Covering Rural Nevada part 4

On a sunny afternoon in June of 1985, I was out reporting on a story when I received a frantic phone call from the newsroom. It was assignment editor, Kirk Frosdick ordering me back to the station as quickly as possible.

Ed Pearce had just been fired as news director and there was panic in the newsroom. Furthermore, I was told to drop whatever I was doing and prepare to anchor the 6:30 newscast with Debra Wetzel.

            That began my short career as the lead anchor at Channel 2. Soon after the dust settled, I was permanently promoted to the lead anchor position. In the meantime, many of the season veterans of Channel 2 news were leaving in droves, and included my co-anchor, Debra Wetzel.

            A brand new management team was hired to take over from Ed. They were fresh out of the University Of Columbia School Of Broadcasting in Missouri, and were eager to prove their worth. And they were young, too.

            I was assigned a new co-anchor who was just 22 years old, and who had a tendency to throw temper tantrums when she didn’t have the lead story. We didn’t get along very well. In fact, one day I told her she needed to be tied to a tree and gone without water for a week until she learned to behave.

            That, coupled with my inability of settle into the position, plus my dislike for this team didn’t go over with the news director very well either, and so, two months later, my television career ended quite abruptly.  I went from a television star to a day working buckaroo in less than eight months.

            Cowboyin’ in the fall isn’t bad, but winter was coming on, and the day job was about to end.

            That’s when I got a phone call from the National Guard. (I had joined the Guard in 1982.) The Guard Bureau was looking for a seasoned radio announcer for Armed Forced Radio and television Service in Central America. Was I interested?  With snow starting to fly, the answer was easy. Yes.