William Daniel Staples (1907–?) was a Virginia lawyer, editor, and public-relations director. After graduating from Princeton and the University of Virginia School of Law, he practiced in Roanoke, served with the War Production Board, and undertook World War II military-government and civilian-supply assignments. He later directed public relations for West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company and married Mary Elizabeth Macdowell.
Whitwell Wentworth Coxe, born in Roanoke in 1884, was a Virginia lawyer and public official who became general solicitor for the Norfolk and Western Railway. A University of Virginia graduate, he practiced law in Roanoke, led bar associations, served on the Roanoke Board of Aldermen, and helped with Virginia’s 1933 repeal convention.
William Jackson Jenks rose through the Norfolk and Western Railway from telegraph operator to chairman of the board. Born in Wake County, North Carolina, in 1870, he later made his home in Roanoke, Virginia. The biography also notes his marriage to Sallie C. Baldwin and their daughter, Virginia Kyle Jenks Woods.
Frederick J. Kimball was a railroad executive and mineral developer who helped shape the Shenandoah Valley Railroad and Norfolk and Western. Born in Philadelphia in 1844, he rose from railroad engineering jobs to lead major coal and rail expansions in Virginia, including the Pocahontas coalfield and a westward line to the Ohio River.
Blair Joshua Fishburn was a Roanoke business executive, civic leader, and politician born in Big Lick in 1876. The son of tobacco manufacturer Reuben Harvey Fishburn, he attended Randolph-Macon Academy, led several banking and commercial firms, served on Roanoke’s city council and in the Virginia House of Delegates, and gave land for Fishburn Park.