Monday was a bittersweet day for Buchanan County Department of Social Services Director Harold McClanahan as he bid farewell to the job and the people he considers “family,” hanging up a 35-year career and heading toward retirement.
  And while his last day is technically not until Friday, a luncheon in his honor was held Monday and saw many of the people he has worked with through the years -- including various members of the administrative and advisory boards he has served under -- attend to wish him well.
  “I’ve forged a lot of friendships here and I consider the people that I work with as family,” McClanahan says. “. . . They’re just part of your family.”
  McClanahan, the son of Maurene McClanahan, of Bristol, Va., and the late Ervin McClanahan, is a 1966 graduate of Grundy High School. He attended Virginia Tech and later completed his bachelor’s degree in public administration at Upper Iowa University.
  When he was hired to work for the Buchanan agency in March 1971, he was the third of three eligibility workers hired. Those three workers divided up the county and its then 35,000-resident population geographically and working with three social workers, delivered the various programs offered by the state agency.
  Now, he says, there are 50 plus employees in the department, including 18 eligibility workers and 18 social workers.
  On his desk now is the calculator he has used for most of his 35 years with the agency, although the walls are already stripped bare of the photos and other mementos and certificates he had in place. A shelf sits empty on the wall.
  But despite the fact that those remembrances are gone, packed away in boxes as he prepares to leave the agency and his lifelong career with it, McClanahan remembers well his early days with the department.
  When he started his career, his office was on Main Street in the Royal City area. A big picture window looked out on the street and the Dixie Drive-In across the street. Passers -by on the sidewalk could look through the window and see McClanahan at his desk at work.
  “I saw the world and the everybody could see me,” McClanahan quips.
  The first eight years of his career were spent in that building and he also remembers well the flood of 1977 -- not only for the impact it had on the community and the clientele his agency served, but also for the hardships it created for the agency which lost many of its records stored in the basement to the raging waters.
  “A lot of our records were destroyed,” McClanahan says, adding that luckily, the new Food Stamp program had just recently moved from the basement to the ground floor level at the time the flood occurred.

   A three-month extension to complete the county reassessment was granted last Monday during a continued meeting of the Buchanan County Board of Supervisors.
    Board members agreed unanimously to grant the extension requested by Assessor Jay Rife, who noted the contract he signed with the board contains language in it allowing for an extension.
    Rife noted he anticipated finishing by August 31, 2006 and had told his subcontractors he expected all values to be on the books by that date. He asked for an extension however to September 30, 2006.
   "The extra time is just in case the unexpected happens," Rife said.
   The motion to grant the extension was made by Hurricane Supervisor William P. Harris and was seconded by Garden Supervisor Buddy Fuller. The vote was unanimous.

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    Two of the defendants named in the Operation Big Coon Dog case have been transferred from federal prison to community corrections management centers in the federal system, also known as halfway houses.
  Rodney Blake Lee and Ricky Allen Adkins have both been released to the Raleigh CCM in Butner, N.C.
  Inmates assigned to community corrections centers are sometimes allowed home confinement  for the last six months, or 10 percent, of their sentence, whichever is less, according to a federal bureau of prisons website.
  Inmates in the program remain in federal custody and are monitored 24 hours per day. Sign-out procedures allow them to leave for approved activities, including work.
  Lee and Adkins both have a  federal custody release date of July 5, 2006, according to the  federal bureau of prisons website.

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