Local Government Attorneys of Virginia fall meeting in Roanoke

This year, the fall LGA meeting is in Roanoke.

I'm not sure, but I think the fall meeting was also there in 2001, not long after 9/11, and that was one of the best conferences I ever attended. There was a party at the house of the then-mayor, up on Mill Mountain, with a strange, fog-shrouded view of the lights of Roanoke. There was a Civil War lecture from that other Virginia Tech civil war guru, contrasting how Jefferson Davis and John C. Breckinridge dealt with the closing days and immediate aftermath of the Civil War. There was a fair-sized delegation from far Southwest Virginia, including Dean Foster, Karen Mullins, and Nancy Dickenson. And, the law lectures were good as well.

The mayor of Roanoke at that time, a fellow named Smith, was apparently a bit of a Civil War buff, and so he had a painting above the fireplace of a Civil War general from Virginia with a white beard, and the general in the painting looked quite like this Roanoke lawyer, who was also in attendance at the meeting.