Event planned for Tinbridge Hill’s Yoder Center

If you’re going

The Run for the Roses foot race to benefit the Yoder Recreation Center will begin at 3 p.m. on May 3, and will start and end at the Old City Cemetery.

As we’ve all been told a thousand times, it takes a village to raise a child. But as Aubrey “Chub” Barbour is quick to add, it doesn’t hurt to have a community center, either.

Barbour was raised in the Tinbridge Hill neighborhood of Lynchburg, located in the oft-neglected part of downtown between Fifth Street and the James River. If Lynchburg is the City of Seven Hills, Tinbridge would have to be considered a foothill — it didn’t make the cut for the top seven.

But Tinbridge Hill has spirit, if not grand historic houses. A few years ago, Barbour grabbed a bullhorn and led a small army of neighborhood kids through the streets near the Yoder Recreation Center, shouting defiance at the local drug dealers. The last thing you want, if you happen to be in that line of work, is a lot of attention, so many of the dealers left. The streets are safer now.

The problem at the moment is more mundane — a lack of facilities at the Yoder Center.

“We really don’t have much,” said Barbour, the center director and the unofficial “mayor” of Tinbridge Hill. “We’ve got one big open room and a kitchen, but we don’t have a place for arts and crafts or a lot of other things that most other centers in the city have.”

Fortunately, Tinbridge Hill’s days of being forgotten are over. Thanks to a diverse collage of helping groups including St. John’s Episcopal Church, several other downtown churches, the Riverside Runners, the Legacy Museum, the Old City Cemetery and the Lynchburg Police Department (apologies in advance if I’ve skipped over anyone), a multi-faceted event is scheduled for this weekend to help give the Yoder Center an infusion of cash.

“The city can’t do it any more,” Barbour said, “because times are hard.”

Thus, the first Run for the Roses 5K footrace, with each $15 entry fee going go to the Yoder Center. A kids’ race ($10 entry) will be part of the event, There will also be a spaghetti dinner at the center on Saturday night, and a number of peripheral activities coinciding with the race on Sunday.

Saturday morning at Dunbar Middle School, some 30 kids showed up to attend a class in distance running, courtesy of the LPD. Instead of running from the police, they were running with them.

“It was really neat to see,” said Jane White of St. John’s and the Tinbridge Hill Neighborhood Association and about a dozen other civic identities. “The older kids were encouraging the younger ones, and they all seemed to be having a good time.”

The “Run for the Roses” actually has a double meaning, because the Old City Cemetery employees are hoping their famous roses are in full bloom by Sunday.

“It’s touch and go,” said White. “It’s been a little cool.”

The main race will start at the Old City Cemetery and finish on Hollins Mill Road. The police department is donating a lot of manpower to police the route, making sure the scariest hazard the runners might face are some cobblestones in a few sections of the route.

“We need so many officers for traffic control,” White explained, “because the route goes through so many intersections. There wasn’t any way around it.”

Chub Barbour won’t be running, but they will hand him a gun — a blank pistol, to use as the official starter.

“What I’m really looking forward to,” he said, “is the spaghetti supper.”