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DICK FORD: A HALF
CENTURY OF NEWS
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By Christine
Imbs
What does a serious television news anchor do when asked to break
into song during a live interview? If you’re Dick Ford and the request
is made by the legendary actor Zero Mostel, you sing.
“I told him I didn’t sing, but he said, ‘You do with me,’” Ford
remembers with a laugh. “What else could I do?”
Singing with Mostel may have been a bit out of his comfort zone,
but when it comes to covering the news, Ford is right at home. After
all, he’s been at it for the past 50 years. You could say television
news and Dick Ford grew up together.
“I got my first television job while still in high school,” he says.
“They didn’t have a news department at the time, so I joined the
stage hand union and worked all the programs. It was a great learning
experience.”
Ford says stations in those days only gave token attention to the
news. The entire department was run by five or six people, and they
aired two 10-minute newscasts each day. As for cutting-edge visuals,
they were lucky to have snapshots, or black and white film without
sound. “My first job, we took photos with a Polaroid camera and
showed them during the news,” Ford says. “People got excited because
they could actually see a picture of something.”
Today Ford says just producing the local news takes a staff of several
hundred, and it airs about seven and a half hours daily. Ford admits
that lines between news and sensationalism are sometimes crossed,
but as a person who remembers world events coming to him from a
voice on the radio, television news still amazes him.
“Listening to the radio with my father, I thought how great that
we can listen to this guy give us this information,” he says. “Now,
we actually see what they are talking about. It’s exciting.”
Ford can look back at a career filled with some incredible achievements.
He’s covered national political campaigns and conventions, flown
on a training mission in an F-4 Phantom jet, traveled to Saudi Arabia
to report on Desert Storm, and reported live from Rome during the
canonization of Sister Philippine Duchesne.
And oh yes, he made it to the White House.
“It’s impressive that a president takes time to speak with you—even
if his answers are canned,” Ford chuckles. “But the luckiest thing
I did was to interview all three generations of Eisenhowers. David
Eisenhower, the president’s grandson, told me he had never met anyone
who had actually done that before.”
Although technology has improved how we receive the news, Ford doesn’t
believe it means we get more of it than before. “I think in the
old days audiences got just as much information; it just became
more laborious to listen to it,” he says. “Today, it’s a more picture-oriented
business. Often times, if a story doesn’t have a picture, it doesn’t
get on.”
After 34 years anchoring a news desk in St. Louis, this well-respected
and popular broadcast journalist plans to retire soon. The station
is actively seeking a replacement. When that occurs, he plans to
remain in St. Louis. “I look at what I have here and what St. Louis
has to offer, and I’m very happy,” he says.
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TALKING
POINTS
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Born:
Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.
Family: Wife, Gail; four
children, two grandchildren.
Charities: St. Patrick’s
Parade; USO at Lambert Airport.
Favorite Vacation: A trip
to Alaska taken with the whole family.
Favorite Places: San Francisco;
the Cayman Islands.
Favorite Movie: Serious
films, such as “The Pianist.”
Favorite Television Program:
Sports.
Favorite Books: Biographies
or histories.
Best Things About St. Louis:
“Almost everything is accessable.”
Activities/Hobbies: “I
do a lot of swimming.” |
Christine Imbs is a St. Louis-based freelance writer.
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