In my nearly 40 years as a journalist, I have worked in 14 cities in nine states and met hundreds of interesting people. This year, I’m visiting many of the places where I’ve worked to reconnect with friends and colleagues and to share some memories, good and bad.
Sometimes my life is like a time lapsed video. Interesting and moving fast.
I spent this year’s 4th of July weekend in Knoxville. Now suddenly, it’s Labor Day and I’m in Abingdon, Virginia for some R&R.
I won’t bore you with details of everything that’s happened in the past two months. Suffice to say, a lot of stuff has happened. And I came out on the other side. So far, so good.
Instead, let’s take a spin back in time to where my 40-plus years as a journalist started. In Knoxville. At WBIR-TV 10 and Radio as it was known then.
The first time that I walked into the television/radio station in north Knoxville, I was 16 years old. I was there to apply for an internship. I got the job.
Then when I graduated from Fulton High after studying radio broadcasting there, I was offered a full-time job at the radio/TV station.
Somewhere in my attic in Richmond is a box filled with scrapbooks and pictures from my early career. (Note to Ava Duvernay: Start with this box when you’re doing research for your documentary about my life.)
I intended to pull out that box and show you pictures of some of those treasures, but life got in the way. While I’ve been back to Richmond since July 4, I did not make it to the attic.
Trust me. I have some gems worth seeing in that box. Next time I get the chance, I’ll pull a few out and share them.
I have an original page from the American Girl magazine article about me being (perhaps) the youngest TV reporter in America.
Buried in that box is an ad from the Knoxville News Sentinel about the launch of the WBIR Radio All News station listing me along with other reporters and editors including Carol (Marin) Utley, Steve Dean, and a half dozen others.
And now I have more to add to that box or at least to a digital time capsule.
When I was in Knoxville in July, John North, a friend who moved from his newspaper job to TV, gave me a walk down memory lane. And I have photographs to prove it.
I stood in the same building on the hill overlooking Broadway where I wrote my first news story, edited my first 16 millimeter film story, and where I learned all sorts of valuable life and career lessons.
I sat in the studio where dozens of morning show hosts have come and gone since my time there.
As I walked into the WBIR newsroom on that Saturday afternoon, I was surrounded by a very different world.
The newsroom is on the ground floor now. When I worked there, it was on the second floor. In my first year of working there, I edited film alongside photographers including Gary “Ziffel” Arnold. (If you wonder why he was nicknamed Ziffel, Google “pig on Green Acres.”)
Now video stories are edited on computers. In one corner of the newsroom are robotic studio cameras. Back in the day, we had a photography dark room.
I told the young reporters and producers who were working that holiday weekend a rambling story about how news anchor icon Carl Williams used to offer to “buy if you fly.”
That was his way of offering to pay for my sandwich, if I was willing to go down the hill to the drug store to pick up lunch for both of us. I usually got a pimento cheese sandwich and chips. Carl got the sandwich that was named in his honor.
I had more stories that I wanted to share with the reporters/producers/videographers there that July day.
I wanted to tell them about how the first story I covered was a grease fire at the Blue Circle where the Krystal is now on Broadway. I walked to cover the fire.
Or how WBIR paid for me to take driving lessons after I had an accident driving one of the station’s cars.
Maybe even share a story or two of some of what went on in the station parking lot after the 11 p.m. newscast was over. (On second thought, maybe not.)
But the current crop of WBIR journalists was busy and probably didn’t want to hear the musings of an old veteran like me. So instead, I thanked them for the important journalism work that they were doing and left.
Then John and I went out for a cold beer on a hot summer day in my hometown where I first slept.
In Your Shoes Media 