The Roanoker - September / October 2018 - 87

T H E S H E R M A N AT O R

COMMUNITY CARE (LEFT)
Mayor Lea is seen around town
during community and sporting
events.
THE FIRST LADY (BELOW)
Mayor Lea and the First Lady
of Roanoke, Clara.

He said, 'Let's do it together. We
can help each other because we come
from different communities,'" Lea
said. "I said OK."
In 2004, city politics had run aground on Victory
Stadium, an iconic but aging stadium on the banks of
the Roanoke River. Lea had used it for the Western
Virginia Education Classic, an annual football game
played between two black college teams. He and
Wishneff ran on a platform of preserving the stadium.
They won election to council, but the stadium battle
continued on. Even after a 2006 election sweep by the
independent For the City ticket doomed the stadium,
hard feelings lingered.
What did Lea learn from the Victory Stadium fight?
"You can't let it get too deep," Lea said. "You have to
learn to accept that sometimes you may fail. You have
to get back up and go forward. From failure, you can
come back stronger. The thing I said back then was that
I wanted the stadium, but once it did not materialize
and we lost, let's do the best that we can for the kids
we've got in schools. Don't lose sight of why you're
doing what you're doing."
Price remembers that when she was president of
the Roanoke Education Association, Lea advised her
"that there are times when one steps out, that you have
to have a thick skin, don't take things personally and
remember that as a public servant, you are representing
others."

COURTESY OF SHERMAN LEA

TheRoanoker.com

With Lea coming up for re-election in 2008, he
broke from Wishneff. That year Lea was elected vicemayor as the top voter-getter in the council election,
while Wishneff finished fourth, short of re-election. The
2008 election marked a major step from the polarized
politics of the Victory Stadium era toward a calmer,
more stable dynamic, with a consistent group serving
from 2010 until 2016. When Bowers announced his
retirement in 2016, Lea and Trinkle both ran to replace
him, leading to the showdown at the Berglund Center.
Lea's election as Roanoke's second black mayor came
just as Roanoke became a hot destination for talented
young people who love the outdoors. He's continued his
efforts to use sports as a tool to bring people together,
both with a high-profile basketball event and a summer
youth basketball league using police officers as coaches.
"As mayor, I'm proud of where we are in terms of
economic development," Lea said. "I still feel we can
do more with poverty. There are certain aspects of the
community that do not feel the resurgence we're having.
I look out and feel good about what we're doing, but I
also want to make sure that I'm doing the best that I
can to give people an opportunity."
The mayor of Roanoke does not carry the strength
that many people associate with the title. Local
governments in Virginia are tightly restricted by the
state in what they can do. And in Roanoke, the city
manager handles the day-to-day operation of the city,
relegating the mayor to a largely symbolic role. And
yet, effective individuals can transcend the technical
limitations of the office to become true community
leaders who can motivate and inspire citizens.
"Titles are important," Dykstra said. "At the end
of the day, Mayor Lea is one of seven votes. But he's
also a central point of contact. People want all of city
council to take action on something, but they will go
to the mayor. He is representative of the council body
as a whole."
When you walk into Noel C. Taylor Municipal
Building and gaze at the portrait of Roanoke's first
black mayor in the lobby, you don't think about what
he couldn't do because of the restrictions of the office.
Instead, you think about what Taylor accomplished, and
how his council transformed Roanoke in the '70s and
'80s in a way that made possible its current resurgence.
Lea is a little more than two years into his first
term as mayor, and his fourth term on city council.
During that time he's survived vicious factional feuds
and played a role in the city's emergence in the 21st
century as a hip, revitalized mountain town. The ending
of his political story-and that of Roanoke under the
Lea mayorship-remains unwritten. I
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

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The Roanoker - September / October 2018

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