By Debbie Adams
The 2024 Vinton Dogwood Festival is scheduled for April 26 and 27. Over the next several
weeks, The Vinton Messenger will be looking back on past Dogwood Queens leading up to this
year’s festival and the crowning of a new queen. Miss Vinton Dogwood Festival 1982, Martha
Newton, is featured this week.
Spencer): Martha Newton was crowned Vinton Dogwood Queen in 1981. (photos courtesy of Martha Newton Spencer)
The Dogwood Festival originated in 1955 through the joint efforts of businessman Ott Goode,
School Superintendent Dr. Herman L. Horn, and the William Byrd High School Band Boosters.
The boosters wanted to establish a festival close to home so their children wouldn’t have to
travel so far to participate in other competitions.
Vinton was known as one of the best “band towns” of the time and the only band in the state
west of Lynchburg to have uniforms. Unfortunately, the uniforms of the 50 members were not in
good condition, so Goode, Horn, and the Band Boosters came up with the idea of holding a band
festival to raise funds to “dress up the band” with new ones. They added “Dogwood” to the name
of the event for the many flowering dogwoods in the area.
Some 69 years later, the festival remains one of the town’s most treasured traditions.
The inaugural Dogwood Festival included a parade with a grand marshal– a celebrity, a
dignitary, or local talent– numerous marching bands, floats, and the Dogwood Queen and Court.
It was estimated that 10,000 spectators lined the streets of Vinton to watch that first parade.
In the early years of the festival, each participating band was asked to select a princess. The
princesses were judged by a panel prior to the parade with one-on-one chats at the Vinton War
Memorial, and then a queen was selected and crowned after the Dogwood Parade.
The first Dogwood Queen was Janet Bowman from Jefferson High School.
According to an article in The Vinton Messenger, “Beauty alone is not the factor on which a
queen is chosen. At the Dogwood Court luncheon at the War Memorial, each princess is
observed to see how much aplomb she exhibits at a public gathering. The poise she shows in the
parade and throughout all the festivities is also taken into consideration. Personality is another
factor. Is the ‘Miss’ charming? Does she have anything to say? The judges are looking for a
typical, wholesome genuine girl who typifies the American high school girl. All the princesses
fall into this category, but there is always one who has just a soupcon more.”
When Martha Newton (now Spencer) was crowned the Vinton Dogwood Queen in 1981, she
was chosen to represent her school by students in the band and orchestra at James Madison
Junior High School in Roanoke that she attended.
The Vinton Messenger 1981 Dogwood edition noted that her loves were music and golf. She was
a cheerleader, an SCA member, and a member of the Modern Foreign Language Club. She
played violin in the church orchestra and was a member of the Roanoke Youth Symphony.
She was 15 years old and a freshman when she was crowned. She remembers that on the day of
the 26th Dogwood Festival the weather was sunny and warm—“a beautiful day.”
Having never been in a parade, she remembers “vividly the large crowds of people lining the
parade route.” She rode in a convertible with members of her family—as a princess, before she
was crowned queen for 1982.
The night before she had been introduced on stage at the traditional Lions Club minstrel show at
William Byrd High School.
On Dogwood Festival Day she remembers being interviewed by the
judges, including Vicki Damico from WDBJ7. (Spencer later taught Damico’s daughter in
Roanoke City.) She remembers one question from the interviews about the “racial make-up of
schools,” which she says she had never thought about before, “having been raised in a Christian
home, where my parents modeled dignity and respect for everyone.”
The other judges that year were Roanoke County Commissioner of the Revenue Wayne
Compton and Ted Rogers from WFIR Radio.
After the luncheon, hosted by Mayor Charles R. Hill, came the parade and then, late in the
afternoon, the presentation of the band and float competition awards and the crowning of the
queen.
“I was stunned when I was chosen as Dogwood Queen,” Spencer says. “I couldn’t believe it. I
never expected to be crowned. My mom saw it as a big honor. It was a special time in our lives
that we shared.”
Her parents were Dr. Richard Newton, a cardiologist who practiced in the Roanoke Valley for
about 60 years, and Jane Newton, a “stay-at-home mom” who raised four children, volunteered
with many organizations, and “kept the books” for her husband’s practice.
The grand marshals for the 1981 parade were Millie Taggart from the CBS daytime show
“Search for Tomorrow” and Bill Royer, a former hostage recently released from Iran. Mayor
Charles Hill declared it “Freedom Day” in Vinton in honor of the hostages freed and the eight
soldiers who lost their lives attempting to rescue the American hostages held by Iran. Dozens of
dogwood trees were planted in their honor and memory.
While Spencer was crowned in 1981, she was the reigning Dogwood Queen presiding over the
festival in 1982, when she was 16 and a sophomore at Patrick Henry High School. Of that day,
she mainly recollects the luncheon, a second parade, this time riding on a float past 25,000
spectators.
She says that while it has always been an honor to look back on her days as Dogwood Queen,
she didn’t really appreciate the significance at the time.
“It’s a lovely tradition that I appreciate more as I get older– and neat to look back on,” she says.
Spencer graduated from Patrick Henry in 1984 and attended the College of William and Mary,
majoring in elementary education. She then earned her master’s degree, also in elementary
education, from UVA. She taught for one year in Hanover County and then returned home to the
Roanoke area where she has been teaching for 30 years in public, private, and virtual classrooms.
Her husband, Kevin, is a teacher as well, in Roanoke City. They have two sons, Edward, a
businessman, and John, a youth pastor.
The Spencers lived in Roanoke City for 27 years but have now moved to Vinton.
In 1983, the method for selecting the Dogwood Queen changed. According to Susan Teass, who
has been Dogwood Queen’s Court Coordinator for many years, “A group of Vinton's leaders
wanted our young ladies to be a part of the official Miss Virginia competition, held in Roanoke
each year.”
“Ruth Thomas, Nita Echols, William Cundiff, and several others furnished the operating funds,
created the corporation, and joined the Miss Virginia organization, an affiliate of the Miss
America organization, with all of its rules and procedures. Our franchise was an “open pageant,”
meaning that those who competed were allowed to come from any city or town in the state. Also,
the contestant could be attending any college or university in the state. This led to great diversity
and opportunity for friendships in our group of contestants.
“As their organization grew, the Miss America Pageant became encumbered in lots of fees and
layers of rules, documents to be certified, papers to be notarized, lawyer's fees, etc.,” Teass
explained. “Many of the tiny pageants, ours being one of them, could no longer afford the
personnel or funding required, and town support dwindled to the point that in our final year, our
director had spent over $5,000 in personal funds to keep it going.”
The procedure for selecting a Vinton Dogwood Queen changed once again at that point, and the
queen and her court were thereafter selected from senior girls at William Byrd High School,
nominated by the faculty and chosen by the panel of judges. It remains the same today.
