I remember when I was in the eighth grade that I idolized him as he ran around town reporting on the news from his KQUE Big Red News Car. We all had little transistor radios and would try to spot him as he drove to his next 'on the scene' report. That usually meant a car wreck. We actually caught up to him on our bicycles one time and he gave us an autograph.
Flash forward about ten years. I am a brand new news photographer/reporter for Channel 7, KOAT. I am on the way to one of my first assignments as an on the scene reporter with a 16mm Bell and Howell camera. It is a car/motorcycle wreck on Rio Grande Blvd. at that big jog in road near Los Ranchos. There is one person there before me and it is Ed Pennybacker. He beckons me over to see somebody's gray matter stuck in a headlight.
Well, I didn't shoot that particular picture but I got a kick out of being there with a guy I thought so much of. He worked for many more years as a consumer reporter and TV personality.
On another note, I am cracking up over the McCain camp's reaction to Obama's visit overseas. The news coverage of the trip is dramatic and the whining about it by the republicans is pathetic. You cant argue that the 200K Berliners who showed up to see him are sincere about seeing a new kind of smart and articulate leader that we all need so badly.
1 comment:
Jim, thanks for your blog/obit for Ed Pennybacker. He was a familiar media fixture I remember as a kid, too (though I don't think the term "media" meant anything in those days.) Reading your article, I could almost hear his voice on the air once again.
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