Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 13, 1990 TAG: 9007130812
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It has been more than 32 years since the old "Today" show - starring the late Dave Garroway - broadcast from the mountain.
Times have changed, and Garroway didn't have 30 Miss Virginia contestants to lighten the very early hours of the morning.
Scott did. And he is a man who knows how to make the most of a situation like that.
The current Miss Virginia, Tami Elliott of Newport News, was there and got on nationwide television talking to Scott.
"Eat your heart out, Gumble," Scott said to Bryant Gumble, a "Today" show host in New York, as the camera panned the 30 contestants, who didn't appear grumpy despite the hour.
Before the morning was over, Scott had plugged Roanoke several times as well as the Miss Virginia Pageant.
He went on the air with the Mill Mountain Zoo's new emu and with a red-tailed hawk and a screech owl. "I thought the only place we found emus was in the crossword puzzle," Scott said, not surprisingly.
It was a great day for T-shirts, which are Scott's favorite devices.
Among the crowd, for example, was a nine-member delegation of the Great Bridge United Methodist Church Youth Fellowship in Tidewater Virginia. Cut to initials, this makes a great T-shirt legend.
Members said they are in this part of the state painting and renovating a church service center in Franklin County.
About 200 people were on the mountain before 7 a.m. - among them Linda Phillippi of Wytheville, who also made an early morning drive when Scott visited Roanoke in 1987.
It was time, Phillippi said, for "a Willard fix."
Although the view from the mountain was at its best, the television camera didn't do much for it, which was not Scott's fault.
Even with the Miss Virginia contestants and the emu, the mountain-top performance lacked some of the energy the Garroway "Today" show brought to Roanoke May 15, 1958.
There was the curious case of J. Fred Muggs, a monkey that was then appearing regularly on the "Today" show.
J. Fred Muggs had been replaced in Roanoke by another monkey called Kokomo Jr. Explanations of this substitution differ. But it is clear that J. Fred Muggs had become a biter - of both human sexes, actually.
So, Kokomo Jr. was playing in the trees on Mill Mountain more than 30 years ago and fell to the ground.
The monkey came up limping, and they took it to Roanoke Memorial Hospital for X-rays - after which it bit then-hospital administrator William H. "Ham" Flannagan on one side of his jaw.
Flannagan recalled this week that the bite came after Kokomo Jr.'s trainer suggested the monkey give the hospital administrator a grateful hug. After the bite, the trainer took a poke at the monkey, missed and hit Flannagan on the other side of his jaw.
Kokomo Jr. had a pulled muscle.
by CNB