ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 30, 1995 TAG: 9601020045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Strip
GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE: Sales of turkey calls are brisk as Tech fans fly to New Orleans
Virginia Tech fans blasted south Friday, savoring the sweetness of a journey to Sunday night's Sugar Bowl.
More than 2,000 boarded 14 charter planes from Roanoke Regional Airport for the biggest bowl in Hokie history. Untold others poured onto the interstates in rented vans, charter buses and family sedans or on charter flights from Richmond and Northern Virginia for the game in New Orleans' Superdome on New Year's Eve.
Days of planning paid off as the airport staff, additional security workers and volunteers guided a record number of passengers onto planes without major delays. Counting regular flights, the airport put more than 3,000 people in the air Friday, exceeding the airport's record by about 1,000, according to airport executive director Jacquelyn Shuck.
All day and into the night, it was a haven of Hokieness.
The airport wasn't afraid of acting Hokie.
Waitresses and gift shop clerks wore Virginia Tech T-shirts. The gift shop was loaded with Hokie apparel and $7 copies of the Sugar Bowl program.
Before dawn Friday, airport finance manager Dan Neel and other normally desk-bound staffers were out in the 22-degree weather (with a wind-chill of 15) to direct passengers to overflow parking in a nearby field. A few employees were to pull double shifts into the night.
They'll do the same thing New Year's Day, when most of the charters return.
Airport accountant Mary Snyder didn't mind. A true-maroon Hokie, she bought a wide-screen TV Thursday night to watch the bowl. If morning passengers were sleepy when they got off the shuttle from the overflow lot Friday morning, Snyder had a wake-up call. She shook a rubber turkey call at them. Gobble, gobble, gobble.
The bowl brought business to Red Wolfe's World Champion Gobble Call of New Cumberland, Pa. An airport shop sold them for $19.99
A Salem hunter and Tech fan is distributing them, said maker Mike Wolfe, son of Red Wolfe, who designed the call in 1968. Unlike some others, Red Wolfe's is in one piece, a rubber-encased object about the size of a large Magic Marker. All it requires is a shake.
Mike Wolfe produces the calls at his home in New Cumberland. He shook one into the receiver during a phone interview. Gobble, gobble.
This was the holiday season of a lifetime for a certain Radford High School senior who wears layers of head-to-toe Tech clothing.
Josh Hawley, 17, got word Dec. 18 that he'd been admitted to Tech for the fall. A week later, his folks gave him his Christmas present - a trip to the bowl.
Hawley wants to be an engineer, what kind he doesn't know. Waiting in an airport line at dawn Friday he met Jimmy Martin, a Tech associate professor in civil engineering. Martin looked Hawley over, shook his hand and declared, "He looks like a civil to me."
Martin thinks the Sugar Bowl's one of Tech's biggest public relations coups ever, with the school's name being flashed on TVs across the land. "It'll help the school with recruiting students and all," he said, "getting that exposure."
Some travelers wondered why Roanoke police decided to park radar-equipped cruisers near the airport. Weren't they raining on Tech's joy by trying to catch bowl-bound speeders?
Airport executive director Shuck said she asked police to be there in case of traffic jams. Police traffic supervisor J.R. Ratcliffe said it was just a coincidence that the two officers who pulled that duty were radar officers.
Besides parking two police cars along the street, police set up a radar trailer across from the airport entrance to flash motorists' speeds as they passed. Ratcliff said that was just a reminder to slow down.
Tech's cheerleaders entered the airport at 7:12 a.m., hauling a huge banner and their "bird bags" full of props for the Hokie Bird, the team's costumed mascot.
A slender young man, who shall remain nameless, carried a long-handled mock-up of a branding iron he'd made Thursday night. He'll gesture it vigorously Sunday night as the Hokies try to leave a lasting impression on the Texas Longhorns.
"Are you a cheerleader?" he was asked. "Kinda," he said, glancing around secretively. He grabbed a reporter's pen and notepad and scribbled on it "Hokie Bird." "We're not supposed to tell," he explained.
Little-recognized as a women's fashion phenomenon in Western Virginia is the self-styled Hokie hat.
A bowl-bound fan at the airport Friday morning turned a beach-style straw hat into a Tech shrine. Gradually, she's adorned its band with a turkey, two maroon satin Christmas balls, Hokie ornaments and other Tech paraphernalia.
Patti Cowley, another Hokie hat-maker, owns Blackburg's Omni Travel and Tours with husband Larry. She was easy to spot as they ushered hundreds of charter passengers to their planes Friday. She was wearing a sophisticated Hokie chapeau - an orange J. Crew felt bowler around which she'd tied a crinkled maroon scarf.
"Every game I go to, somebody tries to buy it," she said. "I don't know why somebody doesn't just make them."
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. 1. Traffic for staggered charterby CNBflights bound for the Sugar Bowl moved smoothly Friday afternoon
through the Roanoke Regional
Airport. 2. Jo Ann and Jimmy Michael of Roanoke arrive at the
airport Friday at midday to catch their 2:15 charter flight to New
Orleans. color.