Over the past few days, hundreds upon hundreds of comments flowed into a multitude of Facebook sites devoted to Buffalo as it once was, sites where graying correspondents collectively mourned the passing of television’s Tom Jolls.
Many recalled leaving school a solid 50 years ago to hustle home and swallow a peanut butter sandwich while watching “The Commander Tom Show,” starring Jolls. Every now and then, someone would maintain in a trick of blurred Facebook memory what broadcast historian Marty Biniasz said happens often in these comment threads:
“I remember him,” they’d say of Jolls, “on Rocketship 7.”
Right spirit, right channel, wrong show. From Pennsylvania, Dave Boreanaz laughed softly at that tale. No one understands the place Jolls holds in the collective regional memory quite like Boreanaz, who – under the TV name of Dave Thomas – was at the helm of WKBW’s “Rocketship 7” for 16 years.
Created at the peak of American fascination with space travel, the idea was simple: Boreanaz routinely appeared as an astronaut on a set designed to conjure up a space flight, typically joined by his sidekick, Promo the robot, a character defined by John Banaszak.
Tom Jolls, the affable weatherman on the legendary WKBW-TV (Channel 7) anchor team alongside news anchor Irv Weinstein and sports director Rick Azar that dominated local news for decades, died Wednesday in Buffalo Hospice in Cheektowaga. He was 89.
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