battlefield of child abuse and custody rights. Working 50 to 60 hours a week, the Roanoke native has made it his mission to improve the lives of children caught in sometimes horrific circumstances. Among his most important contributions: founding Families in Touch, a long-running support group (now part of a national affiliation) for families with mentally ill members; helping to launch the Roanoke Valley CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) Program which trains volunteers in child abuse and neglect law for at-risk youngsters and gives the court eyes, ears and dedicated individuals who make recommendations for the child’s care; a program for children exposed to adult domestic violence, plus efforts to focus community attention on providing juveniles with permanent homes, rather than keeping their futures uncertain. Married with two children, Trompeter, though surrounded by emotionally draining cases of human misery, stays enthusiastic through exercise, rest and the knowledge that he’s part of a system that makes a positive difference.
Barbara Rogers Dickinson
Artist/writer Barbara Dickinson
An art history graduate of Wellesley College and first paid director of the Roanoke Fine Arts Center, Dickinson took over the fledgling center in 1958 and in a master stroke, launched the Sidewalk Art Show for local talent the following year, giving valley artists the opportunity to showcase their works in an easy-to-reach venue. Retiring to give birth to her first child in 1960, she began entering her own paintings soon after, watching her brainchild expand to take in hundreds of gifted regional participants. A lifelong writer, her first novel, “A Rebellious House,” was published in 1997; she has since published two other novels, as well as numbers of book reviews and columns. The mother of five and grandmother of 15, she is widowed and living in Roanoke.
Richard H. W. Dillard
Author/professor Richard Dillard
In 1964, Dillard was a young English instructor at a small women’s college that had hooked into a new idea: attracting and training writing talent on a big scale. Over a 40-year span – 31 of which he acted as director – no one did more than Dillard to turn the raw talent of Hollins University’s creative writing program into national stars, or to catapult the obscure Virginia program into one of America’s Top 20 programs. In those four decades, Dillard mentored approximately 800 aspiring writers from around the world, including such Pulitzer winners and stellar authors as Annie Dillard, Lee Smith, Madison Smartt-Bell, Jill McCorckle, Henry Taylor, Natalie Trethewey and Kiran Desai, winner of the British Commonwealth’s Man Booker prize. For his contribution to other writers, Dillard was awarded the 2007 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP)/George Garrett Award. The author of 13 volumes of fiction, poetry, essays, and literary translations, he continues to conduct classes at Hollins.
