|
 I
missed the California Gold Rush of 1849 by 98 years, but
I got here in time to take in the “Summer of Love” in
the 1960s in San Francisco. It wasn’t what you might
think, because I was married by the time that
happened.
A New Yorker
by birth, I first saw the light of day in mid-town
Manhattan on January 17, 1941. My mom, Mary, was a
nurse and had gotten a discount at the Wickersham
Hospital, where she used to work. We all came home
to Riverhead, on New York’s Long Island, about 70
miles east of the “Big Apple,” where I grew up,
along with a younger brother named Charles along
with my dad, also named Charles.
Maybe it
was all the years before I started grade school
when my main playmate was the family’s G. E.
console radio, but I always wanted to be in radio.
At age 15 in 1956, I got my break – doing a fifteen
minute children’s show on WRIV called the Kiddie
Klub. I worked my way up the ladder to “Polka
Time” and “Tops In Pops,” and over the next few
years moved from WRIV to WVIP in Westchester
County, NY and WTFM, NY in 1961. WTFM was New
York’s first full time FM Stereo station, built from
the ground up for the new medium in 1961.
In 1963,
following a side trip to WETH in St. Augustine,
Florida, I set out for Phoenix as program director
of KRFM, a brand new FM stereo powerhouse in
Arizona. I stayed there three years, learned to ride
a horse, and then headed to California, to take a
gig at KFOG in San Francisco in 1966. To this day
they are my favorite call letters. The following
year I moved back to the Los Angeles area vowing
that I’d soon return to Baghdad by the Bay. It took
me thirty two years to get back north - to
Sacramento.
In Los
Angeles my career really took off. After a year at
KNOB in Anaheim, I joined the all news staff of KFWB
980 in March of 1968 – one of the most tumultuous
years in American history. It was a great year for a
news guy. Three years later I moved to another
iconic LA station – KRLA 1110. By June 1972, I had
gotten really lucky when I was offered a news
gig at KMPC 710, without a doubt the great radio
station God ever breathed life into. My boss was
Gene Autry, one of my boyhood heroes.
By the end
of the 70’s the business had begun to change and I
began to itch to get into television news. That
opportunity came in 1978 when I trotted across the
lot from Autry’s radio station to Autry’s television
station, KTLA 5 where I stayed for another eight
years. Next, on to Fox KTTV 11 and freelance
assignments at other local news operations before
signing on with Independent Network News (INN) in
1988.
A major
career shift occurred in 1989, when I joined the Los
Angeles County District Attorney’s office as News
Secretary to District Attorney Ira Reiner. That was
another tumultuous year in Los Angeles what with the
police beating of Rodney King, the Los Angeles riots
and the O.J. Simpson case. During my time there I
was assigned by the new D.A. to build a public
affairs program for the department’s Child Support
Bureau on the eve of a takeover by the state.
In 2001,
Gov. Gray Davis appointed me as the Assistant
Director for Public Affairs for the new state
Department of Child Support Enforcement. I left the
year after “Governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger took
office and became a “consultant.”
Now, in my
“Golden Years,” I’m still involved in media
projects, doing voice-overs and writing. To keep my
mind tuned up, I’ve gone back to college to
put the finishing touches on the degree I was too
busy to get while I was working. History major. It
figures. |
