ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 17, 1996 TAG: 9612170077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
RADIO PERSONALITY Slam Duncan netted 1,237 bikes for Toys for Tots in his campaign this year.
Slam Duncan's motto: If you build it, they will come.
Correction: If you dangle a full-size trailer from a crane 125 feet above ground, they will come.
Last Thursday, the J-93 radio personality set out to collect 1,000 new bicycles for the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve's Toys for Tots program. To draw attention to his "Bikes Or Bust" campaign, he and Staff Sgt. Steve Gardner broadcast their appeals from inside a trailer high above a parking lot at Tanglewood Mall.
On Monday, Duncan and Gardner - who coordinates the Toys for Tots program for the Marine Corps Reserve unit in Roanoke - came down from their unsteady, prone-to-sway-in-the-wind perch.
They had 1,237 bicycles.
"Going for a grand and making it a grand Christmas for the kids seemed like a good goal to shoot for," Duncan said Monday. "It wasn't [until] Friday night that I started believing we had a shot at it."
The bicycles - Huffys, Roadsters, powder pink, steel black, training-wheeled and mountain-styled - will be distributed by the Salvation Army Roanoke Corps. Remaining money donations will buy more bicycles, possibly bringing the total to "the low-to mid-1,300s," Duncan said.
A large stack of yellow sheets sat on a table inside the trailer Monday - forms that every contributor was required to fill out. The stack's thickness was evidence of community generosity, said David Tiller, whose Richmond public relations firm handled promotions for the event.
One Roanoke County Sheriff's Office employee raised enough money from her co-workers to buy 55 bicycles. Wal-Mart donated a $1,000 gift certificate and offered it for auction as a means of raising money for the campaign. A group of towing services got the gift certificate and "gave it right back to us to use to buy bicycles," Tiller said.
Terry Bradshaw spent Saturday and Sunday night on the parking lot, beneath the trailer, assembling bicycles.
Bradshaw, of Salem, stopped by the parking lot on Saturday, his day off. One woman was assembling bicycles. She had only two wrenches, he said.
Bradshaw drove home, grabbed his tool box and a few more layers of clothing, and returned to Tanglewood.
From 8 p.m. Saturday until 10 a.m. Sunday, he sat at a folding table, with bicycle parts sliding around the table's frost-covered top, and put bicycles together. He came back Sunday night and worked until Monday morning.
By then he had assembled about 150 bicycles.
"It's a great cause," Bradshaw said. "You never can do enough for the children. I did just a small part. No amount of work can compare to the smiles that'll be on those kids' faces."
Bradshaw said the late hours didn't bother him. He works the third shift - 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. - at AMP Inc.
Last year, the bike event's first, Duncan raised 620 bicycles. This year, more than 1,200. Next year?
"I don't know what 1997 will hold," Duncan said. "This year, coming into the event we were a little apprehensive. We didn't know if we could go to the well too many times.
"But after seeing the results of this year's effort, I'm hearing the word `tradition' passed around quite a bit."
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB