Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1990 TAG: 9006200285
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
The show is about people becoming addicted to working with self-help groups of various kinds. It didn't matter that Stephens thought she was the wrong person for the show. When the Oprah Winfrey people were looking for guests, their computers kicked out an article headlined "I Was a Support Group Junkie" that Stephens had published Aug. 29, 1989, in the Washington Post.
"What I had written was a spoof, a satire," said Stephens, a graduate of George Wythe High and James Madison University. "I sort of wanted to talk them out of having me on."
The producers, though, told her they wanted a guest who could bring a lighthearted approach to the subject, "not taking into account the fact that I'm only hilarious on paper, not in person."
\ Johnny Mathis was supposed to be honored this week at a celebrity dedication in Anderson, S.C., but things got misty and did not work out.
That's what the director of the new Anderson Civic Center found out Monday at a ceremony to name a street after the singer.
Civic center director Martin Durham said Mathis was to have entered the parking lot in a convertible Rolls-Royce to cut the ribbon for the dedication of Johnny Mathis Boulevard. But he said Mathis didn't want to come out in the rain, and the owner of the Rolls-Royce did not want his car driven with the top down.
by CNB