Recorded 10/14/2015
Interviewed by Nathan Flinchum, Virginia Room Librarian, Roanoke Public Libraries

My name is David Bowers. I grew up in Roanoke, went to Patrick Henry School, came back in 1978 and practiced law for 37 years. [I] taught at three colleges in the area here and served on the Roanoke City Council for a total of 24 years, including 16 years as the Mayor of Roanoke.

My wife and I live in an older house on the edge of Mill Mountain just off of Walnut Avenue. We can go right out our back door and we're 2 doors, 3 doors away from the forest and Mill Mountain with 10 miles of trail. So over the years that we dated and have now been married we always like to walk and hike and take our dog, my dog Catcher. He's a golden setter with a little mix in him. He's been a great dog. 

So I have pictures and memories of Catcher and me hiking to the Star. We can do it on a cold, clear February day here in Roanoke and it's just a great hike; to go up there and just have a crystal clear view all the way over to Potts Mountain where West Virginia begins just on the other side. So that's probably 45, 50 miles view from the Star on a clear.

The other memory that I have has just come about in the last couple to three years when Landon(?) Howard came here with the Convention and Visitors' Bureau. He began bringing travel writers, journalists into Roanoke. So they would be kind of wined and dined here for a couple stays, stay at the Hotel Roanoke, have breakfast at the Roanoker, go the Weiner Stand, see the festivals. One year they came and they even marched with me in the Christmas parade.

So we had journalists from around the country and North America and consequently we've had very postive travel stories about Roanoke in papers out in Oklahoma and Pittsburgh and Seattle and Canada; southern magazines and just all over which has really generated a nice buzz about visiting Roanoke and increasing our tourism.

I've been asked on several occasions, got to be almost a dozen occasions, to meet with these journalists about 9 o'clock in the morning up at the Star. On the first or second time that I was asked - I usually wear my suit and coat and tie - my suit - the uniform of my day - but on the second occasion as I remember I had the day off and I was wanting to take a hike with my dog Catcher. So I - we did; we went right out of the house, up the mountaintop to the Star and the journalists came with Landon(?) Howard and I was telling them about the Carolina Road coming through the gap there by Travel(?) Town and Read Mountain and pointing out, out in the distance, if you lean out far enough from the overlook you could see the Peaks of Otter on a clear day when the leaf cover is down and telling them where the Appalachian trail is and just explaining some of the things about our great 6 time winning All-America City. And inevitably of course they would want to know about the dog and so I would finish up always telling them about Catcher and showing them Catcher's one trick.  

His trick is - and to set up the trick I explain my wife is a Latina from Honduras - speaks Spanish - and the little bit of Spanish I have learned over the years includes a command to sit and a command to shake. But I always set it up because my dog doesn't respond to the English. So when I say "Sit" he will not sit. When I say "Shake" Catcher will not shake. But when I say it in my broken or pidgin Spanish, when I say "Sientase" he knows to sit and when I say "Dame a mano", "Give me your paw", "Give me your hand", he then gives me his paw and shakes. And all the journalists are just over - I mean, they just get enthralled by this. They just can't - of course - the truth of the matter is if I taught my dog to sit when I said "Lampshade" it would have been - the dog would've responded to the command. But they're always intrigued by that little trick that he can't - I tell them this is my dog Catcher is a Spanish speaking dog. He does not respond to English command; he responds to Spanish. When you say "Sientase" he will sit and when you say "Dame a Mano" he'll shake. That's when he gets the bone. I've done that time and again at the Star and it's one of my favorite memories of being at the Roanoke Star.