Talk about good luck: I had the incredible fortune of two incredible mentors in Mal Sillars and Chuck Gaidica. (The video below features my first on-air newscasts.)Īnd the rest, as they say, is history. The very fact that I even had a career here can be traced directly back to Bob Warfield. That would never happen today! But it also tells you a lot about Bob…he saw some future potential and wanted me to get as much on-air experience as possible. And by the way, Bob Warfield had to write a letter to the Channel 50 news director affirming that he had no problem with my working at both stations. Over the next few years, I added the weekend on-air weather job at WLNS-TV6 in Lansing, as well as the back-up fill-in meteorologist role at WKBD-TV50 here in Detroit … I worked seven days a week for a one year, nine-month period…I only had twenty-one total days off during that period. Naturally, I missed a few classes, but I had a friend record those lectures on a tape recorder, and I caught up that night. So, I commuted from Ann Arbor to the station and back every Monday and Tuesday morning during my final semester. ![]() The only problem is that he wanted me to start immediately. There were two noon newscasts in which they did not have anybody here to do the weather, so he wanted me to make a forecast, create some maps, and write scripts for the news anchors to read. Bob told me that it was fortuitous that I called, because he was considering creating an “experimental” weather position and I was at the top of his list because I already knew how to use the weather computer due to my internship. I called WDIV news director Bob Warfield and told him I was graduating in the spring and looking for a job. During that summer, we were one of the first stations in the country to get the first computer graphics weather display system.įast forward again to winter break between my final two semesters at U of M. Is a dog interested in a steak? Is a bowler interested in a strike? Is a baseball player interested in a home run? OF COURSE I was interested! So, I had the privilege of spending the summer of 1981 here in our weather office, working with Mal and our other weatherman, Doug Hill, now of blessed memory. ![]() Barry told me that WDIV meteorologist Mal Sillars was looking to hire the first ever weather intern in station history and asked if I was interested. He actually used a bunch of my “material,” and I even got to come to the station and visit him occasionally.įast forward a few years to my time in the atmospheric science department at U of M, and I called Barry one day to say hi …except this time he had moved to Channel 4 and was doing the weather here. So how did I end up at WDIV? It all started in high school, when I used to call Barry Zevan, then the funny evening weatherman at Channel 2, and give him some clever puns to use (oh the irony…I’m about as funny as a plate of Jello). ![]() How blessed am I that I told my family at age seven that I wanted to be a “Channel 4 weatherman,” and then got to do exactly that for four decades! A colleague of mine in another city called me a “unicorn” for getting to spend my entire career at the same station, and I don’t take for granted what I’ve had the privilege of doing my entire adult life. As most of you know by now, I am retiring from Local 4 after 40 years of living my childhood dream.
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