FORMER TECH PILOT'S NEW FAME CLAIM IS BIT PART IN `JFK'

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 14, 1992                   TAG: 9202140246
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-9   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLLEY 
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
FORMER TECH PILOT'S NEW FAME CLAIM IS BIT PART IN `JFK'
Ray Roberts Jr. had already spent time at fame's elbow.
As a pilot for Virginia Tech in the 1980s, he was the one who flew future Hokie football star Bruce Smith to Blacksburg for a visit. Smith is now a defensive star for the Buffalo Bills.
"Talk about a big guy," said Roberts, who grew up in the Longshop area. He was the pilot for the Virginia Tech Athletic Association from 1979 to 1986.
Roberts also flew in Ralph Sampson - another big guy - who said "No" in the end to Tech's basketball program. Sampson went on to basketball stardom at the University of Virginia.
So maybe it's a small surprise that Roberts, a 1974 graduate of Blacksburg High School, should have ended up with a bit part in the most talked-about movie of recent months - Oliver Stone's "JFK."
Roberts, now a pilot in Dallas, got the role by answering a call for tryouts for an unspecified movie one Sunday afternoon in the Texas city where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.
Roberts landed a non-speaking part as a police officer in "JFK."
Friends of Roberts can catch a glimpse of him in uniform in a scene at the Carrousel Club and standing behind a picket fence after Kennedy was shot.
Nor is that the sum of Roberts' movie career. The former Hokie pilot also has had small parts in a television movie about outlaw duo Bonnie and Clyde, as well as in the films "Fugitive Among Us," "Hexed," "Dangerous Curves," "An American Story" and "Ruby, The Man Who Shot The Man Who Shot JFK."
At one point in "JFK," the pilot found himself doing double duty as a real policeman.
"We had many tourists try to walk into the line of the cameras," Roberts wrote in a description of the "JFK" set he sent to the Roanoke Times & World-News. "Being in full police uniform, I finally found myself helping with crowd control."
Roberts took pictures when he could, including several of actor Kevin Costner and of Stone.
"I got a lot of great shots on the set," he said.
Dallas has become a hot spot for movie making, Roberts said, in part because, like Virginia, it is in a right-to-work state and welcomes the movie makers.
Roberts, who said he has put together a network of aspiring Dallas actors hoping to find work in movies, said being a full-time actor is not his goal.
The history he was exposed to on the "JFK" set, he said, was the most important part of the experience.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB