ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – Later this year, WDBJ7 will celebrate its 70th anniversary.
And during Black History Month we are profiling one of the trailblazers on our air: sportscaster Roy Stanley Miller.
Longtime viewers of WDBJ7 remember Roy, delivering the sports during a 30-year career in television.
But the Wytheville native got his start in broadcasting at his hometown radio station WYVE while he was still in high school.
“One of our favorites was ‘Patio Party’ in the summertime,” said Roy’s sister Rhonda Miller Rogers. “He deejayed that program every summer and all of that was while he was in high school, maybe a junior, senior.”
Rogers also remembers his visit to WDBJ7 a few years later on Valentines Day 1972.
“And if my recollection is correct,” Rogers told us, “they talked to him, interviewed him and hired him on the same day.”
Roy recalled that day when he was honored by the Roanoke Branch NAACP in 2000.
“I walked in that building. I had an eight-inch Afro, a pair of dark shades,” Roy told the audience. “I had my shirt open, didn’t have no hair on my chest, but my shirt was open. And I had on a pair of platform shoes,” he said to laughter from the audience.
Roy Stanley Miller would go by his middle name on the air to avoid confusion with WDBJ7 News Director and Anchor Ron Miller.
And in the earliest clips we found in the WDBJ7 Archive, Roy was covering news, not sports.
“The new home will cost about $100,000 and it will house 16 children at one time, he said in a story from 1972.
Roy would eventually go all-in on sports, building a strong rapport with student athletes, coaches and fans throughout southwest Virginia.
He chose to anchor on weekends and report during the week, even after he was offered the job as WDBJ7’s Sports Director.
“And no matter where we went, we would come back to the station and get out after having laughed all day long,” said former WDBJ7 Sports Director Mike Stevens.
Stevens travelled across southwest Virginia with Roy and saw first-hand how people related to him.
“Coaches, players, everyone, would just gravitate to where Roy was just to talk to him,” Stevens said.
Roland Lazenby was a year behind Roy at George Wythe High School. And they remained friends after both moved to the Roanoke Valley.
A former newspaper reporter and journalism professor, Lazenby has written more than 50 books, including definitive biographies of Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
“Roy was that person that, and I think this was true his entire career, that broke down every kind of barrier with his presence and just the strength of his persona,” Lazenby said.
We also sat down with Roy’s children, Keisha Miller Jackson and Chris Miller.
They remember him as a normal dad with an unusual job.
And they want others to know that he and their mother Katie Dudley Miller were always there for them.
“I think that he knew the responsibility you know that he had, but it didn’t cause him to act one way or the other,” Chris Miller told us. “He really was the same you know on camera as he was off camera.”
“I hope people hear that he loved his family. He loved his job,” Keisha Miller Jackson added. “And he balanced them both out to where work didn’t interfere with home and home didn’t interfere with work.”
Keisha and Chris have their own families now. And they want their children to know about their grandfather’s life and legacy.
Roy died in April 2002, after a brief illness. More than 20 years later, friends and family remember him as a role model, a devoted family man, and a talented broadcaster who left an indelible mark on southwest Virginia.
“He’s been gone way too long and way too soon, but people still talk about Roy like he was on the air this past weekend doing the sports,” Stevens said.
“He landed in the right place at the right time and ended up doing something that he loved doing. And that’s the reason I wonder how long he would have kept doing it,” Rogers told us.
“It’s sad,” Miller said. “It’s something you don’t realize until they’re not here anymore, but I’m thankful every day, you know that I got to grow up with him you know being my father.”
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