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

DATE: FRIDAY, January 14, 1994                   TAG: 9401140156
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PEOPLE

Wyman, 57, has a 31-year-old son, Stephen, from his first marriage to Diane McCollum. Stephen Wyman was engaged to marry the mother of his father's second wife, Mandy Smith, but some press reports have indicated they split up.

The man who twisted his way to the top of the pop charts in the 1960s is changing his tune: Chubby Checker's going country.

"I'm going to make an assault on the country music business," Checker said Tuesday on the Nashville Network. "I've always had a love for this music. And now that I'm 52 years old, I'm going to do what I want."

Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Garth Brooks and other country music stars have a new message for their fans: AIDS is not just a big-city problem.

On Thursday, Carpenter, the 1993 Country Music Association female vocalist of the year, helped unveil a series of public service messages aimed at the 50 million Americans who say they are country music fans.

One of the ads stresses that abstinence is the only sure way to guard against AIDS. Another, featuring Carpenter, urges the use of latex condoms.

"But you have to use them properly, and that means every time you have sex, from start to finish," she says.

Fired? Me? Nah. "I quit," Shannen Doherty says in her version of why she left "Beverly Hills, 90210."

"I feel no sadness. Who wants to get up at 5 a.m. and leave the arms of your husband and go work for 12 hours in a job in which you're miserable?" she said in an interview in TV Guide's Jan. 23 issue.

Doherty said it was a mutual decision by her and producer Aaron Spelling.

Spelling, whose daughter, Tori, also stars in the TV show, said only that "Shannen knows why she will not be on the show next year."

If you've been holding out for a better deal in exchange for turning in your handgun, former heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe thinks he has an offer you won't want to refuse.

Bowe pledged to pay $100 for each firearm turned in during an exchange program in the nation's capital.

"I think if you have one gun off the street, then maybe that's a life that you saved," Bowe said as he dropped a silver Smith & Wesson 10 mm handgun - his own - into a collection box.