The Roanoker - November/December 2014 - 37

As the stAr turns 65

Bob Kinsey Remembers Its First Day
Like it Was Yesterday

by scoTT sagneTTe

When you, your brothers and your dad did the work that would come to give
"The Star City of the South" its name, you tend to have strong recollections
about those three months of work to have the switch ready to flip (well, almost
ready to flip) on Thanksgiving Eve, 1949.

The sTory of our sTar, which turns 65 this
November, begins in an eighth-grade classroom in
Roanoke in 1905. Young Roy Kinsey sat dutifully with
his geography book open in front of him. But there
was a catch.
"One of the Roanoke Hobie brothers - maybe Dexter - used to tell the story of Dad having a sketch pad
inside the book," says Roy's son Robert A. "Bob" Kinsey of Roanoke. "And Dad would spend his class time
practicing his lettering."
By age 13 Roy Kinsey began making small signs, and
by 1908, at the age of 15, he was listed in the Roanoke
City Directory as a sign writer.
"His first real office for Kinsey Sign Company was in
a little office on Kirk Avenue in 1920," says Bob Kinsey,
"with five or six employees."
Roy Kinsey's company would be selected, of course,
to erect the Mill Mountain Star in 1949, with the assistance of his sons Warren, Roy, Jr. and Bob.
The idea was hatched for Roy Sr. on a driving trip
through Chattanooga, Tennessee, when the senior
Kinsey - by then the owner of Kinsey Sign Company
- noticed decorative light fixtures in the shape of a star
on one of the mountainsides. The city had used the
side of the cliff as the structure to support the fixtures.
Back home in Roanoke, the Merchants Association's
Christmas Street Decorations Committee had been discussing the idea of a star at the top of Mill Mountain
- to promote the downtown shopping for the holiday
season. A need and an idea were about to meet.
In the last week of August, 1949, Kinsey Sign Company received the contract to build the Mill Mountain
Star. The contract also called for 100 three-foot stars
to hang from the lamp poles in downtown Roanoke.
"The contract called for the work to be completed
by Thanksgiving eve," says Bob Kinsey, "for a grand
total of $28,000."
Roanoke Iron and Bridgeworks was given specs to
build a steel structure that would support the star. Bob
The

R oanoker.com

Little, an engineer at Roanoke Iron, was advised the
star would need to withstand 100-mph winds, plus a
30 percent additional safety factor.
Kinsey Sign took the star's fabricated pieces to Woodrum Field where they were placed face down on a
large concrete apron that was not in use for aviation.
Three star panels with openings between them to reduce the wind load would be used to hold the neon
tubing. The sheetmetal edges were turned up three
inches to contain the light, making the illumination

Long coats, top hats and
neckties announce the
1949 era almost as strongly
as the new structure
behind it.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

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The Roanoker - November/December 2014

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