His show ended in 1970, but he remained behind the microphone for KTTV-Channel 11 in Los Angeles as an announcer until 1981. Yet people from around the country are remembering "Sheriff John" Rovick.
Newspapers from around the country are reporting on Rovick's death at the age of 93. The tributes are coming from Seattle, Windsor, Savannah, Miami and many others. His passing is being reported by the Huffington Post. He is being called "a Los Angeles icon."
It must be that baby-boomers who grew up in 1950s and 1960s Los Angeles moved on to other places around the country, but remembered the kindly kiddie show sheriff who had celebrated birthdays and led the Pledge of Allegiance every day.
Other Los Angeles kiddie show hosts have passed on, but I don't recall any (with the exception of "Captain Kangaroo" Bob Keeshan, but his was a nationally televised show on CBS) from Los Angeles that had this kind of coverage.
LA Observed wrote:
John Rovick was still being contacted by fans from Los Angeles. What's remarkable about that is that he stopped appearing on TV as Sheriff John in 1970. He told the local paper in Boise in 2005 that the doctor who saved him from a heart attack was a Sheriff John fan. So was his dentist. "So are three of the people at the clinic where I get my eyes checked," he said. "I was walking in to a store the other day, and a woman gasped and said, 'Sheriff John!' It just doesn't stop.
"It's amazing that it's been so many years ago and people still remember the impact the show had on their lives."In a 2005 interview article with the Los Angeles Times, it was reported:
One father wrote a letter of thanks and told him how his young daughter learned to say the Pledge of Allegiance: "... with liberty and justice for all, and now to our first cartoon."
That's not a bad legacy to leave behind.
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