Don Welch was one of the characters that Fred Gault worked with during his TV career
I left The Times in 1969 after being lured back to WRCB-TV, Channel 3. The news director’s position was calling.
One of the first stories we covered that made the Nightly News on NBC with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley involved the famous Civil War locomotive, “The General”. The train carrying the locomotive was passing through Chattanooga on its way to Georgia. Just inside the city limits at the Wauhachie yards near the foot of Lookout Mountain, Mayor Ralph Kelley had the train halted by police.
Channel 3’s black and white film coverage of the train takeover was one of the network’s lead stories that night. In the late ‘60s, news-film was 16 mm black and white negative film, hand-processed at the station for the news. When the negative film was played back, the negative film was transformed into a positive or normal image. Later the exciting world of color film was introduced and, after being hand-processed for a while, a fancy processing machine was employed. A giant leap for coverage.
During the years I was at Channel 3 we supplied network coverage of the Jimmy Hoffa jury tampering trial here in Chattanooga. The trial went on for quite awhile before he was found guilty. U.S District Judge Frank Wilson, newly appointed two and half years earlier, guided the proceeding with skill, dignity and honor.
In May of 1971, singer Wilson Pickett failed to perform at the Memorial Auditorium touching off several nights of primarily racial rioting. Mayor Robert Kirk Walker called for a curfew and, after a few nights of the National Guard’s presence, the city became calm again.
During my second stay at Channel 3 we added such great talents as Don Welch and Allen Jones. Don Wick was the weather guru. One of our stringers outside Chattanooga was a young Darrell Patterson in Athens, Tn. He later joined WTVC-Channel 9 as Sports Director.
We were the first television station to employ an African-American reporter in the news department. Stan Coleman was a great talent who went on to work in Louisville, Ky., TV for years.
One tragedy Channel 3 covered in the ‘70s was the crash of news anchorman Mort Lloyd’s airplane near Manchester. Mort was the most popular television personality of the day. He was very likely to become the Democratic nominee for the Third Congressional District when the crash occurred.
While at Channel 3 we created “Action Line” - the city’s first consumer affairs program. It was a pretty radical innovation in the early ‘70s as viewers' problems and complaints with various vendors were actually solved. “Action Line” had teeth as we called names of companies and vendors who were misleading at best or cheating at worst their customers. The sales department was not happy.
During my years at Channel 3, the station was owned by Rust Craft, a greeting card company. Employees were so unhappy with their treatment; they joined the Teamsters Union and ultimately signed a contract with the company. This was totally unusual in local television markets.
Thank you to those who have written me about this series. See you again soon.
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Fred Gault can be reached at avfred@gmail.com