We’re about to celebrate one of our favorite things here in our mountain town of Roanoke, Virginia.
Photo Above: The late Bob Kinsey sits beneath the Roanoke Star in 2014 at age 89.
Our giant neon star, erected in 1949 on Mill Mountain to face downtown as a holiday shopping lure, turns 75 on Thanksgiving Eve.
And we here at Blue Ridge Country were fortunate to have known—for the last few decades of his life—the man behind the lighting of the star. Bob Kinsey, who passed away in March at 98, was a careful reader and overall friend of the magazine.
One example: There’s a manila envelope on the back corner of my desk—hand-delivered by Bob Kinsey in 2023—containing voluminous detail and careful geologic documentation about an old (“no one knows how old,” according to the Virginia Division of Geology and Mineral Resources) landslide on Sinking Creek Mountain where the Appalachian Trail crosses it.
Bob Kinsey loved such detail, and appeared at the office soon after I mentioned Tinker Creek in this space to provide me with the one thing I had not covered that I wanted to: the exact location of its headwaters.
Point being: Bob Kinsey was a great fan of historic detail and, as if he had to earn such passion and dedication, certainly did so on the day the Roanoke Star came on for the first time. He told the story to our sister publication, The Roanoker, a few years back, noting that his father’s company, Kinsey Sign Company, had completed all aspects of their contract to build the star—fixtures, panels to hold the neon, sheet metal edging, concrete apron, wiring and more—in time for the November 23 lighting ceremony.
Except one: The wiring to the switch that would enable Roanoke Mayor A. R. Minton to activate the power to the star for the first time at a precise ceremonial moment.
That’s where a hidden Bob Kinsey, 24, would await the moment of the mayor’s reach to the “switch” to, with perfect timing, actually illuminate his company’s big new star for the very first time as national broadcasters Lowell Thomas and Ted Mack along with Life magazine looked on.
Just one of a million little pieces of history that Robert A. Kinsey created and collected in his beloved hometown of Roanoke, Virginia.
The story above first appeared in our November / December 2024 issue.
