PLYMOUTH-There is no Terryville hotel, no delicatessen, and the "mayor" is really a selectman, but Ted Knight's television special Tuesday night still jogged some memories.
"The names (used in the program) were not the same" but there were "lots of things" to be traced to the television star's years of living in the Terryville section and his homecoming visit last summer, said Knight's cousin, Joseph S. Kovaleski.
The musical comedy hour was a fictionalized account of the visit to town made last June by Knight, who plays Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
Kovaleski recalled that the decorations at the testimonial he was given during his visit here resembled those in the television version, adding, "He cried then, too."
There really was an old flame of Ted's back home, and he did get into a fight with another boy at school "but it wasn't the mayor," Kovaleski said.
Selectman Walter K. Lassy Jr., whose counterpart was played by Fred MacMurray, said he had been too busy working to be able to watch "himself" in the special.
The show also featured Edward Asner, Phil Silvers, Rue McClanahan, and Loretta Swit. Film footage of the town was taken in June, but the plans to use the film were scrapped when the show's concept was changed several months ago to make it more fictional.
"Terryville could have been Oshkosh as far as the rest of the country is concerned," one resident explained, "but it matters to us."
[The Hartford Courant, Wednesday, December 1, 1976]