ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 27, 1995 TAG: 9512270129
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
note: above
ON SALE: Box suite over the Superdome end zone with open bar and Cajun dinner for you and 20 of your closest Hokie-lovin' pals. Now $5,500.
Renny and Lucky Lynch, owners of Roanoke's Travel Professionals Inc., had Christmas Day off. But that was it for the holidays.
The couple worked Saturday and Sunday, arranging airline charters and Bourbon Street accommodations for 2,100 people headed to New Orleans to watch Virginia Tech play in the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Eve.
``It takes a lot of work to move that many people,'' said Lucky Lynch, hoarse Tuesday afternoon after a day of answering questions from Hokie fans about Gulf Coast weather and clothes. The Lynches fly down this week to shepherd their flock until they come back New Year's Day.
With Tech's first major bowl, the city of New Orleans and the day and night of New Year's Eve, area travel agents such as the Lynches have rarely seen such demand.
This week's Southern migration of Hokies is flapping capital into some segments of Western Virginia's post-Christmas economy.
At least 13 charter planes filled with fans will fly out of Roanoke - most on Friday - and six or more will leave from Richmond and the Washington area.
Jacqueline Shuck, executive director at Roanoke Regional Airport, said passengers should have friends or relatives drop them off at the terminal rather than leave their cars, because parking will be tight. She expects twice as many passengers as on most New Year's weekends.
``What we don't want is for people to miss flights,'' she said, just because they can't find a spot in the parking lot.
The CMT sporting goods store in Blacksburg has sold out of most things Hokie. Dan Greer, manager of Blacksburg's T Shirt Factory, was still selling plenty of turkey calls, the shakeable kind used by hunters.
Inquiries about van rentals keep coming to Roanoke and Blacksburg companies. They reserved dozens of vans weeks ago when Tech got the bowl bid, and they could use many more. ``We've had so many calls, I couldn't count that high,'' said Bryan Leadman at Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Groups of van-less Tech students reserved two cars instead and told rental agents they'd follow each other the 852 miles to the Crescent City. Maroon cars went first.
AAA of Virginia has run out of New Orleans tour books and drawn up more than 200 maps and routings for clients headed to the game. It takes an estimated 17 hours to get there, nonstop, said Frances Waters of Abbott Bus Lines.
Her company is sending seven or eight buses to New Orleans. John Wahl, 21, a Tech junior from Wilmington, Del., has booked 90 people, mostly from the Sigma Chi fraternity, for two of Abbott's buses.
Nancy Powel, a first-year student at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Tech, was at her parents' dairy farm in Union Bridge, Md., this week but running newspaper ads here trying to fill another Hokie bus at $100 a person.
So far, four Roanoke limousine services haven't booked one of their stretch limos for the trip. Employees said a limousine would run $600 to $800 a day, plus lodging and a tip for the driver. Five can travel most comfortably in a limo, they advised.
An insurance company in Metairie, La., is the one hawking the $5,500 box suite at the Louisiana Superdome in a newspaper classified ad. Wendy Hilker of Powell Insurance said the company wasn't going to use its 21-person, two-level suite, so managers decided to rent it out. ``We have the only box that has no overhang to it,'' she said. ``It's the closest box to the field.''
The company lowered the price from $7,000 in hopes of finding one party to use the suite, rather than renting it to smaller groups that have called about it.
Kim Clark, owner of the Greenfields sporting goods shop on the Roanoke City Market and an '83 Tech grad, was irked that a shipment of Hokie caps hadn't arrived.
Pre-bowl apparel has a limited market. But if Tech wins, he said, he could sell hats and other things emblazoned with the words ``1995 Sugar Bowl Champions'' for years.
``Championship stuff,'' he said, ``lasts an eternity.''
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. AP Coach Frank Beamer arrives in New Orleans byby CNBplane Tuesday with Tech's staff and players. Their fans are on their
own. color
2. graphic - Sugar Bowl color STAFF KEYWORDS: FOOTBALL