Vermont Report; Interview with Jack Barry

Well he was just four years old when it all began. Jack Berry lived under the you d the radio in Waterbury. A show that marked the beginning of what was to be come Vermont's most recognized career in broadcasting a voice and a face recognized statewide that debut was in 1930 and it was the first of many very broadcast from Barry's hometown. He did radio at Waterbury high school and after graduation took his familiar voice to the U.S. Navy working for Armed Forces Radio in this country and in the South Pacific. Is commercial radio career began in 1948. It's a very to various stations throughout Burlington New Jersey Pennsylvania Iowa and Delaware. Next a brief stint at Vermont educational television before heading to Washington to serve as press secretary to Senator Patrick Leahy. Barry returned to Vermont two years later and has been here ever since with dual career. He is known as the dean of talk radio. I'm LIVE Jack bury him had been burned by Burlington area listeners for 11 years and will return once again statewide in January. But perhaps he is most

recognized in this venue such a crock of state's trade and those items are now the master of ceremonies behind the TV option. What about those three Peter they have been the point man in weekly discussions of state news events. And finally the host of Vermont report a weekly interview program that has brought a host of guests into Vermont home and from local and state experts to national and international dignitaries. Now however that part of Barry's career is about to come to a close. I'm Jack Berry thank you so much for watching good night everybody. It's time to retire. Time for Barry to say good night to his viewers. One last time. Good evening and welcome to Vermont report I'm obviously not Jack Berry but I am Bridget Berry. Some of you may know me from WCAU X TV I'm usually there as a news reporter but tonight I'm on temporary assignment as your host and tonight I have a very special guest for you.

My dad Jack Barry. Let me begin with an explanation I should probably tell you that my father had no idea that this show was about to take place. He didn't find out until about 15 minutes ago when he finished taping what he thought was his final Vermont report but surprise Dad you've been saying for months that we have to do a TV program together while your colleagues here at Romani TV they would surprise you with that opportunity so welcome to Vermont report. BRIDGET. First of all thanks to my colleagues I really wanted to have the opportunity to chat with you here on Ramadi TV and I thought maybe on Vermont this week just didn't work out with the way everything was coming together news wise that I had that opportunity. But I have to tell you in all sincerity of that I can't I can't think of

anyone that I would rather have with me on my absolutely last Vermont TV program. Thank you. You're welcome. I think we need to begin to and I think people are wondering how you feel about retiring what you are going to do. Well everybody has said to me you're too young to retire lots and lots of my friends say that and they're probably right. And I have been getting people by saying I couldn't let my wife get up every morning and go to work or she wouldn't let me stay in bed while she got up and went to work. So it is worked out that I am going to have a radio show I'm going back on the radio with. Guest call in program which probably before too very long will cover most of the state of Vermont. So I'm looking forward to that it's interesting that at my age I could start a brand new enterprise and that's what makes life very very exciting and I look forward to it tremendously. How do you want to go back to the radio but how do you feel about leaving TV. Oh I have very mixed feelings about this. I had such wonderful years here.

I started here in the early 70s late 1969 or early 70 as a volunteer not answering telephones or things like that but there was an awful lot of money around and I had the capability of doing interviews and moderating programs and so Jake Dunlop and Ray Philips invited me to come to Ramadi TV and do that which I did I was tremendously pleased to have that opportunity and then I was in radio and had the opportunity to come here 973 to be a broadcaster and to do the programs that I did. When you talk about radio that began a long long time ago the sound the beginning piece that you were on the air when you were four years old. That's right I did I was on the first broadcast of W DV in Waterbury. My mother your grandmother used to get me dolled up in a little black suit a velvet suit with a little Eton collar. And I would go around to the women's clubs and one thing and another and do recitations and you know I had theatre in my blood as you did very very very

very early on. And so I was invited by Harry Whitehill who was the owner of Devi to come and do a little recitation. And I wrote read a poem that was written for me by a barber in Waterbury and I'll never forgot which I remembered all of that arc and find it. But the little. The opening line was this is Little Jackie Barry coming through the air and it went on from there. I've heard that several. Not sure you have. What was it dad though that got you into it what was it that you loved about radio that kept you in it. Well we were my mother my father and I were radio buffs we listen to radio I can remember listening to programs out of Charlotte North Carolina late at night the nightmare of Charlotte. And I don't know what it was but I just have always had this radio bug. From the time I was eight or nine or ten years old and I used to go to WBEZ with Jake Diehl who is a sports broadcaster and I was crazy about the New York Giants I was a mellow baseball fan and the baseball scores came in on the

Western Union teletype and occasionally Jake would let me read the New York Giants line score on the radio. And so that was great fun and that that really had me hooked. Then rusty Parker the late rusty Parker who was you know just one of the great Vermont broadcasters of all time and another classmate of mine by the name John Woods we produced and did a. High school radio show we broadcast half an hour from our weekly assembly and this is back in 1900 243 of 43 44. And Rusty was the engineer did all that we sold the program bought the telephone lines and we would have musical groups we would have teacher student discussions. I did a sportscaster and it was it was really wonderful so from that time on we were all hooked and rusty and John and I all wound up in the radio business. I do want to talk about all of that this sports the Play by Play that you did over the years. I want to talk about your mother Grammy a little bit. She had a great influence

on your life. She was a journalist as well. She was. She really did. My father had studied journalism at Villanova as well so I mean he he was involved in it too. Then he went on to become a chiropractor and later a postmaster in Waterbury and then in lots of ways he helped my mother but my mother was a self-taught woman she went to school. She was in the second graduating class here at Cathedral High School in Burlington. And she worked a very couple of very very prominent enterprises here Girard Baking Company McKenzie packing company whatever and she was kind of a secretary and I don't know what motivated her and never. I don't just don't remember what got her started but she started writing a personal column you know the Waterbury column for the old Burlington Daily News. And she also. WM-Oh owned the paper and Charlie Weaver who may be watching this program over in the Northeast Kingdom and Bob Crone and Rick Mark cotta and Jerry EGL and Bert Langley some wonderful

people at the Daily News really kind of took her under the wing but she had an innate sense of knew was she really knew what was news she knew how to report and how to do it. And as a matter of fact she became a feature writer and I can't remember the year but it was in the 40s. She won a headliners of the year award for the old Burlington Daily News for a series of articles that she did on the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury which was kind of a snake that at that time and through her efforts I think largely the state of Vermont recognized that it was a problem there they built new buildings and the treatment. Patients at that hospital changed drastically. What do you think that she would think of your career now if she were still alive. Well that's the one on happiness really that I have that she didn't have a chance to see my career really in broadcasting or television either for that matter she was very proud. I thought about it when I went to work for Pat Leahy that my mother would be so proud that I was in the news business and I was one of 100 people

press secretaries for United States senator. I knew that would have pleased her a great deal because she was in television too she worked for Jay Sullivan at Channel 3 prior Mickey Gallagher prior def Parsons prior. You know she was an incredible woman. She bought a speed graphics camera and learned how to use it and she covered all this news from around central Vermont. And she would go take pictures and and put them on the bus or on transit to Burlington go down to channel 3 develop the pictures and I'd be on the air that night which was unheard of the things that that she was doing at that time and she worked. She later worked for the Burlington Free Press but when I was in high school I can remember as a kid she was a stringer for the Boston Globe in the old New York Herald Tribune. And so when there was big new was in in central Vermont. All these big city reporters would be clustered in our kitchen you know and inhaling a few beverages. And it was a smoke filled room and I thought to myself wow it was

just so iconic I grew up with fraternizing and the broadcast nut. You know it's nice to be able to say it's their generation. JOURNALIST Well I'm very proud of that project I'm very proud that you have come into this field and I know that you got a chance to go and talk to kids in school occasionally even as I do. It's an honorable profession and a very good one. And without the Fourth Estate we'd all be in big trouble so I hope your career is long and pleasant and that you get to achieve the things that give you as much satisfaction as my career is given to me. Well let's get back to your career. Sure. Where did you go after high school in your initial radio programs I've heard stories over the years about Philadelphia and sock hops and all kinds of different things that you did not just in news. Well I've had the wonderful variety of things in broadcasting. I started out at I was an Armed Forces Radio in the South Pacific. During the war I was in the Navy and I was at an A We talk and with a station called W. XLE

Armed Forces Radio. I got a chance to go to Guam during the Central Pacific basketball championships and during the war they had the best basketball players in the world out there. And Marty Glickman the famous voice of Madison Square Garden was there and I had the temerity to approach him and say Could I sit with you and study how you do play by play basketball. And he was pleased to do that. And so when I came back I went to St. Michael's College for a time and then I went to jail why 948 may have one hundred forty eight at the end of the year in the fall of the year Al spoke says to me can you do. He was the manager of the station. Can you do play by play sports and I said Sure I can do basketball anyway so I started out doing basketball at Memorial Auditorium sitting beside the late Whitey Killick whose son later became a spectacular basketball player at UVM. Well that was the start of it I had the Marty Glickman style. And I became an instant hit in Burlington and I did wound up doing all kinds of play by play sports football baseball

basketball hockey boxing wrestling horse racing. It's I've had a real go round at sports and I did that for a long long time it did University Vermont and St. Michael's football and basketball I did all the local high school sports and so which I really love. So there are still a lot of people around this area that you have shared many memories with people that you were involved in in radio when you play by play sport. Oh sure. You know the coaches here all of them the late doc Jacobs and fuzzy Evans and so many others at Donnelly the athletic director at UVM Denny Lambert and and the coaches through the years. You know there's something about sports radio which is absolutely spectacular. There's that there's a wonderful camaraderie there's a kind of a feeling. Matter of fact I'm going to host a satellite broadcast St. Michael's College is going to be a satellite one of their basketball games to alumni chapters all over the United States. And I'm going to have the great

pleasure of acting as the master of ceremonies for that program so they get me back in the sports that way but. But sports was wonderful I loved it it was my main objective for many many years. And I guess until and but I did a lot of news I worked in New. I wrote new is I edited news I was news director broadcast and it was done every conceivable kind of disaster that you can imagine here in Burlington airplane crashes and fires and homicides and you know you name it. And I've had access to it so the new is was always something that I tremendously enjoyed. You talked about moving on I left Burlington I went to Trenton New Jersey TTM and I replaced Ernie Kovacs there when when he went to Philadelphia television and did the morning program there and then eventually I went to Philadelphia myself. I banged around the country with a program called home town America I worked in places like Altoona Pennsylvania. And came back to Philadelphia where I was mostly a newscaster but I had my own a couple of record

programs standing room only once was a Broadway musical show and then I created a program called the Patton Jack Show which was a woman's program but not like the woman's program. Women's programs of those days were a little different. I think my memories of your career probably go back to 1973 though when you joined Vermont ATV I mean I'll obviously remember when I was a small child and I was probably eight or nine then. How did you get into television and how did that change your career that's obviously there's some different talents involved in that. When I was at Wilmington Delaware I did programs for Georgetown University I used to host in the old black and white days. Some of the major professors at Georgetown University they would come up to the television station and I would have astronomers and mathematicians and philosophers. And one thing and another and I would do interview programs with these people and of course that's where I also got into the business of talk shows with the late Joe Pyne when Joe

Klein was on vacation. I filled in to the program and boy when I got my teeth on a talk radio that was really it for me. The fondest memories here at Romani TV were any interviews that well I can remember one fond memory Bridget that you were involved in. I remember you came to work. Yes. I came to work one day and you came to work with me you remember that what I'm going to tell everyone you haven't let me forget to ever let you forget it. Jake Dunlop and I were here one Saturday afternoon fundraising and Bridget came to him to work with me and and I don't really recall how it started but Jake said something about a singing and Bridget's just saying and so we put Bridget who was about oh I think I was eight or nine or nine yeah put her on a stool and she sang acappella without accompaniment. You're so vain. And I thought Bridget Well this is the start of your show but I don't think you did very well fundraising that.

I don't know anybody I'm going to have another child and contribute a lot of money in your name Bridget was wonderful but any any interviews that stand out in your mind I know they're just too numerous to count. Well gosh I through the years I've interviewed so many thousands of people radio and television that it's hard to say. I have people that I tremendously enjoyed interviewing Jihan said Dot. I think that that program will stick out in my mind because I had read her book. I had been to Egypt I had spent some time there and I knew a great and I've been also to Israel shortly before that so I understood a great deal more what was going on in the Mideast but I thought that she was one of the most remarkable women that that I could imagine in the world because of what she did for women in Egypt how she brought them out of the Dark Ages so to speak. And she was so gracious and so lovely here on this program that that will that one will really stand out in my mind but I've had some.

That the trip to Israel I was still working here brought back some great film I had a chance to talk with Shimon Peres about Eve on many of the other diplomats there Scully who is the new secretary general of the United Nations I had a chance to interview him but Vermonters I mean people Pat Leahy over the years Dick Snelling I always really enjoyed the interview and Dick's now and he and I got our juices in the visceral juices flowing every time we talk. I did a program just a couple of weeks ago with Gary Nelson Gary Nelson I had some wonderful political dialogues over the years. All the governors Dean Davis had some wonderful shows with him way back to Tom salmon and other politicians in the state of Vermont. I really love are mine and I really have enjoyed tremendously the opportunity to present here on public television so many people of prominence in a state that that's very true though the thing about that is special about Vermont is that people here really do care and I guess I feel that in my job as well that

people care about what's going on and what you do does have an impact and people are appreciative of the role that you've served. Well I've been here a long time and there's something to be said for longevity. I know everybody which is really nice and people have been just very good to me. I once worked for a guy used to say I'd rather be lucky than smart. And I think that's my case certainly. I've been very very fortunate I've been in the right place at the right time for so many things I've had here in the TV the opportunity to be here a long time and act as a producer and a host is just wonderful because I had a chance to have my life my fingers into everything. I would say that the proudest accomplishment I have here at Bronte TV is Vermont this week. Not this program but Friday night. I wanted to do that program for a long time and there was a long time when funding wasn't available for it. And so when the funding did become available for it I remember of the Allen

camp all of the Ramadi TV staff saying to me we've got to get into the program right away. So the program always was. That evening I'm Jack Berry with me tonight to discuss the top news stories in Vermont this week are and the reporters are there and bang right into the headlines and into the show. I think I'm very very proud of what that has done. It has become I think and this is no denigration of you or what happens with the other television stations in the area. But I think that it is unique in that every single week it is probably the best opportunity for people in the state of Vermont to find out what's happened in New was in-depth. Of the week. Well I know I have people tell me all over the state that oh we watch your dad every every Friday night and that show is wonderful. Do you feel any sadness. Well yes I do. How could you leave. You know particularly guys in the crew the people are behind the cameras and audio and directors. I think about

those guys as my great buddies men and women who through the years have been so good to me because you know they cover up my mistakes when I would screw up they would be you know very kindly reracked to the tape again and we'd started again and I never got any heat from them. So I love them madly and the opportunity to work with a great group of very congenial pleasant people in this building has been just outstanding It's a part of my life that's ending hopefully not totally because I'm going to come back and visit from time to time and but it's hard to separate really difficult. You talk about the crew helping you out and one of the most important times that they need to help you out is when you are on live. Yeah. And I guess that brings back to mind the Vermont ATV auction I can remember as a little girl Kathy and Maureen my sister's coming in here and helping out with the auction and it used to be a while it's turmoil and.

There are two things about the auction is that it is physically very demanding to be standing on your feet on the concrete floor for hour upon hour upon hour in the old days I used to do a lot more than I've done of recent vintage. But the effort of concentration to understand where you are what's going on to pay attention to the director and to pay attention to the producer and it's a it's a very very difficult chore but it's fun. I've always enjoyed it because I've met so many people talk with me over the years about boy we really liked the auction. Well it's funny because some friends of mine if they don't see Vermont this week over my report they would say oh yeah he's the guy. He's the guy on the ATV auction isn't a white hair in glasses so a lot of people actually know you for that. Yeah. Everywhere I've gone down in the past few weeks people have been telling me how much they're going to miss you on the air they'll be able to to hear you on the radio but people are going to miss you. And I actually got a letter from one Vermonter who asked that I give this to you and I'm going to read this to you.

Dear Jack on behalf of the people of the state of Vermont I want to thank you for your dedication to Ramani TV your commitment to providing quality television for Vermont is deeply appreciated. On a personal note Vermont this week is one of the few television programs I watch and it won't be the same without you. I wish you all the best. I am pleased that you are continuing your broadcast work on the radio and I hope I'll have the pleasure of being a guest on your show in the future. Sincerely Howard Dean. Well that's absolutely wonderful and I'm very grateful to the governor for those kind comments and I might tell our viewers that Governor Dean will be my first guest on my first radio broadcast on January 20th WBM t at 6:20 on the dial. That's all the plug. We have a few more minutes I guess I'd like to turn this to you. And what where you have seen changes in journalism and what your thoughts are on the future of journalism and in Vermont.

Well I think that Vermont is blessed with a wonderful press corps and I. They're very concerned they're very knowledgeable and that is very important. I'm distressed that some aspects of journalism and that there's there's a lot of turnover that the institutional memory which is so important to good reporting and I know that you have you worked at the free press and now you're channel 3 and you've been here doing in news for several years now and the memory and the files that are available to you and your understanding of who is here who is important who are the key players are is really terribly important. I do. I'm unhappy that we've lost the local aspect of it I mean I used to think about the Burlington Free Press and I used to needle or McLaurin J-Mac McClure occasionally and I used to call his paper the local daily which when I look at it now I would like to say that I wish I could still say things like that that I think that we've become a lot different that so much of our radio for example is satellited in. And there's not enough local radio. But I'm

going to be local radio. And I think that. That's the thing that I think has changed a great deal political coverage reporters used to cover all the candidates traipse around the state with them during. They don't do that anymore obviously because they don't have the dollars to do it. We have about a minute left. Your final thoughts on leaving What would you like to say to Vermonters in your last goodbye. Well I would hope that Vermonters would. Would think that as a journalist I've been fair. This program Vermont report has never been edited. It goes and what you see is what you got. We've never taken anything of this program out of context so that we misquoted or anything of that kind. So I hope that I would be considered as fair in the and the political arena doing the moderating the debate so I've tried to be a said you a slave. They are there and I have always

tried to do an interview that brought out what the guest had to say not what I had to say. There's a very unique experience for me. I've loved every single bit of it. I thank all of you for your wonderful attention to me and your kindnesses over the years. And that is the last word I'm sure Vermonters share my sentiment dad I'm wishing you much love and happiness and success in your retirement you've been a great service to the state. Thank you Bridget. That's it for this special edition of Vermont report. I'm Bridget Berry. Goodnight. World.