COMMAERNTTARY THOSE WERE THE DAYS By John Wilson 50th Anniversary of WWII; in Bucharest, Romania, escorting an adopted child back to his new parents in Tampa; dodging Fidel Castro’s agents in Havana; on a U.S. Navy Destroyer taking part in the blockade of Haiti; in Moscow broadcasting on then- Soviet Television; in Panama for the arrest of Manuel Noriega; soaring through the air in U.S. Air Force and Navy Jet Fighters; on a nuclear submarine heading out of Tampa Bay; and at National Political Conventions in Detroit, Atlanta and San Francisco. However, for me, the most memorable event took place at the Florida State Prison near Starke, where I witnessed the execution of serial killer Ted Bundy. On the other hand, and every good journalist needs another hand, the most NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 | TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE 139 Iwrote, edited and rewrote almost every word of my script for the entire 50 years I was broadcasting the news. I did it even when I was live on the air. I kept changing words and phrases here and there to make what I was saying clearer and easier to understand. The sound of spoken words is often very different from how they look in print. The technical directors in the control room knew I might change my words at any moment. Therefore, they chose not to “watch” every word in my script, but rather scanned it and “listened” to it, expecting some spontaneous ad-libbing. I knew when I could leave my script and when I had to stay with it. The control room directors became some of my best friends, so we depended on each other and became like family. One of the negative sides of my long tenure in radio and TV news was having to stay in the newsroom most of the time. So, when the opportunities for out-of-town travel came, I jumped at them. Often, I found myself in various parts of the world that were filled with trouble. I have been to the White House, where I had lunch with President Reagan; on the beaches of Normandy during a celebration of the exciting and dangerous experience took place just before my retirement, when I parachuted out of an airplane with elite troops from the U.S. Special Operations Command from MacDill Air Force Base. In looking back, perhaps the most inspiring, if not the most personally rewarding event of my long broadcast career, came on my last day at WTVT Channel 13, when I turned my anchor chair over to my son Mark. He had joined us on the staff at WTVT 18 years earlier, coming from the NBC station in Raleigh after launching his own TV news career many years before in St. Petersburg and Clearwater. I am still trying to figure out what “retirement” will mean for me, as I am still so busy doing such a wide variety of things. The one constant in my new schedule is somewhat watching my old gang on WTVT, at 6 and 10 p.m., as well as seeing my son Mark in the chair where I sat for so long. So the world evolves. 9 EDITOR’S NOTE: John Wilson ended 50 plus years of radio and television news broadcasting with his final goodbye on WTVT Fox 13 on November 26, 2014, the day before Thanksgiving. John Wilson
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