January 28th, 2014

Snuffy Feature Story In Th’ Roanoke Times!

by John Rose

When I was a child, my family moved fairly often as my father climbed the ranks in his chosen career of education, but we always stayed in Virginia. As a young child we lived in several cities/towns around the bigger city of Roanoke. These three cities/towns were Covington, Ferrum and Blacksburg. But of the three, we lived in Covington the longest. In fact, it’s where I was born. I loved Covington, it was a wonderful place to grow up…in my memories, it’s kind of like a Bedford Falls from It’s A Wonderful Life.  Plus, it made it even better that our grandparents lived there, too!

When we lived in Covington, Ferrum and Blacksburg, Roanoke was always the big city we went to for shopping or going out to eat or going to the movies. Roanoke is known as “The Star City” because there is a giant lighted star on top of the mountain that you can see from everywhere in the city. The Roanoke Times, which carries Snuffy in its online comics section, was kind enough to write a wonderful “Question and Answer” feature about my life and my Snuffy Smith cartooning career. I even created some special Snuffy Smith art involving Snuffy and the Roanoke Star. If you’d like to read it and see the special Snuffy Smith Roanoke art, please click on the link below:
http://www.roanoke.com/arts_and_entertainment/article_8b6c31c2-852c-11e3-ac76-001a4bcf6878.html
Covington and Roanoke are both wonderful cities and I have many special memories from both places. We still visit both locations bodaciously often!