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Magic Mirror: Former Romper Room hostess looks back
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Published: October 13, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE
By today's computer-generated, HD-animated standards, Romper Room seems pretty tame stuff for kids. Just a show with a cute hostess, puppets and parades, and a "magic mirror" that didn't fool anyone.
But 50 years ago, Lois Whitmeyer notes, that flickering, black-and-white TV show was cutting-edge. And in a time when a Do-Bee meant something altogether different than today, Whitmeyer was one of a lucky few starring in children's TV.
"Everybody and his uncle wanted to be on the show," she said. "It was new, it was exciting."
Whitmeyer's mementos of the early days of kids' TV are tucked in photo albums. She's not sure where the mirror is: probably somewhere in a box in her Gates Four home.
And no, the magic mirror still doesn't fool kids. "Really it was two mirrors," she said. "I'd hold up the first one, with a real mirror, and say the magic words.
"Then the camera would blur while I put down that mirror and pulled up the other one. Then I was able to ‘see' the kids at home, or that little Johnny hadn't been doing his homework or whatever the parents had written to me.
"We laugh now, but back then it was a big deal to have Miss Lois say hello to you on Romper Room."
Unless you're a transplant from Michigan, you probably don't remember Miss Lois. Each town had a different Romper Room hostess. New York had Miss Louise. Baltimore had Miss Nancy. Every show across seven countries was unique.
The message, however, was consistent: Be polite. Viewers were pleasantly reminded to eat their vegetables, not to put rocks in their mouths, say please and thank you and generally doing all the things that a purple dinosaur suggested two generations later.
Whitmeyer, 77, stumbled into celebrity through a combination of accident and desperation. The wife of TV programming pioneer Ernie Whitmeyer, she was a stay-at-home mom as her husband helped get WJRT, a Flint, Mich., TV station, up and running.
One of the first shows on the station was Romper Room. Lois Whitmeyer would watch each morning with her son, Art, as the hostess led children in songs and activities. "It got to where I knew the show by heart," she said.
One day, Ernie Whitmeyer got a panicked call from the studio. The Romper Room lady had been in a wreck and was hospitalized.
"I mentioned offhand that it couldn't be that hard," Lois Whitmeyer said. "I said I could do it."
The next morning, she was. She clomped around the cramped studio with six children every day while the regular hostess recovered.
Studio officials were so impressed that when the original Romper Room hostess moved to a bigger market, Lois was asked to be a permanent replacement.
In Flint, she was a local celebrity. Kids would squeal when they spotted her shopping, and the TV station often sent her to events for publicity.
Ernie Whitmeyer's career took him to bigger stations in the mid-1960s, with milestones such as the first televised basketball games at Madison Square Garden and the inaugural Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. Lois Whitmeyer left television, returning to the other side of the magic mirror. Eventually the couple retired to Fayetteville.
Ernie Whitmeyer passed away a couple of years ago, and Lois Whitmeyer has been battling a variety of illnesses. She doesn't brag about her past celebrity, but with a little coaxing, she can still sing the Do-Bee song.
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