A Hoosier comes Back Home Again to Indiana...
NEWS PRODUCER &
POLICE REPORTER
October '78 to Late '80
The telephone call was from Harry Gallagher, the News Director at WPTA -TV, back in my old home town. He offered me the chance to come back and do TV news in Fort Wayne. I accepted before Harry could tell me I was also getting a lot more money.
While at 21-ALIVE, I produced many of the first satellite remotes by a local TV station. Moved newscasts from third to first place in one year. Earned the GANNETT AWARD for VERNON JORDAN SHOOTING coverage.
Just after Harry gave me the job, HE accepted a job offer to anchor at a television station in Detroit. Not long after he arrived there, doctors discovered he had skin cancer. In a very short time, he died. Then, not long after my dad passed away, Sue Welday got sick with some mysterious kind of disease.
The anchor woman's health was never very good since I arrived at WPTA. A lot of that was because she just worked so damn hard often forgetting to sleep or eat - driven as though work was a way to take her mind off her personal life which really did not exist. Before she got this really bad problem, she fought a battle with Krohn's disease. This time she went into a coma - and never woke up.
I saw so many parallels between her and Karen Carpenter, not the least of which was a fanaticism about weight. Sue's death was also such a waste of talent. Out of the hundred or so women anchors with whom I've worked, on the air she was one of the best three. Off the air, no one worked harder - and she was always civil to everyone in a business known for lost tempers and nasty words.
Since staying would violate my journalistic code and principles, I reluctantly resigned - without having another job waiting.
Six weeks later a college friend called to say there was a producer opening across the woods from WPTA, at WANE. Click the LOGO to find out what happened when I applied at NEWS-15.
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