Whip

I'm just off being on the phone with my mother... our weekly head-to-head, heart-to-heart session where I catch up with all of the news which is fit to know about, at least in Chillicothe, Ohio.

From time to time, there is depressing news from Allen Avenue, today's was one of those days when the big news was, if not depressing, at least a little sad for me personally. Tennant Hoey died. Tennant gave me my first "real" job some 39 years ago this fall. It was all because we were on the cutting edge, although we didn't know it at the time.

Tennant Hoey ran Channel 2.

For the benefit of those who read this blog who have not been to Chillicothe, Ohio, let me explain about Channel 2. Some years back it was noted that in order to get a decent television signal in Chillicothe, one had to either live on Carlisle Hill, or had to have had a decent television antenna on a fairly high part of one's house. The local telephone company (oddly enough named The Chillicothe Telephone Company) erected a tower on top of Mount Logan, captured televsion signals from Columbus, Dayton, Cincinatti and Huntington, West Virginia, and shipped the signals down to the television-starved townspeople on coaxial cable. There was one channel left over after the networks were covered, and that was Channel 2. So, instead of duplicating network coverage by importing Channel 2 from Dayton, it was decided that Chillicothe would have its own television station in the form of Channel 2 which was "broadcast" solely on cable.

Most of the day, Channel 2 consisted of a camera showing a mechanical bulletin board which changed every half minute or so. Integrated into the board was a digital clock and a thermometer showing the outside temperature. At about 5pm most weekdays, Channel 2 got busy with local programming and Tennant Hoey was in charge of that programming. There was news coverage in the form of a live newscast, there was coverage of Chillicothe High and Bishop Flaget High sports (Football and Basketball), as well as live coverage of Chillicothe City Council meetings. Yes, it was all in Black and White using cameras which weighed a ton, but at the same time, it was cutting edge television. It was only later, after cable television came into markets where a goodly number of households could just as easily content themselves with matter which was broadcast, that what was being done at Channel 2 back in the mid to late '60s was the predictor of Community Access Television.

This 17 year old went to Tennant Hoey in the fall of 1971 and pitched the idea of a television show highlighting the goings on at Chillicothe High School to be 'aired' once every two weeks. My boldness not only got me the televsion show, but it also landed me with a job as a camera operator.

I ended up with a few other jobs around Channel 2 as well, including mailman, lighting technician (okay, all I did was flip the occasional switch), booth announcer, floor director... I was a regular "Jack of All Trades". Of the other High School kids there at the time, I was perhaps the only one to have worked on both sides of the camera.

Three events became defining moments of my Senior year at CHS.

The first was having the gall to type out a letter (with a green ribbon no less) to Governor John Gilligan inviting him to appear on the TV show I was, I guess, producing. He accepted, he showed up, and a good time was had by all. 1972 Arrow, page 94, center picture. Governor Gilligan later ended up doing something for the Carter administration, Jane, Nancy and Jeff appear from time to time on my Facebook page, and I really have no idea what happened to Tim.

Second was the shilling I did as Dracula on behalf of our Senior Class Play. Somewhere on this blog I have told the story of Channel 2 newscaster Gene Minney greeting me with the phrase "Why, of corpse!" ever since, the last time being in July of 2009...

Finally, there was the telethon. "Rusty" Mundell had this idea that somehow or another an outdoor drama about an Indian named Tecumseh would be a good thing for the community. So did a few other people. So, a telethon was held to purchase seats to use as seed money to build an amphitheater on the back side of Sugarloaf Mountain... and I was there. "Rusty" was right... and it was Tennant Hoey who helped to pull the local media together to give "Tecumseh!" the boost it needed to get started.

Eventually, Channel 2 was sold, something about the FCC not wanting cross-ownership of a telephone company and a cable company in the same community, and Tennant moved over to the phone company along with a few other people who had worked at Channel 2 at the time I worked there. I like to think that some of my subtle sense of humor came from Tennant Hoey. I appreciated him. He never raised his voice, he was open to new ideas and all in all, he was, perhaps, one of the best people I have ever worked for. Some of my fellow workers called him "Whip". Other than being in charge of a neat little operation on East Water Street, there was no reason to equate him with anyone who would be a stern task master.

He was one of the nice guys. I am sorry to see him go. Rest well, Tennant.


Be Seeing You!