Harry Volkman has been around a LONG time, may be the longest TV guy in service in Chicagoland. I think he has been on WMAQ, WBBM, WGN and WFLD. I started listening/watching him when I was growing up there - maybe since grade school or junior high.

Fred Norman (formerly of KOCO-TV for so long) in OKC is an old friend from the biz there but Ed Dumit has known him even longer!

I think Ed once told us he and Harry rode the city bus to TU - and I may be wrong on this part - both lived on the West side of the Arkansas in the 50's. Tough to imagine from my tenure in the 70's that at one time this was a very LIVE part of Tulsa as most of it had been leveled for urban renewal.

Wish Ed had on-line access to enlighten us more.

I noticed that Mike dug up a Harry Volkman pic from the WGN site. I think Harry is a guy that not a lot of Oklahomans know of. Here's some background info, a lot of which comes from OKC meteorologist Gary England's book "Weathering The Storm", and from Harry's bio at the http://FoxChicago.com website.

Harry was Oklahoma television's first weatherman. Some could argue he was TV's first. He attended TU for awhile, and worked at KJRH for a couple of years. When he went to OKC in the early 50's, he became somewhat of a rebel. At that time, there was no weather radar, and tornado warnings did not exist, except for use by the government. It was believed that issuing these warnings would cause public panic. While in OKC, Harry issued the first on-air tornado warning, angering the weather bureau (there was talk of possible charges against him), but the public reacted in a very positive manner. I am of the belief that by knocking down this barrier, Harry is single-handedly responsible for the type of advanced warnings we currently receive. In 1959, he went to Chicago, where he ruled the weather airwaves for over 30 years. Several years ago, he moved to the Fox affiliate, and accepted a lesser role as weekend meteorologist.

Erick, I will put your excellent exposition next to Harry's pic. Thanks for the research.

Someone mentioned a conspiracy among three or four announcers at different stations who would get together and play the same record at the same time. KAKC did a slightly different thing in 1956. Still trying to attract an audience to the new format, they played the same record over and over all day long. I guess I should say, “the same song” all day long, because they wore out several records in the process.

The announcers thought it was a joke at first, and tried to think up various ways to introduce the record. But, as their shifts and the day wore on, it seemed to drive them up the wall as much as the people in the listening audience. The latter were lucky, though. They could switch to another station. The announcers were trapped.

The record was Andy Russell singing....oh, heck, I can’t remember the name.....perhaps “Canadian Sunset,” or something like that. Some of the words went, “A weekend in Canada, a change of scene, was all I bargained for.” The singer found love “Out there, on the ski trail.” Anyway, it was a dumb song.

The stunt did nothing but call attention to “The New” KAKC, even in a negative way. But, I’m sure that was OK with the management.

When I was at KWGS in the late ’50’s, TU supplied student interns for local TV stations and I worked part-time at Channel 8, as a member of the floor crew. This was before the introduction of videotape and many commercials were “live.”

The challenge was televising the evening news, weather, and sports bloc, (with live commercials within), all done in a small studio. Two heavy cameras moved on tripods and had no zoom lenses. You had to rack a turret of several lenses to switch from close up to wide angle. It was best to wait until your red light was off, before you racked the lenses. Otherwise the director would go ballistic. At Channel 8, as they aged, images on the tubes would become “burned in,” a sort of reprise representation. Engineers would remove one lens, leaving a hole. You could burn off previous images by flashing the opening into the lights. The procedure while not recommended was definitely cheaper than a using a new tube.

Although I wanted to be on the air, I did not envy KTUL announcers. Since they had to do three or four live spots, “cheat sheets” were taped to the front of the cameras, just below the lenses. Occasionally, we switched cameras and touched off a panic because the script would be taped to the wrong camera. Breathless announcers would dash after us trying to read copy, not committed to memory. Often we moved new cars and trucks in and out of the studio during the news, making room for other live spots during the weather and sports.

Not everything went smoothly in the days before videotape. Oklahoma’s violent weather caused some improvisation. One afternoon a thunderstorm knocked out studio lights. We were set up to shoot a commercial in the studio, but in only five minutes managed to move everything outside in daylight and the commercial went off without a hitch.

Of course, there were pranks. After the late news, the camera crew got a taste of acting. While creepy music played, “Mystery Theater” opened with a “burglar” locating a safe with his flashlight. He would open the safe and pull out several cards containing the sponsor’s name and that evening’s episode of “Boston Blackie.” One of us would play the burglar; the other would run the camera. For laughs, I once placed a mousetrap inside the safe. The burglar winced with pain as he pulled out the card with the mousetrap attached to his fingers. The booth announcer broke up on the air. You never knew what to expect on live TV and, of course, that added to its appeal. Those were the days!

A first mention of "Mystery Theater"...

One more trivial note - in an e-mail from Wayne McCombs - he asked me if I knew that our old TU neighborhood where we both first split an apartment after college was being demolished for the Hardesty Sports Complex at TU? I told him I did know, had explored it last August with TTM webmeister Mike Ransom.

Talking about Tulsans in film - I had forgotten that scenes from "Tex", "Rumblefish" or some other SE Hinton book were shot on 7th by Delaware by Francis Ford Coppola in the 70's or early 80's.

Coppola had a mobile unit that recorded camera shots on VHS video fed via "video taps" from his film cameras - then new - now standard procedure. It was parked in front of Randy Kindy's (okay Finis/Doris Smith's owned dump) old digs. In this Avco custom camper, we were told that they could rudimentally edit a "rough cut" on a Convergence brand editing system. For years this brand was the poor man's CMX video editing system in Tulsa at 6 and other places. We also were told that the camper had a built in hot tub! Those durned Californians!

To name drop - does anyone remember where Coppola had rented or bought a house out by the Okmulgee Bee Line for years? Thought some of his kids had spent time in Tulsa, too. This was his "little picture" period after "One From The Heart" flopped big-time and he did a lot with SE Hinton....

Explorers at 6 - can anyone tell us more about this? Leslie McDonald now Leslie Pepper was part of either a co-ed Explorers group or a Monte Cassino group that went to 6 in the late '60s and got to run TV gear. She knew Buddy and Leon before I did. Any of you remember her if you were in that troop?

BTW - she is a VP in the HPS division at EDS in Dallas now, but at one time in her life at TU as an undergrad, she was nominated for homecoming queen from the Independents at Lottie Jane Mabee Hall at TU and also pulled TV cable for the field level camera for ABC's NCAA coverage of the same game! Oh yeah, for several years she ran EDS' in-house publications and was an arm's length away from that li'l H. Ross "guy" at EDS HQ in Dallas when he ran that shop...Considering that Les is 5'11 or so - they must have looked funny walkin' down those corporate corridors...

Gary Busey on "Gunsmoke", too? Got a msg from Wayne McCombs who said he vaguely remembered Teddy Jack Eddy doing a turn on one of the last episodes of Gunsmoke. Do you think an Okie accent typecast him for a while? One of my co-workers here who used to manage a movie house said that after the Buddy Holly flick, Gary seemed typecast for a long time as a villian or an "American gone wrong" - witness "Lethal Weapon" and "Under Siege". Such is the life of a character actor I guess!

Was surfing the WGN 50th anniversary page, and found a couple of Jim Ruddle pics! It's actually a solid site with tons of pictures from that station's history.

http://www.wgntv.com/station/fifty/

A millenium or so ago, I was an explorer scout at KOTV. One evening, after a long session creating a commercial for a local Dodge dealer (fighting a cranky charactor generator the entire time) I noticed a figure in the dark at the top of a ramp used to drive cars into the studio. One of the cameramen was taking a break before the 10 o'clock news show, napping on a trampoline pushed up against the bottom of the ramp. The figure at the top of the ramp started running down the ramp, jumped on the trampoline and then continued across the studio into the hallway connecting the studios. The surprised cameraman bounced up and down on the trampoline for the next few minutes trying to figure out what happened to him. I clearly saw the phantom jumper as he ran across the studio floor, but his secret is safe with me.....

Hmmmm....

Mike Bruchas' question as to who owned a lake home? It was Leon Russell! I saw it advertised for sale in some Realtor mag withen the last two or three years. It also contained an elaborate recording studio which I understand was not much used. As to the "peeps" who showed up at Leon's other studio (The Church!) and other venues, mayhaps Mr. Zeppa or others could fill us in. I never saw any of them around KOTV for interviews, etc.

George Harrison in Tulsa - ask Leon Russell or Steve Ripley.

Used to know where Clapton lived when he and Marcy Levy were an item. I wasn't a fan of him except for music in his drunken druggy days but love him now.

Someone said at one time Paul McCartney and Linda were in town too. Amazing who may have popped up at the old church on 3rd street in the 70's and 80's! The folks at the Ranch House Restaurant across the street may have noticed limos and it was probably the only greasey spoon in town that rock stars would have been unnoticed in as they were a country listenin' crowd.

Somebody had a lake house out on Keystone as a hideway because I remember going to Prue and having it pointed out but no one could tell me WHICH celebrity it was then!

Can anyone out there help me with something? I've read several posts here over time that refer to George Harrison's stay in Tulsa in the early 70's. I have never seen this mentioned in any Beatles book, so I'd love to do an article on it. Does anyone have more info on Mr. Harrison, maybe someone I could interview for my Beatles web-site? Feel free to e-mail me if you, or someone you know, has this info. It would be greatly appreciated!

Looking over the Rockin' 97 entries reminded me of when Scooter B hired me for mid day shift in '73. I was doing nights at KELI...I still dislike Dean Kelly for making me use the name Sami Stone... Scoot called to see if I would play Radar Love by Golden Earring. Told him I would. Then he told me who he really was, and asked if I wanted to come to KAKC. Working for KAKC was definitely the place to be back then, so I say Hell yeah. We were to meet at Goldie's the next morning, and he told me that he'd be the one with the marijuana t-shirt on.

About three years later, most of those "heavyweights" were either gone on to bigger markets or in rehab. I signed on to do mornings for KTFX which was gonna try to do KAKC on FM. When that deal fell through about 10 minutes after I got there and I was out of work, Mr. Mark called to invite me to the KAKC Christmas party where he gave me a $100.00 bonus!! What a guy. What a crew.

Hey, Charlie, weren't you also on KELi in the early 80s? I remember listening to you a lot at that time.

I visited your fair Panama City awhile back to do some wreck diving just off the coast and some sinkhole diving inland. It just isn't possible for there to be any better beach in the world. At night, the sand looks like snow under the lights near the "Club La Vela". Nice gig!

In the ‘50s there were a lot of radio announcers who went from town to town, getting jobs mainly at the lesser stations. They would stay for a few months and go somewhere else. Normally people of lesser talent, they were referred to as “drifters.”

Drifters were differentiated from the people who were working their way up from lower rated stations or entry level stations to the better stations that had higher pay and better working conditions. There was such a “starter” station in Bartlesville and another in Okmulgee. Pay usually was 50 to 75 cents an hour. People wanting a career had to start somewhere, and they got good experience in one of these small towns, before trying to get a job at a good station in a bigger city like Tulsa. A program director would not hire someone at a better station unless the prospect had commercial experience somewhere---anywhere. It didn’t make any difference.

There were two other ways to start up the ladder. One was to get a job as weekend announcer at one of the better stations, become known, and then wait for a full-time job to open up, hopefully at that station. Larry Strain and Milton Haynes did that at KRMG. The other way in Tulsa to get started was to begin at a bottom station in town, get experience, and then move up. KAKC was perfect station for that. That was the path Jim Ruddle, Noel Confer, Bob Griffin and I took. People like John Doremus, Charles Connor and Dave Hindman used KOME for the same purpose.

To the managements of the commercial stations the experience obtained at a non-commercial station such as KWGS was worthless. I found that this prejudice still existed in Austin in the 1970s, both in radio and TV.

The big exception to all these rules was Virgil Dominic. I am not certain, but I think that his only experience was with KWGS before he went straight to KVOO, the most prestigious station in town (although by the mid-late ‘50s KVOO was not at the top of the ratings). Virgil was exceptionally good. After he left Tulsa, I occasionally would hear him delivering a newscast on NBC.

Meanwhile, the drifters would come and go. They invariably were nice guys. I never talked with one in depth, in order to understand what motivated them or what they were searching for. I wonder if we still have drifters today?

This site really brings back memories. We used to try to scale the wall of Leon Russell's house back in the early seventies. Mazeppa and Teddy were a week-end fav if you weren't having a slumber party. Bob Hower and Don Woods I definitely trusted with the news and weather! This is a great site!

Thank you very much, Karen.

GoodLife TV cable is showing a Bonanza episode today, "The Hidden Enemy" that has Mike Farrell (pre-MASH days) as a new doctor in town who has Viet Nam -like post traumatic stress syndrome from his Civil War service..Hmmm. An EVIL not good doctor. (A few weeks ago they had a young + unfunny Richard Mulligan as an EVIL not good doctor - the writers must have hated doctors on this show...).

Our own Teddy Jack Eddy is the "wild and crazy punk kid" brother of a patient of the doctor's who dies. He is out to kill/harm/bother the Mike Farrell character for this. Will try to send webmeister Mike Ransom a video clip of Gary Busey "in the early years" to grab for stills on this site.

Also in this often post Dan Blocker cycle of episodes in the last years of the series - is Tim Mathison as another adoptee of the Ponderosa family/cast as "Griff". Whenever he takes off with the wranglers - my staff shouts, "Road Trip!" - a key phrase from his "Animal House" role from about 2 years after this series.

GoodLife only bought the last 3 years of the series, after Pernell Roberts left, Michael Landon kept disappearing to launch other shows, and Dan Blocker died midstream of the episodes but I can't remember how they wrote him out of the script.

A lot of the story lines seemed to reappear in Little House on the Prairie and Touched by an Angel - so I guess there is no such thing as an original script. Especially if Michael Landon was a part of it.

I must have been at TU when this flight aired, remember NONE of these episodes but when growing up - we watched Bonanza almost every Sunday night on NBC if not watching Ed Sullivan....

Mike Farrell has popped up in the last 2 weeks on GoodLife's reruns of Combat, Garrison's Gorrilas and other off-net shows as again a doctor - so I guess he was typecast for that role in Hollywood.

BTW - what was the name of Lorne Green's short-lived detective show on ABC in the '70's - before he did "Battlestar Galactica"?

"Griff".

Wasn't the host's name Betty...had a grey streak in the front of her hair...did live commercials for Bosco...would pour this dark liquid into a fancy glass filled with milk and swirl the chocolate drink to perfection. Many hours were spent impersonating KOTV's early hosts...guess the imaginary camera was rolling in my family's kitchen as far back as 1950. Trivia: What was the name of the poem that closed all programming at midnight...Mel Gibson recited it to a young boy in what movie?

Gotta be "High Flight". And the grey-streaked hostess: Betty Boyd.

I really enjoy your web site. I love the pictures of King Lionel & Lee Woodward and Mr. Zing & Tuffy. I grew up in the Tulsa area and always wanted to meet those TV personalities. Unfortunately I never received the pleasure of meeting them. John Chick was an asset to Tulsa TV that is sorely missed. I remember his silly antics on Mr. Zing, the John Chick Show, but his unicycle rides was what I looked forward to on the Labor Day Telethon. He was an entertainer, but most important a kind, caring person who definitely loved his city.

I did a search for "Commander Ken" on your website and found nothing. If I remember correctly, he was a radio personality on KRMG in the 70's. Do you have any information on him and his whereabouts? He was in Tulsa recently I believe because of some memory show or radio anniversary.

Keep up the good work! I'll check this site often.

Debbie Garrison
TVMan's cousin

TVMan as in Bill Groves? Bill sent in a picture of his Uncola card, and let Gailard Sartain know about this site, for which we owe him a hearty "thanks".

Thanks for writing, Debbie. Maybe your question will stir up some Commander Ken info.

Donnell Green-ism from the latter "Coffee Break" shows on 6 {brought to you by OG&E (or was it PSO?)}....she could not say tortilla (tor-TEE-yah) chips, always called them tor-TIL-ah chips...At least she could say tamales and so much more! Heard she attended the KOTV reunion..

Miss Gladys who was the behind the scenes "food wrangler" for years on the show.....

Yes, Donnell Green was there!

When I was a kid in the sixties my mom used to watch a cooking show sponsored by I think O G & E, it had a lady named Peggy Schaffer that was host. My mom would get a note pad, write down the recipes and try to cook it for supper. Mom been deceased for years, funny the things you remember growing up, Great Memories, Great Website...Rusty

Thanks, Rusty. You are thinking of Peggy Shaber of "Coffee Break" on KOTV. There is a picture of her in Betty Boyd's book about Tulsa TV, "If I Could Sing...I'd Be Dangerous". When I get my scanning capability back, I'll try to put the picture out here.

Just saw Mistah Ransom's 2 minutes on Six In the Morning. I'm curious, did you invade the KOTV archives, Mike? ;)

There's 2 (actually about 4) more of my 15 minutes of fame gone. LeAnne Taylor and Rick Wells are just as nice in person as they are on screen. No, I didn't get into the archives, but did get to watch the Soap Swami do his thing off camera. Thanks to producer Marc Sherman for asking me to be on the show.

And thank you for watching, Erick!

Roger Burch was a friend of John Hudson's. Do you know where Roger is now? I have wonderful video and pictures of John Hudson, Jack Morris and Jerry Webber in the 1970's when John and Jack co-anchored the news(standing) and Jerry was doing the sports. Karen Keith was a camera person then. How things have changed.

Just so happens that Roger checked in with us in Guestbook 43...his email address is rsburch@prodigy.net.

If you would like to send copies of any of your pictures, we would be glad to see them here.

I'm glad someone remembers Milton Haynes. He was three years behind me at Central, later going to TU. When I was winding down my months at KRMG, he became the weekend man. Not only did he have a great voice and good delivery for such a young person, he also was a very nice guy.

Because I drove the Newsmobile Mon-Fri, then pulled the early evening shift on Sunday, our schedules overlapped. He ran the board while I did the 10pm news. Milt was an emotionally responsive person who could readily express joy and sorrow.

I always tried to play with this by ending the newscast either with a funny or a tragic story. My objective was to read the story, then quickly turn the mike over to Milt. He would have to read the outro while either laughing or almost sobbing.

He never disappointed me.

Does anyone know what happened to him? He seemed to have great potential.

Re Larry Strain - did not know him but some "format" in Chicago - maybe on WAIT-AM - often did that trick with the same song performed back-to-back by different artists and it worked! When I tried it in college at KWGS - yuck - it never matched!

Question: What FM frequency did KTUL run FM on? I knew that KTUL-AM became KELI but who got the FM???

Re obits and national emergencies - standard operating pose at KTUL-TV - when an ABC Special Report slide came up - TAKE THE NET! Usually they came up not more than :15-:30 before a major bulletin of national/international import. Have the engineers roll tape on it too for the next newscast if any video was sent. ABC in the 70's did not "twx" stations of an upcoming bulletin. It just happened.

Celebrity obits on my watch at 8 - LBJ was a shocker - I think KTUL also sent our "mobile post office" truck down there to Austin as a back-up for ABC on funeral coverage but maybe Mike Miller can confirm this.

The other 2 that I later most remember from when working in Amarillo at KVII - ABC breaking in late night for Nelson Rockefeller's death - while with Megan Marshak (not his Happy) AND Mayor Daley of Chicago's death. The latter because in my short lifetime or at least since 1954 in Chicago til I left for college at TU - I would not know of another Mayor but Daley.

Does anyone know what ever happened to Larry Strain? When he was at KRMG he used to play segments of the same tune by different artists, back-to-back. (Three or four versions of say, “April in Paris.”) I’ve never heard anyone else do that.

Also, Strain was a member of the “Knights of the Night” club of late night Tulsa radio jocks., He usually hosted our parties in the KRMG studios after hours. (Others involved included Milt Haynes, Scooter Seagraves, Jim Hill and others former TU students.)

I seem to recall Larry leaving KRMG at one point to become Public Relations Director at the American Airlines facility in Tulsa. (He may have replaced the legendary M. J. O’Brien who was one of the best flacks I ever met.

Someone please fill in the blanks. Larry was big in the late 50’s early 60’s and had a great nighttime voice.

This has only a tangential connection with the main business of the board, but since Frank Morrow broached the subject, I'll add a slight note:

It was late winter, 1953, and we had just come back from a North Atlantic weather patrol. I was standing a nighttime in-port radio watch aboard the Coast Guard cutter "Campbell," tied up at St. George, Staten Island. The watch was simply a formality, because we got all our normal communications through landlines while at the dock. Still, we monitored the distress frequencies so that we could have a heads up, in case something happened.

New York harbor was, in those days, still filled with freight and passenger vessels, along with the hordes of tugs, tenders, and ferries that crisscrossed the waters. The S.S. United States had only gone into service the preceding year, and the French, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian and other passenger fleets were always much in evidence.

I was reading a book and drinking coffee alone in the radio shack when suddenly every circuit began to crackle. Morse and voice communications battled for prominence and soon it was possible to sort out their message: Joseph Stalin had died.

As if by prearrangement, every ship in the harbor sounded its whistle, from the deep honking of the major ships to the piping of the tugs. I was puzzled, at first. Was it some kind of tribute to the vanished monster? Then I realized. They were all celebrating.

Some shorts:

"Dixieland Detour" on KOME on Saturday afternoons in the 1949 or 1950 featured thirty minutes of great Dixieland music.

Lindy Ross was announcer at KOME and KTUL simultaneously. He worked the day shift at the former and the evening shift at the latter---16 hours in all. He said that it was the only way he could make a living wage. He didn’t last too long.

I still get chills when I remember watching the AP teletype pounding out the story that Soviet ruler Josef Stalin had died.

I also remember laughing at the AP which completely messed up the story about Bobby Dobbs taking the head football coaching job at TU for the 1955-56. (TU had been winless the previous year.) The wire service called him Bobby Dodds, then proceeded to run a bio on Dodds, who was then a big-time name as head coach at Georgia Tech. It took a long time before they came in with a very sheepish retraction.

KTUL and KAKC simulcast in FM as well as AM, even though no one had an FM receiver. The KAKC management always insisted on giving both call letters for station breaks. (My model had been John Trotter, who in Ft. Smith always said, “This is KFPW, with FM.”). KTUL had a separate sign-off for its FM, and never mentioned FM on station breaks. The announcers at KWGS were basically talking in a closet.

During the first years of TV, having a television set was such a status symbol that some people would buy fake antennas to put on their roofs to impress their neighbors.

Before TV came to Tulsa, the more affluent families had TV sets that could pick up a very snowy picture from Okla. City.

Re the antennas, people also carried phony cell phones when they were status symbols. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Just archived Guestbook 46; this is #47.

In #46, we heard from more new people with interesting things to say (as a result of the 7/16 article in the Tulsa World about this site). We heard once again from Lee Woodward and G.Ailard S.Artain, among others. KRMG's Don Cummins was remembered. KAKC's Robert Walker (Grammy-nominated this year!) told a Gary Busey story.

All worth reading...click the link just above to do so!