Yesterday was a good day. What started as just a bit of rummaging through Google brought me to a blog about The American Forces Network where I was privileged to serve at the 3 major affiliates: AFKN in Seoul, South Korea, AFN in Frankfurt, Germany, and The Southern European Broadcasting Service in Vicenza, Italy-a total of 7 years. I stumbled across my old TV studio where I shared my time between television and radio, though I preferred radio. It wasn't necessarily that I didn't like television. I just found it boring. I wrote 4 minutes of copy to wrap around 18 minutes of video. So boring, in fact, that I started to edit my own video. But we all spent time hopping between radio and television. We were in the military..barely..we were civilian announcers in funny clothing. And we were very close knit. More so than virtually every unit in the military, whether Army, Air Force, and Navy. I leave out the Marines because I never ran into any Marine broadcasters. Anyway, I was able to put together most of the crew from Italy on Facebook. A couple of folks are missing and they were people who were very special.
First there's Melanie Morrell. I looked at her as my little sister even though I was, on paper, her superior. I say on paper because we worked together to achieve our collective goals without ego. That's why I had very few pictures taken of me in the studio. It was a job..A very enjoyable job, but a job just the same. Melanie was one of the first people I met when I was given the grand tour of my new digs when I arrived in country and one of the last I saw. When I left, I didn't say goodbye..I never was good at goodbyes so I liked to just fade to black. In her case I wish I'd made an exception. Melanie retired as a Chief Petty Officer, no mean feat for a woman, and a single mother at that. It was with great sadness I learned yesterday that she passed away in 2007 of cancer.
I split my time between radio and television. In fact, on a couple of occasions when we were short staffed because of vacations or illness, I'd do my morning show AND afternoon drive, put on a long song and run to the television studio to do the 6 PM news. I never really liked television, even though that was where I had the most success as far as awards go. I actually found it boring. Nothing beats seat of your pants radio, although there were days...
I had two major challenges in television, and I'm not sure which was the biggest. First, we got our video feeds direct from ABC. Every night, a courier would take copies of The ABC World News and their daily electronic feed to JFK and they'd be in country the next morning and in our hands by 2 in the afternoon..In a perfect world. The problem was, it hit the Italian Postal Service in Milan and then be sent to our APO..sometimes arriving 5 at a time a week later. It's a real challenge to do a wrap around on a week old story. I decided that television news wasn't something I wanted to continue after the final Cambodian genocide by the Khmer Rouge in 1979. All told, 1.7 million Cambodians were massacred and I was showing video night after night of slaughtered men, women, and especially children, while the rest of the world paid lip service. I actually started shedding tears on camera and a news anchor isn't supposed to do that.
The other major challenge was trying to make me look good. I always thought I was the Sam Donaldson type..Not the pretty boy who was starting to replace true journalists. And Susan Durham, my floor director, made it her mission to make me look, well, not necessarily pretty, but make me look "reasonable"..We tried different make-up, we tried different lighting, we tried different camera angles..But no matter what we did, I still had the bags under my eyes. Today we'd just do some Botox. Her husband was in military intelligence, and she was another woman in a field where there weren't many women in civilian life. The military was always at the cutting edge in realizing women weren't just nurses and secretaries. The same with ethnic minorities. The old slogan "Be All That You Can Be." wasn't just a hollow saying. We meant it. Susan was actually the last member of my team I talked to before I left country. I had cleared everything and was officially done. I ran into her as I was leaving for the day, going to get some rest as we were flying out of Aviano early the next morning and had a 90 minute bus ride to get there. She said she wanted to take me to lunch for old times sake, but I bowed out. I wish I hadn't.
Italian utilities are expensive so many junior enlisted bought kerosene heaters as Northern Italy can get cold. I learned a few months later that hers had malfunctioned and she and her husband had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
For those of us in American Forces Radio and Television, The '70's was an amazing time because we were the only game in town especially in Germany where our 150kw transmitter, 3 times more power than WABC or KHJ, we programmed to 500,000 military personnel, not to mention their dependents, civilian employees, ex-pats, tourists, and countless Germans. Even though our mission was to be the "Voice of the Command", "The Voice" was really Paul McCartney, Merle Haggard, Joan Jett, etc..Our airshifts were relatively short-3 1/2 hours for mornings, 2 for mid-days and afternoon drive, and 2 for locally produced Network Time in the evenings. We were a newscaster's dream. Uncle Sam gave us license to use feeds from every news organization on the planet..We may do a wrap around from ABC News and follow it with another from Reuters. On the programming side, our L.A. Entertainment unit gave us Charlie Tuna, Roger Carroll, and Wolfman Jack, among others. In fact, much of Wolfman's fame came from AFRTS. Millions of men and women returned from Vietnam and the one thing they missed on the radio was the Wolfman...That lead to his appearance in "American Graffiti" as John Lucas didn't want a run of the mill disk jockey..And at the time, Wolfman was broadcasting from across the border in Mexico, and Lucas heard him in L.A.
If we had an idea, we'd go ahead and do it. Everybody had funny bits, and mine caused a major Italian Earthquake of sorts. In 1980, we had the peanut farmer and the actor running for President so I figured there was room for a "Big Time Sensuous Rock and Roll Disk Jockey" so I ran for President. Just a 60 second bit that started with a cheering crowd and ended with the arrival of police. A funny speech in the middle and that was it. Wing and a Prayer Productions strikes again...60 seconds to write, another 60 to produce. And all was going well until Stars and Stripes came to town. Anybody who has been overseas knows Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper that had a bigger circulation than the New York Times. They were in town to do a fluff piece on something that actually didn't make it to print. Instead the reporter heard one of my "campaign speeches" and decided that was a better story. He cleared it with the Public Affairs Office and we did an interview that I figured would be a couple of paragraphs at best. I took a few digs at the Navy and gave my vision of foreign affairs and the economy..(Bizarre) and he went on his merry way..A few weeks later, I pulled in to begin my morning airshift and my producer met me at the door and told me I probably wanted to call in sick..For the past couple of hours he'd been answering calls from screaming admirals in Naples..Then he showed me the article..BOTH PAGES!!! One admiral wanted me court-martialed and even telexed a copy of the regulation forbidding military personnel from engaging in political activities..When I got off the air at 9, I was called into our Network Commanders office and told to suspend my campaign. But the listeners loved it. I had 12 people who admitted to voting for me absentee.
It's really sad how most of us take our circumstances for granted. The people you leave behind, the places that most people never see, things they never get to do. We always think that life will go on and beyond each turn is a new adventure..new people..new opportunities..Then you reach that point in your life where there is far more past than there is future. It's then you realize you should have spent more time savoring the past. I have probably said goodbye to more people than most, and most to never see again. As I look back at those who are gone, not just Melanie and Susan, but the others I have known who are no longer here, I wish I had found more time. There are many, living and dead, that I wish I could see one more time or hear their voice, but those times were squandered looking to the future but ignoring today. RIP Melanie and Susan..You are not forgotten.
