Hap' Richards, Mayor of Joyville:  "These are pre-schoolers and you have to please them."
  "When Mommie's sick I answer the phone and tell them that she isn't here," wrote one small applicant for citizenship in Joyville. From another, "I throw out the garbage," and a third pre-schooler by way of testimony justifying his application for the coveted citizenship dictated a letter: "I washed the windows every day."
  Letters like these are received by Floyd (Hap) Richards six days a week at WTIC-TV Channel 3. Hap is the Mayor of Joyville and has been since the first week of WTIC-TV when Mr. Leonard Patricelli called him in and asked him to "devise" a children's program, "That was it. Period."
  Hap devised a program. First called "Adventure Theater," it was three-quarters of an hours in length and ran Monday through Friday in the afternoon. The show had, among other things, old time cowboy movies and thrillers. "I was then, and always have been, the writing staff for the show."
  Today it's "The Hap Richards' Show" and all the little citizens and future citizens of Joyville gather before the TV five mornings a week to watch. There's the Mayor, who is also the postmaster. That's his uncle, the first citizen of Joyville, who goes by the name of Henry Cameroon Tibbetts, "Don't ask me where he got his name. All these things just evolved. He's just an upcountry character from New Hampshire. Many names are drawn from my home town." Then there is "Cliff Hanger" the mail carrier. Hap does two characters, the Mayor and the Postmaster: "You have to be constantly alert not to just have fun among adults. These are preschoolers and you have to please them. You can't use signs."
  Children are very perceptive and Hap said, "I can't wear my watch when I do Henry Tibbetts, a child would pick it up. I have to turn my ring around or I get letters saying, `I know you're both characters. I saw the ring.'"
  How do you become a citizen of Joyville? You do things for Mommie and Daddy, not just one but on a continuing basis. Then Mother or Dad will send the name in along with the statement of what the youngster has been doing to help. "I go through the sofa and pick up all the change for Mommy," was the word from one youngster whose Dad naps on the sofa. Once the names of the hopeful candidates are in the Mayor asks those who are already citizens to vote. The vote is always in the affirmative and the new citizen is sent a certificate.
  All five 9:00 a.m. shows are tapes on Thursday morning. Each show is 15 minutes in length. Hap writes a show a day: Taping day is the easy day." There are seven puppets now and two are women. "I have to be careful (since women's lib) what I write for the women. I hear from the mothers."
  A feature of the show is the Birthday Cake and the names of the citizens of Joyville who are celebrating are read off as names are run through the frosting on the cake.
  "You can tell the era of the parents by the names of their children," Hap said, and for a long time he kept a record of names of children that were the same as the names of famous people. One was "Clark Bow." Lately a few of the astronauts names are showing up. The names of practically all of the Presidents. Some names of the small children are difficult to pronounce but the Mayor makes a point of trying not to let his constituents down.

Floyd Richards, the radio personality

  There is the radio side of Floyd Richards' day and it goes this way: In at 5:30 a.m., you'll hear him giving a newscast on the Bob Steele Show. Then again at 12:05 and 1:00 though not necessarily n a regular basis. He is there until 2:00 p.m. Back again to head the sports show five days a week at 11:25. Then home at midnight to get up at 4:15 to start all over again.
  Sometimes you'll hear him on "Mike Line" started by Bill Hennessey (now with Channel 30) but the format is basically the same. People call in to WTIC AM from all over to ask questions and give answers. Floyd Richards, Norm Peters, Ed Anderson, Bruce Kern, Arnold Dean, all M.C. it. "You can go through the whole staff/ The man who goes on at five in the morning is likely to be on the first part."
  For a long time Floyd did color and commercials for UCONN football and basketball games. In some way, broadcast or telecast, Floyd has covered the G.H.O. since it started. He has interviewed Arnold Palmer and all the rest. "I love to play golf, love all outdoor sports." He was the station champion (golf) two years ago. This is an annual elimination tournament and one prize is a chance to play in the Pro-Am. A boating fan, he has been a national officer in the U.S. Power Squadron. His own Mark II sail boat, a 17-foot sloop (named "Dendondee" after his three daughters, Denise, Donna and Diana, nicknamed Dee Dee) was a joy until somebody came along and bought it at a price he couldn't afford to turn down.
  Interviewing interesting people, personalities from the world of sports to show business is a pleasure to Floyd: "Edward Everett Horton was the best interviewee. A most wonderful person."
  Floyd has met a good many people whom he admires, but one in particular the trombone playing Wethersfield personality idolized: "It was my father, my mother and God, Tommy Dorsey was fourth." This goes way back to his youth, to Farmington, New Hampshire, where Floyd was born on March 5th,, 1920. As a kid he played the trombone. Later at the University of Notre Dame he played in the Marching Band and his last two year in college was a member of the Dance Orchestra.
  The Marching Band always went to the Army-Notre Dame game and to Floyd the first one in Yankee Stadium was an experience: "For an 18-year-old Yankee hick who'd been to Boston only twice." Keeping the right time in the right place is

  Hap, a journalism major, graduated from Notre Dame in 1942. During his college years he worked part-time at radio station WSBT in South Bend. Then he worked for a year in Lawrence, Massachusetts at radio station WLAW: "Another announcer and myself at WLAW were ambitious and wanted to move on. We made a list of all 50-watt [probably typo, 50,000-watt] station call-letters and put them in a hat. He picked three for me and I three for him. Of the three he drew WTIC for me. I picked WHAS in Louisville for him."
  The call-letters were lucky. Two weeks after Hap go his job at WTIC his friend was hired by WHAS. What's more he married the station owner's daughter.
  Of the auditions sent to WTIC in the form of transcriptions on discs the first two Hap sent were broken in shipment. "The third I put on a steel disc. That made it." A formal audition is given at the station when an applicant is asked to come and today the auditions are not as lengthy as they were in the days of WW II." All sorts of names, places, commercials, introductions to musical programs, geographical names, "I said South-ing-ton (not at all as it is pronounced here). The thing that has always intrigued me, coming from a small town, is that Hartford people always said `ruuf' and we always said `roof'."
  That was in the days of all radio and it was some step up from LAW to TIC. Here there was a fine studio orchestra. "The first big program I ever did fed the network. N.B.C., on Saturday morning. I was the announcer and the conductor of the one-half hour program was Dr. Moshe Paranov."
  The staff at WTIC was bigger, too, though it couldn't have been more than a six-man staff. Of the present group only Bob Steele was there. Bob Tyrol (of Wethersfield) now Vie President and General Manager was on leave from the station serving with the armed forces. Bruce Kern of West Hartford was an announcer and Ed Anderson of Newington was in the service. Today there are 17 or 18 on the staff.
  "There was no TV and no FM then. Even so we were busy."
  Eugene O'Neill Jr. was a part-time announcer during the war. He was teaching Greek at Yale. "He had a great cloak like E.D.R.'s (it came from Arabia) and a deep beautiful voice. He has a great respect for his father." A big man the younger O'Neill wanted a taste of everything and had worked in coal mines, "I think he was the most famous of our announcers, at least in those days."
  Floyd did a program with Jan Miner at noontime for Sage-Allen. Every Saturday the dance band from the Polish Home on Governor Street was widely listened to. All the staff did this one. Then there was the great jazz buff George Malcolm-Smith and floyd did the announcing for Great Records of Jazz.
  From time to time WTIC had as late night guests famous musicians because the State Theater has big bands on stage. One night on the show the guest was Tommy Dorsey. After the show Floyd and Tommy, "came downstairs to go our own ways. We lived on Willard off Asylum and I was going to get the bus. Dorsey had a white Lincoln convertible. He offered me a ride; and he didn't have to ask twice. So Tommy Dorsey drove me home at one o'clock in the morning and no one would believe me. There was no one around to see me. My wife was in bed. I don't think she believes me to this day."
  For five years Floyd and Bob Tyrol did the Cinderella Weekend Show. A quiz show for women, the program beamed from Ryan's Restaurant, once on Pearl Street, "We'd have a winner every day. Four came back on Friday and the winner and her husband went to New York for a weekend, the wife with a whole new outfit from Kathryn Nagel, a woman's shop on Trumbull Street. I was more or less the comedy part of the program team. Bob Tyrol was the good-looking straight man."
  Floyd was lucky in more than his job when he went to WTIC. Katherine, now Mrs. Richards, a native of New Haven was a receptionist at TIC. Everyone knows her as Petey.
  The Richards have lived in Wethersfield, the town of their choice for 21 years. There three daughters grew up here; Denise 27, now married to Tom York and living in Wilmington, Massachusetts show is a nurse and teaching nursing at Peter Bent Brigham in Boston. Donna, 24, went to Catholic University of Washington D.C. and is working on a masters in political science at Trinity. Diana, 21, a graduate of Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey is an elementary school teacher and teaches remedial reading in Bayonne, New Jersey. Hap taught speech at University of Hartford night school for 25 years.
  Petey had a Girl Scout troop, troop 397, from the time the girls were in the third grade. When the girls were in high school Tom Beardsley of Wethersfield and Hap became assistants, "It became a Mariner Troop and we (the two men) were card-carrying members of the Girl Scouts of America. With a five-year pin."
  Twice the president of the Notre Dame Alumni and in this area, he once won the Man of the Year award. The presentation was made by Father Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame and a former head of the Civil Rights Commission.
  Of the career he loves Floyd said, "You are low man on the totem pole as you start out." He credits his family with having been understanding and sympathetic. A career-sharing family, "It got to the point the girls were called `Hap' when they were in high school and college."