Chapter Eleven

A Redneck in Blue Blood Land

Although I considered my two Miami Peabody awards tainted because of an over dependence on unreliable law enforcement documents, I didn’t return the medallions to the judging panel. To the contrary, I had no qualms about calling myself a “Peabody award-winning” investigative reporter.

How else does an undereducated ex-drunk from Tuscaloosa High School end up in a plush leather chair at the Harvard Club on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue being interviewed by a Pulitzer Prize winning historian for an important journalism job as Director of Investigative Reporting for a station then described by the New York Times as “the best local TV station in America?”

It was a long way from whence I came, made obvious when I parked my electric blue AMC Matador with racing stripes next to the conservative black and gray automobiles in WCVB’s executive parking lot.

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I learned in Boston that bigger is not better—especially for a misfit. Prior to my arrival in New England, a Boston Globe article hyped me in glowing terms. “A nationally-known television investigative reporter, whose exposés of corruption and racketeering won him prestigious Peabody Awards in successive years, plus numerous other journalistic honors, joins Ch. 5 next month.”

It was nice to read. But the newspaper missed a more interesting story. I possessed a résumé unlike any investigative journalist in Boston. Or for that matter, in most major cities.

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I was sixteen-years-old when I graduated from Tuscaloosa High School, and barely seventeen when I was expelled from the University of Alabama. During my single semester in an institution of higher learning, I failed every class.

It was a blow to momma and daddy. They were convinced that a college degree would make me “somebody.” My parents’ dream was sidetracked in February, 1953, when a self-appointed protector of my welfare informed daddy of the expulsion.That was only the beginning of the bad news.

More stunning was news that my high school sweetheart was pregnant, and we planned to elope. Actually, Glenda Adams and I were already on the road to Mississippi to recite our vows. And there was yet another tidbit to disclose.  Daddy’s little boy had developed a serious drinking problem.

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Ever since I first learned to turn a radio dial, I had fantasies of becoming everything from a country entertainer on the Grand Old Opry to being a rock and roll disc jockey.

Using the GI Bill following four years in the Air Force, I enrolled at Columbia School of Broadcasting in Los Angeles. But I dropped out after four semesters. Too often, I was sidetracked on the way to classes by visits to taverns.

That didn’t deter me from applying for an announcing job at one of the biggest stations in Los Angeles. Invited to audition, I suffered a humiliation that nearly ended my plans for a radio career. After an engineer sat me down to read news copy, my southern drawl generated smiles, giggles and guffaws in the control room. Seeing the reaction, my audition went from bad to god-awful. The engineer must have felt sorry for me. Before leaving, he gave me some advice. “The President’s name is pronounced I’zan hou’er, not Aaahs’an-haar.”

Realizing nobody would hire somebody unable to pronounce the President’s name, I gave up. Fortunately, JFK was elected three years later. I was able to pronounce Kennedy. And a new opportunity came along.