James “Carroll” Colston is an Iowa native, and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1955. He served in Korea with the U. S. Army, where he began his career as a radio broadcaster with the Armed Forces Radio Service. After returning to the States, he worked in Phoenix, Arizona, and Rome, New York, as a disc jockey before spending more than four decades as a sports broadcaster in the Roanoke region.
Using the on-air name “Jim Carroll,” this inductee could be heard calling games on WJLM and WROV, which later became WGMN 1240 AM, for the Roanoke Buckskins football team and Radford College athletics. He also worked as the manager of sales for WROV.
However, it was as the voice of Roanoke-area high school sports that he earned icon status. He has called over 1300 high school games in his 43 years in the Roanoke market, beginning with a Cave Spring-Northside football game in 1964. His portfolio includes the 1971 Group AAA state football championship that later became the subject of the movie Remember the Titans, and calling the plays of such sports greats as Willis White, George Lynch, Tiki and Ronde Barber, and JJ Redick.
He retired from his sales position in 1996 and from broadcasting in 2004, and was inducted into the Virginia High School League Hall of Fame in 1999 for his contributions to Virginia’s high school athletic program.