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In 1992, Vince announced the departure of Mel Phillips, who ran the ring crew and was a ring announcer, WWE Vice President of Operations Terry Joyal (Terry Garvin) and Vince’s right-hand man in creative, Pierre Clement (Pat Patterson) and said they would never be back. Patterson was back a few months later but the other two never were. At the time of the departures, McMahon said they left out of great loyalty to the company and blamed their departure on homosexual hysteria. McMahon specifically told us that one of the three, specifying Patterson, was innocent and said he left because of homosexual hysteria. From talent we spoke with at the time, most were of the belief the Garvin and Phillips stories were true. Much of this came from a story involving the late Tom Cole, a ringboy who made claims about Phillips, and also said that Garvin invited him to his home when Garvin’s family was out of town and made advances toward him, and then when he was rebuffed, Cole was fired in February 1990. The story was reported in a number of major newspapers two years later and eventually ended up on the Larry King Show and Phil Donahue. Cole was hired back by WWE shortly after the news stories broke, but the relationship was always stormy. The settlement was kept secret and there was an attempt to set up the panel on a live Phil Donahue show with the idea that one of the panelists would bring up Tom Cole and Cole would then, from the audience, do the “Perry Mason” finish where he backed McMahon. Before the show, Barry Orton, the uncle of Randy, who was a guest and had befriended Cole, noted backstage to others like myself, Bruno Sammartino and Superstar Billy Graham, that he hadn’t heard from Cole in days and he thought there was something fishy. He told the group to be on the safe side, nobody should bring up Tom Cole and when that happened, the show didn’t go as McMahon had expected it would.
