I recently came across a clip from early 1995 when I anchored the morning show at WNEP-TV in Scranton (the nation’s highest rated local morning show at the time I must boastfully add) and we were promoting our station’s website.
That of course is an everyday part of newscasts today but back then the website was seen as sort of a novelty for our “techy” viewers who understood and had access to it.
So foreign was this thing that we’d give out the web address on air starting with “h-t-t-p colon back slash w-w-w.”
We were a computerized newsroom at the time yes but only in the sense that our newscast was produced through an internal system where we wrote our scripts, had access to the news wires and had internal messaging but that was pretty much it.
We did have one computer I remember that had access to the web. The first experience I recall with it was when I was preparing to travel to cover Pope John Paul II’s American visit in October of ‘95. An editor who knew how to work it found and printed for me some articles on the preps from our owner at the time, the New York Times.
“This is freaking awesome” I thought, to have this kind of instant access to content that I could then print out instead of having to clip out.
It was about a year later when the station’s computer system was switched out to a Microsoft system that now gave each of us desktop access to this World Wide Web. We were all sent to the University of Scranton for a crash course on how it all worked.
As I look back at that 1995 morning show and our wet behind the ears view of the internet back then I’m struck by how we were clueless as to how it would change our lives and for us in television news, our industry.
As I’ve often said it’s almost like a Jurassic Park type scene where everyone gathers around the hatching egg. They “ooh” and “ahh” at the cute little creature that emerges with nary a clue of its potential ability… to grow up and eat us!
Thankfully now we’re still in the coexisting part of the movie.
Eulogy for Col. Francis X (Frank) Kosich; Friday, August 19th, 2022 – St. Ann Church of St. Joachim Parish, North Street, New Britain, CT by his brother John Kosich
When I was first asked to do this the other day I got off the phone and said to my wife I don’t think I could have been asked to do something that was more difficult while at the same time more easy.
I say easy because c’mon, it’s Frank, my siblings and I have a boatload of fabulous stories that could captivate you for hours about our life experiences with our brother but difficult because as I look around this church I realize so too could most of you.
Such is the essence of the man whose life we gather to celebrate here today.
Frank Kosich never walked into a room and didn’t command it simply by his presence, he needn’t even say a word. And in any room he walked there were never any strangers, only future friends he had yet to meet.
He came into the world in Fran style born on New Years Day 1957 guaranteeing from that point forward every birthday would be a celebration. He was the second born of my parents five kids but the reality was in our family he was number 1.
I was talking to our brother Joe the other day and he said every little brother as a kid sees their big brother as a hero, then eventually an equal as they get older. Fran was always a hero to us.
He was one of those rare individuals who was actually born to be the man he would ultimately become, he was a natural born leader.
Whether it was gathering the neighborhood kids to play Army in the alley behind our parent’s first house on Marple Street in Philly or rallying his life long friends from St. Martha’s and Archbishop Ryan for a game or some other pursuit, people gravitated to him, he was the ring leader.
They were skills he would decide to put to use for the Army while at our shared family alma mater Temple University, joining the ROTC. And after graduation Frank Kosich became 2nd Lt. Frank Kosich and he was off to Korea with the Army Corps of Engineers.
I always wish he could’ve had a crystal ball in 1979 to see 20+ years into the future when he would return to Korea for another tour. Not alone but this time with Laurie and the kids. Not as a 2nd Lieutenant but now as a full bird Colonel and not as the low man on base but rather as the Commander of the Army Corps of Engineers entire Far East District.
He held two masters degrees including one in Military and Strategic Leadership from the U.S. Army War College. Again we asked are you taking this course of study or teaching it.
Frank retired after 30 years in 2008 and I use the “retired” term loosely as it was more of an intermission because he then began a civilian second act as an Engineer that led him to Qatar for several years where he worked on a project the world will soon get to see, building the infrastructure for this November’s Soccer World Cup.
After that he was off to New York City where he was the Resident Engineer overseeing the construction of the 2nd Avenue Subway and then to Honolulu where he spent the last several years building that city’s new elevated rail line.
It always struck me as funny how this man who took the el and the subway to and from school was now building them.
They are physical things that will stand in time as a testament to his work but they are not his legacy, his legacy lies in all of you.
Especially in his children that he and Laurie brought into the world and raised. Frank, the first born, the holder of the name who has grown into the man, the husband to Jenn, the father to Sully – that Jeff cap (Sully was wearing in honor of his grandpop) got me – and baby Stella, that made your Dad so proud.
Kristen, “Krispy” – so glad they put that in the obit – you were the absolute apple of your father’s eye. Your “Papa” so loved the time he got to spend with you, the travels with you and watching you blossom into the independent young woman you have become.
And Joey as the youngest I know you can feel cheated on a day like this because you had less time with your Dad than the rest of us but man did you have bonus time together in Hawaii. And how I would have so loved to have been a fly in the car for your cross country drive last year to hear the conversations you had. Fate put you together at a time when you needed each other and for that today I am thankful.
His legacy also lives on in his countless number of nieces and nephews, I believe all are here today, several of whom followed him into the military and that always made him proud. If you were to take a secret poll of them and ask who was your favorite uncle we know hands down who the winner would be and do you know what, the rest of us do not take offense.
And his legacy lives on his friends; from those he grew up with, who traveled here today from Northeast Philly, from the Army and from his civilian work. The condolences have poured in literally from all over the world.
Those friends know he loved movies and how he loved to start “Cinema Clubs” in places he lived where he could share his favorites. I know he did it in Iraq and in Qatar. So in his memory we just watched one of his favorites the other night that we had to put on almost every time he visited, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
What always struck me was how he would laugh at every scene as if he was seeing it for the first time even though he knew every word of dialogue. Do not challenge him on it, he was “bonafide.”
As we were watching it though the title struck me for It asks a question that we’re all asking today, O Brother, where art thou? You’re not here and that hurts.
Our faith teaches us that you are in a better place, a happy place and in that today we take solace.
I can actually picture you there, I can see him giving St. Peter an earful right now telling him how to improve his operations at the Pearly Gate, I can see him giving our parents a great big Franny hug for us and above all I can see him in a comfy chair in the middle of a well lit room surrounded by stacks and stacks of his favorite books.
Can’t you picture it? Reading glasses on the edge of his nose, toothpick hanging out of his mouth, legs crossed in his comfy pants and a big smile on his face. A smile also born out of the knowledge that in heaven the tee times are always open and also in heaven you will find no poison ivy in the rough!
Oh brother where art thou? You may no longer physically be here with us but rest comfortably knowing that you will live always in our hearts and we will walk together forever.
Jim Gardner before the start of an 11 p.m. newscast, 1987
December marks the milestone 75th anniversary of my station WEWS-TV, becoming the very first television station in Ohio. As part of our month long celebration we just aired a piece the other day with staffers from Northeast Ohio who grew up watching the station and were inspired to follow a career in news because of it.
As I watched it though I thought of another television milestone this month, the impending retirement of WPVI’s Jim Gardner after 46 years at the station. That’s because I was struck by the equal number of people I’ve worked with over the years here at News 5 who were inspired to follow a career in broadcast journalism growing up not in Cleveland but Philadelphia and growing up watching Jim Gardner and Action News.
I was fortunate to not only be inspired by Gardner as a young viewer but to see him up close in action at WPVI as an intern for two semesters in 1987. I joined the station as a sports intern in January of that year when the sports director at the time Don Tollefson, a teacher of mine at Temple University, offered me the slot.
Don Tollefson and Jim Gardner on set 1987
This was like a Phillies fan being offered a seat in the dugout at the Vet, up close and personal with full access. News interns were pretty much stuck on the desk back in that day but as a sports intern, especially at night when things were looser with management gone, I wasn’t tied down, I had the freedom to explore. I spent a lot of time with the editors, the engineers (because that’s where we logged our games) and with people like longtime weatherman Dave Roberts who became one of my greatest mentors throughout my career.
I also got to watch Jim Gardner in action and see that this was a man who not just anchored the news but had a large hand in putting it together, writing much of his own copy each and every night.
When the 6 p.m. newscast ended and others disappeared until the 11, Jim was usually there at his newsroom desk pounding away at his typewriter (it was 1987 and the scripts were written on the old multi colored 8-ply script paper). There was an 11 p.m. producer and executive producer but this was his show.
The old WPVI newsroom of 1987.The old WPVI newsroom after an 11 p.m. show.
Jim was one of those people who could teach valuable lessons without ever saying a word, he did it through his actions, his work ethic and how he treated and was liked and respected by others.
In 1987 Jim established a scholarship at my alma mater Temple University awarded each year to a deserving broadcast journalism student. One of the major selling points of Temple’s program these days is its newscast Temple Update. In late ‘87 I was asked by Professor John Roberts (who was actually WPVI or then WFIL’s first anchorman when it too went on the air in 1947) to be part of the pilot program tasked that year with getting it started.
One of the pieces we put together for the pilot was one that offered advice to incoming students into the major. Well there’s no better person to talk to on that I thought than Jim so we sat down in the studio, part of that conversation here.
In 1999, 10 years into my TV career at the time, I took the job of morning anchor at WKBW-TV 7 in Buffalo. One of the major reasons was because this was for so long a pipeline to Philadelphia, this was where Gardner, Dave Roberts, Don Polec all came to WPVI from (Gary Papa as well plucked from a competitor in the market WGRZ). I had hoped to follow that path as well.
Fate and a 7-foot snow storm landed my wife and I in Cleveland 20 years ago and here we’ve continued our television careers. So the journey home never quite worked out. (Though our Cleveland born son is now a student in Philly at Temple.) Jim and I still keep in touch occasionally and we have run into each other over the years a few times usually at national political conventions.
Much is made in the NFL about the coaching trees of a number of highly successful head coaches through the years like Bill Walsh, Bill Parcells, Marty Schottenheimer. Well in broadcast journalism there is a Jim Gardner tree that is rooted at City Line and Monument in Philadelphia and it’s saplings and full sized oaks can be found in the networks and in local newsrooms all across the country.
And if I can be so bold as to speak for the rest, I say thank you Jim for leading the way!
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – The Education of Henry Adams, 1907.
Me and Jim, Summer 1987The handoff in between the 5 & 6 p.m. shows, 1987The old hand fed paper teleprompter.Dave Roberts and Me, 1987The old news set from above, Scott Palmer and Rob Jennings at desk.
This is a story I recently told as I have often over the years but never put down on paper so here goes. Asking the right question in an interview is only half of the equation the other half is to listen to the answer and make sure you get what you’re seeking.
My lesson on this came years ago, 1991 as I recall, at a regulatory meeting where I was to interview the owner of a local company who was there to talk about a recent bankruptcy filing and the steps the company was taking to right the ship. There was a quirk in the filing, I can’t remember what it was to be honest but I planned to ask the owner about it. I knew even then it wasn’t best to just hit them with it so as we started the interview I lobbed a couple of softball questions that he graciously hit back then I hit him with the biggie.
It was a question that I wrote out beforehand so the wording would be best to get the answer I was looking for and I rehearsed it over and over in my head. As I asked the question it rolled off of my tongue as I had hoped it would and it took the man back. “Wow,” I recalled him saying. “That’s a really good question and quite frankly I’m glad you asked it because it’s something I wanted to address,” he said.
YES!!! I thought to myself in my head. Nailed it! I rock! I wonder if I should pat myself on the back now or later, I’ll wait ’til later.
When I got back to the station, WMGM-TV 40 in Atlantic City, to begin writing the story I put the tape in the player, taking pride once again in how my question sounded but quickly realized as I listened to the answer that I clearly wasn’t present in the moment for after the interviewee blew smoke up my butt about it being a great question he went down a path that came nowhere near close to answering it as he promised he would.
It was a painful lesson that I’ve told young journalists many times over the last 30+ years about the importance of listening. And while my guard would be up for all future interviews it would always especially be up anytime I interviewed this gentleman in the future as I would several more times before I left my job in Atlantic City.
The interviewee? A casino owner, a fellow by the name of Donald Trump.
A mention in a Stu Bykofsky column in the Philadelphia Daily News was a big deal. I scored one in this 1991 that my parents had saved and I found when we cleaned out their house a few years ago.
On September 5, 1985 I walked into my first journalism class at Temple University. It was listed as J-150 when I signed up for the Tuesday – Thursday course that was offered without a teacher yet named but I took it anyway because I needed to and it fit my schedule.
When I showed up on that first day I remember picking a desk a few minutes before class and in looking around I noticed a name on the board, Stu Bykofsky.
“How awesome is that,” I thought to myself, “we have a guest speaker on day one!”
Now if you grew up like me with the desire to one day work in television news you followed Stu’s television column in the Daily News or the “People Paper” as it was dubbed, for a look behind the scenes at the city’s television stations and news departments. He knew where the bodies were buried sometimes even before the guests of honor in those soon to be television plots knew.
As he walked into the class and introduced himself that Thursday it turned out it was not as the guest speaker but to my surprise, as the teacher.
As it would turn out Stu would have a little extra time to devote to the class that fall as the very next day the 4,700 union workers at the Daily News and the Inquirer (or the “morning yawn” as Stu called it) walked out on strike bringing the presses to a halt for 46 days. It was the longest newspaper strike in the city’s history.
I still remember the first assignment he gave us, to write an obituary. Most of us wrote of our own untimely end. Mine I believe had me meeting my maker after being struck by a bus on North Broad Street while running for the subway. Stu would offer up the next day his own piece of obituary writing, an eloquent piece on the death of summer.
I said to myself this was someone I followed and read daily and I was going to impress. So every assignment I would write and re-write multiple times before handing it in with the joy of Ralphie in “A Christmas Story” submitting his essay on the Red Rider BB gun. While the papers Stu returned didn’t carry the warning of “you’ll shoot your eye out” they did carry plenty of red ink, editors markings, suggestions on moving this up or expanding on that.
I swear the average of the grades on my assignments that semester was probably a “B” which to me felt like a “D.” There may have been one “A” on an assignment towards the end of the semester. All of which combined to make the final grade a surprise, Stu gave me an “A” for the class later telling me it was one of the few he ever handed out and though some of my “A” assignments were given lesser grades that was in an effort to push me to be better. It worked.
At the end of the semester Stu called to see if I would be interested in an internship with the Philadelphia City Paper, a free weekly in Downtown Philly which I gladly accepted working every Monday at their 13th and Sansom offices. It was mainly grunt work but after two months I was given the opportunity to write a piece with my own byline on the debut of Ch. 29’s 10 o’clock news (this was a few years before they became Fox). I went down to their 4th and Market offices and interviewed Roger LaMay the news director, Lee McCarthy the anchor and Howard Eskin who was their big grab from KYW-TV 3.
After graduating from Temple we stayed in touch and I would send him tapes in those early years (pre youtube) to critique. The former teacher and television critic didn’t hold back, he was brutally honest on things I needed to work on if I was to move up and he was right. Stu may have been a heavy smoker but he never blew smoke.
(I never knew we Philluffians for example like to add an “h” to words beginning “str.” So street was shtreet, strategy was shtrategy, he pointed out I was doing that.)
My bar trick these days is to say Google “greatest tv interview ever” and you’ll see one of the first interviews to pop up is my “Dead Giveaway” interview with Charles Ramsey, the Cleveland man who rescued three women from a home where they had been held captive for a decade. That 2:52 interview live on the “shtreet” that night has well over 100 million views, spawned an autotune “Dead Giveaway” that has an equal number of views which in turned was the inspiration for the Netflix series “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” I bring it up (to boast yes – Stu would call me out if I didn’t admit it) but to say it wasn’t my favorite interview. No my favorite was one made possible by Stu.
In January, 1991 I had just started as 11 p.m. anchor at WMGM-TV 40 in Atlantic City the old, small NBC affiliate that covered South Jersey. Stu called to say he was going to be down to take in a few shows at Trump Castle and invited me to come along with him and one of his wives so I graciously accepted. One of the shows was Tony Bennett who the folks at the Castle had arranged for us to spend time with after the show.
After the introductions Stu asked him a couple of questions for his column then we just started talking about different things when Tony said to me “now John what do you do?” I said I was the local 11 p.m. anchor at the NBC affiliate. He said “no kidding, next time I’m in town give me a call and we’ll get together and we’ll do a show.” I took him up on his word and when he returned in October I set it up and we did a half hour special looking back on his then 40 years in show business.
I would interview Tony several more times over the years as well as numerous other celebrities, presidents and vice presidents but that first interview, that half hour special remains my favorite.
Interesting to note that it was in that interview that a young 25-year-old me asked a then 65-year-old Bennett if he had any plans to slow down or retire? His answer as we now know was essentially uh NO!
“If it isn’t athletic, if you’re just using your head and your heart and your mind and your hands I think you should never retire,” Bennett said. If you love what you do and you have a gift for it, you should keep on doing it and that all of the great ones went right to the end. Something Bennett, now 95, continues to do.
So to you Stu at 80 I say something that you already know, you’re a young’n by comparison with a lot of thoughts in that head and words in those fingers, just know there’s an audience that thanks you for writing them and looks forward to continuing to read them.
When my wife, Stacey Frey, and I moved to Western New York in September 1999 to join WKBW-TV, neither one of us had ever been to this place called Buffalo. Oh, we knew it, much the same way the rest of the country knows it – the place with the chicken wings, the endless snow and the Bills who lost four Super Bowls.
What we found when we moved here, though, was so much more. We discovered a clean, friendly and inviting city that offered a rich history, jaw-dropping architecture and a picturesque park system. It was a place that had big-city amenities but with small-town charm.
We were able to find a beautiful and affordable place to live on Lafayette between Elmwood and Delaware, a wonderful neighborhood within walking distance of all kinds of unique shops and restaurants. We would park our car on a Friday and have a full weekend without ever having moved it. Topping it off was the fact that it was just 2.5 miles from City Hall. I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and I didn’t think such a combination existed in an urban setting.
As we saw all of this, our reaction was: How could it be that such a secret could remain hidden? How is it that the rest of the country didn’t know what Buffalo had to offer?
As we talked with longtime Buffalonians, the answer became somewhat clear. Decade after decade of loss had done a hell of a job on this region’s collective psyche, feeding an inferiority complex that seemed to prevent people from seeing how good they actually had it.
There’s an old saying that is a personal favorite of mine: A guest sees more in an hour than a host sees in a year.
As a guest in Buffalo for the past three years, we didn’t look at what Buffalo lost, we were amazed by all that Buffalo still had. So what if you’re not one of the nation’s 10 largest cities as you were a century ago. Do you really want to be? Do you really want the inherent problems that accompany such a distinction?
One of our greatest thrills over the past three years was welcoming friends from out of state who were visiting Buffalo for the first time. We took great joy in seeing the look of surprise on their faces as they saw for the first time what we saw three years ago.
That said, I know this isn’t Camelot. This city has its problems. But the current financial crisis, though difficult to swallow now, will only serve to position the city to be stronger in the long run. Economic realities are forcing elected officials to make tough decisions that politically they would never have otherwise made.
We say all this as we, like so many people before us, leave the city for other parts of the country. In our case, it’s just the nature of the television business we’ve chosen. But as we settle into a new life across the lake in Cleveland, please know that we leave Buffalo as two of its biggest cheerleaders, hoping to change in our little way that outside perception.
So when people ask about the chicken wings, I’ll say, yes, they’re as good as you’ve heard. When they ask about the snow, I’ll say, yeah, it snows but they get rid of it. I’d rather deal with two feet of snow in Buffalo than two inches of it just about anywhere else in the country.
And the Bills? Well, when your team gets to the big dance four years in a row, then we’ll talk.
JOHN KOSICH and his wife are former anchor/reporters for WKBW-TV 7. They now live in Cleveland, Ohio.
When you have a friend who is getting up there in years it can be a shock when you run into them for the first time in a while. The dapper appearance they once took pride in now barely visible, their voice weak and the 24/7 energy they once exuded reduced to a slow gait in their step.
I ran into such a friend on vacation the other day… Atlantic City.
We rolled into town a few hours after Tropical Storm Isaias rolled out. Driving north on Pacific Avenue past the famed Knife & Fork Restaurant we were greeted by the flashing lights of a patrol car ahead blocking the street due to downed power lines by the old Atlantic Club casino hotel.
This was a building that was the first all new construction casino in Atlantic City when it opened in 1980 as the Golden Nugget. It would later be known as Bally’s Grand and the Atlantic City Hilton but now this site where Frank Sinatra would perform outdoor concerts under the stars sits closed, desolate on the boardwalk.
We eventually made our way to Bally’s Casino which recently sold for just $25 million, an amount 25 years ago that would have been an average month’s revenue.
After parking we made our way towards the boardwalk across the casino floor once filled with gamblers and the sound of the slot machines striking those familiar musical notes but on this day it is eerily empty and quiet.
But it was on the boardwalk, as we began to take a walk down to the area around the Hard Rock that it really hit us. There was a sea of people for sure but they were a far cry from the shirt and tie wearing clientele of the early 20th Century or even the designer jogging suit wearing casino crowds of the late 20th.
The smell of pot was thick in the air as we passed a group that had openly set up their own mini bar complete with mixers on a boardwalk bench, actions made possible by the fact that in the nearly mile walk and back we didn’t see one police officer on the boardwalk that night.
I worked in Atlantic City for four years in the early 90s and have remained one of its biggest champions. I was ecstatic to see the revitalization of the boardwalk’s north end two years ago with Hard Rock’s transformation of the old Taj Mahal and Ocean Resort’s efforts to give the Revel a second go and the beach bars that gave the island a feeling of really being away somewhere tropical.
Oh I know the city’s faults and how they were well hidden off the boardwalk for decades but I hated the hit jobs that were authored over the years by lazy journalists who breezed in and out of town with pre-conceived notions of what they would find, you know the “tale of two cities” pieces. But I had to admit this was the first time I wasn’t seeing it from the tale of two cities angle but rather the tale of one city, “the worst of times.”
The COVID shutdown and scaled back reopening is something that would be extremely difficult to handle when things were running on all cylinders but that hasn’t been the case here for over two decades. It’s easy for a pilot to handle turbulence at 30,000 feet but it’s a different story when you’re barely flying above the tree tops.
After an hour I had seen enough, I needed to go.
On the drive back and since I have found myself asking what if? What if the city had been able to take advantage of the window that Congress provided in 1993 to allow for sports betting 25 years before they would eventually get it, what if the casinos could have seen the bold writing on the wall during their building boom of the late 90s and early 2000s that their east coast monopoly on gambling was ending, what if those behind the Revel now Ocean Resort could have seen the “too big to succeed” flip side of a resort they viewed as “too big to fail.”
It is beyond my pay scale to think of what is needed to save the city once this pandemic ends but I can’t help but think that my thoughts this day can’t be far off the thoughts of those 45 years ago when the answer being pitched was casino gambling but what do you do once that hands been played?
Byrne Road today and in a blurry stickball photo from the late 70s.
As a kid I took for granted what we had on the street I grew up on, Byrne Road in Northeast Philadelphia. That’s in large part because to me it simply was what it was, I knew no different.
Byrne Road is a U-shaped street with a long middle off of a main road, Chalfont Drive. As a result the people driving down the lightly sloped street (that was perfect for sledding since we never saw a city plow or salt truck) likely lived in one of the 57 row homes that made up our block. So the shouts of “CAR” during one of our games were infrequent.
Looking through google street view images of the block I counted in my head the fact that I had a minimum of 30 kids who were either in my grade, the year before or the year after, the benefits of which were the fact that there were always enough kids for stickball, roller hockey or Nerf Football and often multiple games going on at different ends of the block during the day, especially in the summer months.
Men work on their car while a stickball game plays out around them without a second thought.
We had our ground rules in stick ball for catching off of cars or roofs and in football you knew how to use your neighbor’s station wagon to set the perfect pick and make it past the street light which was the imaginary goal line.
Two hand touch football game playing out with one of the Dad’s (my nextdoor neighbor Don) playing “steady quarterback.”
The funny thing is we had acres and acres of open fields behind our homes with Archbishop Ryan High School but we rarely went back there, that would have required walking a couple hundred yards, the street was what we preferred.
The open fields of Archbishop Ryan High School behind our homes that we rarely played on.
In the winter when the street lights came on it was the signal to head in for the night but in the summer the night was when everyone came out for a game of “One Foot Off the Ice” or “Freedom.” Most parents could be found sitting on their front steps or those of a neighbors because (in the 70’s especially) no one had central air so after dinner the house was too hot. Also remember Philadelphia didn’t get cable until the late 80s so the television options were limited.
I always said that to walk around our block in the winter would take you about 5-10 minutes with the same walk in the summer likely to run you anywhere from a half hour to all night as you stopped to say hello to this neighbor or that one. And if the Phillies were on the radio you were likely to be able to follow the progress of the game from the men sitting in their driveways downing an Ortlieb’s or Schmidt’s while listening to Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn with the call on their tinny AM transistor radios.
For snacks you had your choice of any number of ice cream trucks, Mr. Softee, Water Ice or the Good Humor man who, when I was in 1st grade, sent me to the ER after he ran over my foot. (It was my fault, luckily it didn’t break.) And there was the added attraction on certain nights of the “Whip” which was a tiny amusement ride on the back of a truck. 10 cents as I recall got you a ride and a stick of gum at the end.
We had one neighbor who played the organ almost every night with the windows open (again in a pre-air conditioning era) so as we had a game of stickball going on we felt like we were playing at the Vet and he was the stadium entertainment. It was an example of how this was by definition a “street” but in reality it was a common living room.
As an adult now living in another state I appreciate those times more than ever and it wasn’t just the physical location of our block it was the time and era as I would find out years later.
Not long before my parents sold the house I grew up in I took a walk around the block with my son on one of those warm summer nights for old times sake and sadly I found it took me only 5 or 10 minutes. That’s because there was nobody outside, the streets of summer carried the quiet of winter.
The families of today are smaller, they all have central air, a thousand channels on cable and the kids of course all have video games that would have simply blown us (of the Atari generation) away.
In their minds they have it all but the reality is they don’t know what they’re missing.
Some of the 30 or so kids within a year of me.A tip of the cap to my friend, the late Greg Vinci.
The Emmy Award winning News 5 documentary “The System; A Call for Help” chronicling a domestic violence case from start to finish was born out of our news crew simply stumbling onto an actual assault while driving to a story in the summer of 2017.
In my mind that story brought me back immediately to Philadelphia July 15, 1988. It was a Friday night and I was heading out to a bar with two female friends around 9 or 10 at night.
We were driving along a desolate stretch of Academy Road in Northeast Philly, to our left were woods, to our right we were passing my high school Archbishop Ryan then my grade school St. Martha’s which were quiet on a summer night. In between the two schools was a large field separated by a fence.
We were talking, catching up in the car when out of nowhere a woman ran out into the road trying to flag us down. “Was she joking, did she really need help,” we thought. At that moment I saw a man running off across that field and climbing the fence.
I told the driver to stop, this is not a coincidence and without thinking I jumped out of the car to stupidly begin chasing after him. The man was running behind the school across another field heading towards the woods.
In pursuit, now out of view of the girls in the car and realizing I was not going to chase him in the dark into the woods I again acted instinctively, stupidly and illegally by yelling the first thing that came to my mind “POLICE FREEZE!”
He actually stopped!
“Oh crap, didn’t think that would happen” I thought. “Why are you running?” I shouted keeping a safe distance thinking if he has a gun he’s got me but if it’s a knife or something I have room to run and get away.
He told me it was all a misunderstanding that he thought she was someone he knew and when he approached her she freaked out on him and he got scared and ran.
I studied everything I could about him as I asked him his name (I forget what he told me) I asked him where he lived and he pointed off to an area nearby.
Realizing again that I’m out of sight from the road and the girls in the car, having only his story to go on and oh yeah NOT BEING A COP I had no choice but to let him go.
I ran back to the car on Academy Road and told the girls we had to turn around if this was a real attack the victim would have run to the first house on the other side of the high school to call for help and sure enough that’s what happened and they were waiting for police.
The woman it turned out lived only around the corner from my parent’s house.
She said she was out jogging when the man ran up from behind her and pulled her backwards to the ground and began to attack her. She fought back, broke free and ran into the street just as we were passing.
She shared the story with the Philadelphia police officer who responded, I told him I got a good look at him as I talked to him (leaving out the whole impersonating a cop thing).
“What did he tell you,” the officer asked. “Well that it was all a misunderstanding,” as I retold the story. The officer told us “yeah that’s probably what it was” but the victim insisted “no he violently pulled me to the ground and was attacking me!”
Bottom line no police report of the incident was filed.
Fast forward a month or so later I get a knock on my door one Sunday morning, it was the woman holding a newspaper “did you see this?” she asked.
The article in the Philadelphia Inquirer was about how police were looking for a serial rapist in Northeast Philadelphia and the description matched our guy to a tee.
She had already called the sex crimes unit and was going to be meeting with detectives that afternoon and wanted to give me a heads up.
As she talked to detectives that afternoon others working the case were actually picking up a suspect who immediately confessed to all nine attacks.
The only thing was they only knew of eight.
Her’s was the ninth or actually the third or fourth which was even more infuriating because I stood there talking to the guy, studying him knowing I might have to help a sketch artist, had a report been filed could he have been caught sooner.
(I would later learn one of the subsequent victims was the next door neighbor of a friend of my parents, an attack I always felt might have been avoided.)
The day after the arrest I would be brought down to pick him out of a lineup which I was able to do without even a hint of doubt.
The man would plead guilty so there was no trial and was sentenced to 25-50 years in prison and as of this writing, 32 years later, was still behind bars.
In the background of my live shots from home sits on a shelf one of my favorite photos given to me by the photographer himself snapped a few years before I was born.
“Children at a Puppet Theatre” was shot in Paris in 1963 by famed photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. Eisenstaedt wasn’t just a photographer for LIFE Magazine, he was LIFE Magazine with more than 90 covers to his credit.
The famous picture of the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square at the end of World War II? That was Eiesnstaedt that captured the shot and so many other candid ones of celebrities and politicians that are too numerous to mention.
This one in particular though I loved for there are so many stories in one frame. I interviewed Eisenstaedt at an opening of an exhibit of his work in Atlantic City in the early 90s.
Me and Alfred Eisenstaedt in Atlantic City 1992
Out for a walk he came across an outdoor puppet theater putting on a showing of “St. George and the Dragon” when he recalled seeing the reaction of the kids at the slaying of the dragon. He knew it was a shot he had to get but he knew there was only one angle to get it from, the stage.
So he made arrangements with the puppeteer to position himself under the stage, which being a puppet show didn’t allow much room. On top of that as you can imagine the dramatic moment always comes at the end, so Eisenstaedt was there for a while but when the moment came he pulled back the cloth scrim and positioned his camera to get the shot. Elation, fear, satisfaction, disbelief, each child with a story to tell. That’s why I love the picture so much.
As for the “what if” part of the title, when we parted that Friday afternoon in Atlantic City I asked the then 93 year old Eisenstaedt if he would do me the honor of signing the print of the puppet show I had been given. He smiled and politely said no, explaining how he never signs his photos.
Well in looking up information about the photographer for this post I found this from Christie’s Auction House. It was of an auction of the photo that he had apparently signed at some point and was in possession of his former employer LIFE Magazine. It sold at auction two years ago… for $25,000.
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