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

DATE: MONDAY, June 6, 1994                   TAG: 9406060006
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

PEOPLE

Van Dyke waved and shouted from a 1953 bronze Lincoln convertible in a 60-vehicle parade.

Downtown was decked out in the purple-and-gold team colors of Luther Van Dam, the bumbling but affable assistant football coach that Van Dyke has portrayed for six years on the ABC series "Coach."

At one point, Van Dyke leaped to his feet, struck a Richard Nixon-style pose and screamed, "I will make a great president!" Later, he became emotional when officials announced that an intersection had been dedicated in his honor.

"You don't realize it, but it brings tears to my eyes," Van Dyke said.

Given a choice, James Earl Jones prefers the forces of evil over the forces of good - at least when he's choosing movie roles.

In real life, though, the man who provided the voice for Darth Vader decries the lack of modern-day heroes. He says there's no one who can affect this generation the way John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King affected his.

"I don't have any heroes. I avoid them because I know they all have clay feet, and I don't want to lay my expectations on one being," Jones said at a fund-raising dinner Saturday night for the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord, N.H.

Jones nonetheless spoke hopefully, saying he looked forward to a time when "the eyes of every child burn with a thirst for knowledge that is quenched and rekindled every day in every classroom, every library and every home."