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

DATE: TUESDAY, December 6, 1994                   TAG: 9412060067
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TOWELS AGAINST CANCER

About its brilliance as a caricature - a simple form that fits a simple function. About how much it looks like Foghorn Leghorn's little Chickenhawk pal.

But that was before a press release landed on my cluttered desk, flying a PR flag catchy enough to arrest the attention of any drowning reporter: "YELLOW SWEATER MAN" CAMPAIGN TO RAISE MONEY FOR CANCER RESEARCH.

I called the number at the top of the page.

Andres Valencia answered the phone. "I came in as a freshman in 1990," said Valencia, the brains behind the campaign. "I used to go see University of South Carolina basketball with friends, and saw all the spirit, and the only strong symbol that I could see during the basketball games [at Tech] was John Roller, swinging his yellow sweater."

To the uninitiated: John Roller Jr., a highly decorated World War II veteran and member of Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Class of '42, is the "Yellow Sweater man." He's also been called "The Bullfighter."

He's been famous inside Cassell Coliseum for playing matador at basketball games, swinging a yellow Izod sweater to distract the opponent at the foul line - apparently with some success.

Valencia's junior year, the Yellow Sweater Man disappeared. Word went around that he'd developed cancer. The student discovered that Roller still attended games; he'd just moved closer to a wheelchair ramp from his trademark seat behind the basket.

Some yellow-sweater-swinging had burst, en masse, upon the game scene from time to time during Valencia's tenure at Tech, but it hadn't become as identified with Hokie sports as, say, the Hokie Pokey.

"So I figured, this is my last semester here," and Valencia set to work making sure the yellow sweater tradition wouldn't die.

Valencia tracked down Roller, a former Pearisburg councilman of 37 years, and got his stamp of approval for a fund-raising project.

From now on, Tech basketball fans can buy gear of their own to swing in the stands.

"They're going to be orange towels," Valencia said. "Hokie Orange."

The towels are $3 for students and $5 for the public, and the money will go to the John Roller Cancer Fund. Of that, 70 percent goes to the American Cancer Society, 15 percent to Tech's athletic department, and another 15 percent to Pi Sigma Epsilon, the professional marketing fraternity at Tech, of which Valencia's a member.

Valencia had been thinking perhaps the money could go to Roller.

"You know what he said? 'I don't need the money. I'll give it to you. You can do whatever you want,'" Valencia said.

So Valencia will. Hopefully, he'll raise some money for cancer awareness. He'll know he's done his good deed for the year as he takes stock this holiday season - the December of his graduation from college.

And when he comes back as an alum from his job running the family's Washington D.C.-based electronics business, he can head for Cassell Coliseum and see some school spirit in the stands: Dozens of Hokie fans swinging orange towels.