The aftereffects

The iconic, original WTVR TV station ID slide that celebrated the station's pioneer status continued in use for several years after I left. It had passionate adherents and equally fervent detractors. Personally, I liked it, although I think it should have been updated to reflect a more modern design sensibility.

My friend Walter, in a comment on my last post about being fired as news director at WTVR TV, asked what effect the event had on me and whether my interpretation of it had changed over the years.

Being fired had a devastating effect on me. It meant I had to change careers, and change is always difficult. In this case, change worked out for the best, as have, come to think of it, most major changes in my life. In retrospect, being fired was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

It didn't take long, however, for my interpretation of the event to evolve. At first, I took what happened at face value. I screwed up. The buck stopped with me. That was it.

And I still don't know that this was not a totally correct interpretation.

But there were two other factors that might have come into play, and I don't know for certain whether they did. Senator Byrd and the then-owner of WTVR, Roy H. Park, were professional cronies. I don't know -- and probably will never know -- whether there was a phone call from Byrd to Park in which Byrd expressed his anger (he was, in fact, very angry, or so I was told by his press secretary) and a desire to see me pay for the mistake I made.

Also unknown to me is the role, if any, that my sexual orientation played. As I recounted earlier, I had come out years earlier to the station's manager before accepting the job as news director. He was comfortable with having a gay man in charge of the news department, but his comfort was not shared by the entirety of the staff. The station's program director, John Shand, was known for mercilessly harassing members of the staff he suspected were gay. He never once aimed any barbs in my direction, but there were other staff members whom he publicly humiliated -- frequently. There was one member of my own staff in the newsroom who openly expressed his distaste for working for a gay man. I suggested that he might be more comfortable elsewhere, but he decided that he'd rather keep his job and thenceforth kept his mouth shut.

In the early 1970s, coming out was a much bigger deal than it is today. As far as I know, I was the first broadcast journalist in the city to come out at work. It generated a lot of talk, some behind my back, although there were a number of open, friendly, questions aimed my way, which were followed by what I saw as healthy discussions. I never felt that my sexual orientation put my job in jeopardy.

Did either of these factors play into management's decision to fire me? I don't know. I do know, speaking as a journalist, that there was ample reason to fire me. I accepted that then, and I have no reason today to think I lost my job for any hidden reason. Unless I somehow learn otherwise -- and I doubt that I will, given the number of years that have passed -- I take what happened at face value.

Perhaps that's a sign of naiveté. If it be such, I am happier than I would be did I subscribe to a theory involving a darker scenario.

Pure fun on a Saturday

Isaac, I and Walter on our Segways during a stop at the American Civil War Center at Tredegar.

I'm going to interrupt this linear narrative for a moment to talk about Saturday's Segway tour of Richmond. It was the most fun I've had since ... well ... the last time I took a Segway tour.

My lifelong friend Walter and I met up in Washington, D.C., last Memorial Day weekend. Walter took the train down from Connecticut, where he lives, and I took the train up from Richmond. We took a Segway tour of the city one afternoon, and I was quite taken by the experience. When I learned that Walter was coming to Richmond last weekend, the first thing I suggested was taking a Segway tour of some of Richmond's historic spots. We took Isaac, who is the son of a good friend of ours, with us.

Segways couldn't be easier to ride. An intricate system of gyroscopes, computers and motors keeps the Segway upright. To go forward, all you have to do is lean slightly forward. It works the same way if you want to go in reverse: just lean back slightly. To steer, you use the handlebars. Segways are driven by battery-powered electric motors and can go as fast as 12.5 miles per hour. (Yes, we put them to the test. In Washington, Walter and I tried speed-racing up and down the closed-off portion of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.)

Isaac took to the Segway like a duck takes to water. Despite some trepidation on the part of his mother -- who couldn't accompany us on the tour because of a minor stress fracture in her foot -- Isaac was clearly more at home on his Segway than anybody else on the tour, easily achieving a no-hands balance standing still and fearlessly tackling Richmond's bumpy cobblestone streets.

Having a 12-year-old along with us made the tour even more enjoyable. He truly enjoyed himself and told Walter and me after the tour that he wanted to buy one of his own.

It's always good to see old friends, and the weekend with Walter, Isaac and Isaac's mother, Sally, was a treat. I look forward to the day when Walter comes back to Richmond again and he, Isaac and I can repeat a great weekend experience -- this time with Sally along for a Segway tour too.

The revelation

In a column published Feb. 3, 1992, the Times-Dispatch revisited the story of WTVR TV's erroneous report of the death of Senator Harry Byrd Jr., this time with an ending.

Ultimately, I found out it was the schmuck who did it.

And that sentence works on two levels.

If you've been following this narrative, you'll remember my previous blog about the viewer who was upset because WTVR's movie critic used the word "schmuck" in a review of "The Dirty Duck."

That was in 1974.

In 1978, I was fired after WTVR TV, at my direction, aired what turned out to be an erroneous report of the death of U.S. Senator Harry Byrd Jr. of Virginia.

In 1982, I found out why -- and how -- it had all happened.

By then I had been at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for four years, and I was thoroughly enjoying my new job.

I was alone in my office in the communications division one early afternoon when the telephone rang. It turned out to be one of the most chilling calls I've ever had. The man on the other end of the line had called to gloat.

"I want you to know that I was the one who made that call," he said. I knew right away that he was referring to the hoax call about the death of Senator Byrd.

He went on to say his company was transferring him to another city and that he couldn't leave Richmond without letting me know he had cost me my job. He wanted to brag to me about bringing me down.

I was so stunned by the revelation that I just listened and let him talk. He rambled on, telling me why he had done it. He said he was the viewer who had complained because we used the word "schmuck" on the air in 1974. He was still seething with anger because I had refused to apologize. "That's why I got you fired," he said.

He said he had tracked me down at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts after he had seen me doing a museum promotional interview on television -- ironically, on WTVR. "I just wanted you to know that I got you after all. I wanted you to talk to the guy who got you."

I still hadn't said anything to him, but I had broken out into a cold sweat. At the time of the hoax, nobody had known who did it or why. The station and even the Commonwealth's Attorney's office in Richmond had investigated but had come up empty. The hoax had a major impact on my life, prompting a complete career change, and here I was, four years later, learning for the first time why it had happened.

When he stopped talking, I thanked him. "You did me the biggest favor of my life," I said.

And he had. What I said was no snappy comeback. It was sincere. I loved my job at the museum. It satisfied me in ways that nurtured my creativity and broadened my view of the world. I was challenged and I was content.

My response befuddled him into silence. At the same time my old reporter's instincts kicked in. "Would you mind telling me who you are?" He refused. "What kind of job is taking you out of the city?" He wouldn't tell me. "What city are you moving to?" He hung up.

I remember sitting there after the call ended, my mind reeling. An anonymous call had finally explained the story behind the story that had led to such astonishing changes in my life. At long last, I had the full picture of what had happened.

Over the next few days, as I digested this new information, I realized that the angry viewer should never have succeeded. He had cleared so many hurdles in his quest for revenge. His hoax call had been taken by the newest reporter on our staff. She had neglected to verify the information. I had made baseless assumptions. By all rights, his hoax should have failed. He wasn't clever. He was lucky.

And I realized that in the long run, so was I.

The aftermath

The staff of the WTVR news department sent me a card after I was fired. It was signed by each photographer, reporter and anchor. It meant a great deal to me to know that the people most intimately knowledgeable about the details of my leaving the station were supportive.

I did exactly what I said I would do: In the two weeks after I was fired from WTVR, I celebrated the holidays with my family while also assessing my future.

Now that 33 years have passed, I can say those two weeks were probably the scariest times of my life. In fact, it's safe to say I was terrified -- primarily by the unknown. I was 35 years old, and I had to decide what to do with the rest of my professional life. I don't know that I could have come through it without support from my family, friends and even my former staff. Everybody offered advice. But nobody -- myself included -- held out much hope that I'd soon find another job in journalism in Richmond.

So what did I have going for me? Well, I was a writer, and I knew how to work in television. But I couldn't figure out how I'd be able to make either or both of those things work for me.

What I briefly lost sight of was the professional connections I had made during the course of my 15 years at WTVR. The term "networking" had not yet come into common use in the late 1970s, but that's what worked for me. It didn't hurt one bit that everybody in Richmond who watched TV or read a newspaper knew that I was unemployed.

My mind was still in a turmoil when the phone rang in early January. The call was from the United Way of Greater Richmond. The organization wanted to use television to recruit volunteers -- not with public service announcements but with a telethon. Their plan was to produce a three-hour live program to originate at the studios of WCVE TV, Richmond's public broadcasting station, and to be simulcast on WWBT TV, the local NBC affiliate. They offered me a three-month job producing the show. Two personal connections had led them to center on me. The woman in charge of the project for the United Way was a friend of my sister's, and the United Way board member who was overseeing the project had been my freshman English professor at the University of Richmond. They offered to pay me $5,000 for 90 days' work. I accepted without reservation.

We did some interesting work on that telethon. We centered on a handful of Richmonders who believed that volunteerism had enriched their lives. They ranged in age from young people to seniors, and their volunteer jobs encompassed a wealth of activities. A teenager was a member of a volunteer rescue squad. A young professional helped veterans at McGuire VA Hospital. A senior was a driver for Meals on Wheels. A young woman was a clown who entertained children with life-threatening diseases.

I developed the program as a series of in-depth videotaped feature stories to be interspersed with live interviews with local celebrities, dignitaries and United Way officials about the values of volunteering. I persuaded local TV anchors and personalities to serve as on-camera hosts.

The program, the theme of which was Making a Difference, turned out to be successful, and the telethon's phone bank took more than 1,000 calls from people who wanted to volunteer. (The United Way was so pleased by the results that they called me back a year later to produce another telethon.)

While I was producing the live program, I was also scrambling to find a permanent job. I had been to seek advice from the chief of the Associated Press Virginia bureau one afternoon in early March. As I left the building, I ran into a colleague and friend who worked for the city's radio-news powerhouse. We chatted on the street for a few minutes, and she told me that she had heard that the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was looking for a writer for its public affairs department. The chief PR person for the museum was a man who had worked for me when I was editor of the University of Richmond student newspaper in the early 1960s.

After a series of interviews with him, his boss and the museum's director, I was hired. I started work at VMFA the week after the United Way telethon aired in 1978. I stayed at VMFA until last month. That job opened my eyes to a field I had never even given a thought to: the fine arts. As I told a museum colleague on the day I left work for the last time, it was a great ride, a great education and one of the most satisfying times of my life.

The end of my broadcast career

This clip is from the News Leader on Dec. 20, 1977.

WTVR TV station manager Jack Mahoney asked for my resignation on Monday morning, Dec. 19, 1977. I refused. I figured if I was going to go, he'd have to fire me. At least then I'd be eligible for unemployment insurance.

So Jack fired me. He told me to clean out my desk, hand over my keys to the car that the station had provided, and go away.

I asked if there would be any severance pay. "No," he answered. He stuck out his hand for me to shake. I told him I had great respect for him, but that I didn't feel that it was appropriate for me to shake hands with someone who'd just fired me without severance pay. I could tell that my refusal upset him.

I went down to the newsroom, which was empty except for Jane Gardner, who was getting ready to anchor the noon newscast in about 2 hours. All of the reporters and photographers were already on the streets. I told her I had been fired and began to pack up my belongings in a cardboard box. Then I realized I didn't have a car any more, so I'd have to walk home -- a distance of about a mile. Carrying a cardboard box. Somehow, the prospect made the end seem even more pathetic.

With the grace that had always been her hallmark, Jane offered to drive me home. She'd have to leave the newsroom empty, which was something we never did during the daytime. But she insisted, and I accepted.

When I got home, I stashed the cardboard box in a closet, called my family to tell them what had happened, and spent the rest of the day puttering around the apartment. I didn't really know what else to do. I watched Jane anchor the noon newscast, but there was no mention of my firing.

In the middle of the afternoon, Jack's secretary called to say he had changed his mind about severance pay. The offer was for two weeks, and a check would be mailed to me.

At 6 p.m., my firing was the lead story on "News/90." Right after the report aired, my phone began ringing. Every time I hung up from one call, it would ring again. Friends, viewers, professional colleagues -- they all wanted to know how I was doing and what my plans were. Plans? I didn't have any. How was I doing? I was still in shock.

People in the business understood clearly what had happened. The buck stopped at my desk. The station had done what it had to do to regain its credibility.

But friends and viewers didn't understand. Over and over I heard people say, "You've been there since the early 1960s and they fired you for making one mistake?" Yep, they did. But the mistake was huge.

Then came the calls from reporters at the Times-Dispatch and the News Leader. I told them I was going to take some time to regroup. I also said this would be the first Christmas during which I'd be able to spend more time with my family. That was the kind of quote they were looking for, and it featured prominently the next day.

The next few days were a blur. The phone kept ringing non-stop. A friend who owned a Dodge dealership brought me a car and told me to use it at no cost until I got back on my feet. The manager of the Holiday Inn across the street from the station offered me a job in public relations. A group of Episcopal ministers from Richmond called to say how unfairly they thought I'd been treated and to announce that they'd be picketing the station. A radio station in Roanoke and a TV station in Norfolk called to offer me jobs. I said thanks, but no thanks. I wanted to stay in Richmond.

Two days later, both papers ran letters to the editor, all castigating WTVR. Friends suggested that perhaps the station would reverse its decision, but I knew that would never happen. It had begun to dawn on me that there might be a subtext to the story: I had made Harry Byrd Jr. very angry, and he was a crony of the man who owned WTVR.

In the years since, I have often wondered why Byrd didn't use Mark Twain's famous line, delivered after the New York Journal had erroneously printed his obituary: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," he said.

Christmas 1977 did turn out to be a good holiday season. I spent more time with friends and family. And gradually, the telephone stopped ringing constantly. When it did, it was usually a close friend on the other end of the line. They looked after me at a time when I needed it.

One of the calls I took over the holidays was from the young reporter who had taken the hoax call. She told me she was going to resign because she didn't think it was fair that I had been fired and she hadn't. I spent almost an hour persuading her not to give up her career. "It makes no sense for both of us to be unemployed," I told her.

(Within a year, she did resign. She went to law school and is now a very well-respected attorney in Richmond.)

Here's a tip based on what happened to me. If you're going to get fired, it helps if it makes front-page news: Everybody will know you need a job.

A week after Christmas a casual acquaintance -- a friend of my sister's -- threw me a lifeline. She had a television project for me, and it would pay well. More on that next time.

The error

Harry F. Byrd Jr. is at the far right. The woman in the photo is his wife, Gretchen. On the far left is Harry F. Byrd Sr. The man in uniform is the junior Byrd's son, Thomas Byrd. (Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Virginia)

My career in broadcast journalism started to unravel fast at 6:15 p.m. on December 16, 1977. I was in the WTVR TV master control room for the first portion of "News/90." In the studio, Ken Srpan and Bob Beaudreaux were anchoring.

A young woman reporter, a recent hire, was assigned to stay in the newsroom to monitor the other TV station's newscasts, the AP wires and the police radios. She called me on the intercom to say that Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr. had been killed in an automobile crash on his way home from Washington, D.C. She said a spokesman for the senator had telephoned with the news from a hospital in Winchester.

My first thought was that this was truly a major news story that would have both political and emotional dimensions in Virginia. "Get what you can on paper fast and bring it me in the control room," I told her. Within 90 seconds, she was standing breathlessly beside me with a short bulletin in script form. The broadcast had just gone to a commercial, so I gave a copy to the director, and ran to the studio with copy for the two anchors just as the commercial break was ending.

I forget which of the anchors read the bulletin on the air, but I'll never forget the words. "Here is a bulletin just in to WTVR news. U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr. has been killed in an automobile accident, according to a spokesman for the senator speaking from a hospital in Winchester. The crash happened as Byrd was on his way home from Washington for the weekend. We'll have more details as soon as they become available."

The Byrd family name was legion in Virginia. Harry F. Byrd Jr. had been a U.S. senator since 1965. His father had held the seat before him. Harry F. Byrd, Sr. had been a commanding figure in Virginia politics for much of the first half of the 20th century. He was elected governor in 1925, then a U.S. senator in 1933, and led a still-dominant conservative faction that was known as the Byrd Machine. Harry F. Byrd Jr. was also a crony of the man who owned WTVR TV, Roy H. Park.

We repeated that first brief bulletin a few minutes later, just before the Walter Cronkite CBS news at 6:30. We promised more details in the 7 p.m. potion of "News/90."

I was already plotting coverage of the story. I started grabbing reporters and photographers as I headed down to the basement newsroom. I gathered the staff around my desk and began making assignments. The two anchors would work the phones to get more details for the 7 o'clock broadcast. I dispatched a crew to the Governor's Mansion for reaction. I sent another crew to Winchester and assigned a third team to contact state political leaders for reaction.

The reporter who was about to make the drive to Winchester asked me if Byrd's body was still at the hospital. I turned to the reporter who had taken the call and asked. She didn't know. "What's the call-back number for the senator's spokesman?" I asked. She told me she didn't have one.

That's when the bottom dropped out of my stomach. It was a basic tenet in journalism that you get a call-back number from somebody who telephones with major news. Then you call them back to verify that they were who they said they were. My new reporter, barely out of college, hadn't done that. Nobody, including me, had taught her that.

I ran for the AP teletypes to see if they had moved a story about Byrd. Nothing. I told the young reporter to telephone the Winchester hospital and see if she could verify the story. I told a production assistant to call the state police to verify the accident. The two anchors who were already working the phones were coming up empty. Every phone in the newsroom was now ringing as the AP, the local dailies and other TV stations were calling us to verify our story.

One of the anchors got through to Senator Byrd's press secretary at his home. He was appalled when he learned what we had reported. He knew for a fact that Senator Byrd was very much alive. The hospital in Winchester was also denying that Byrd had even been there that day, alive or dead.

I called all the crews back to the station and sat down at my desk to write what we knew. My first job was a two-sentence "crawl" to run at the bottom of the screen right then, while the Cronkite news was still on the air: "We are unable to confirm our report of the death of Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr.," it said. It ran at about 6:40 p.m., about 20 minutes after our first bulletin.

A few minutes later I ratcheted in another sheet of paper to write the lead story for the 7 p.m., newscast. "WTVR news and WTVR news director Don Dale apologize to you, our viewers, and to Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr., for our erroneous report during the 6 p.m. broadcast about the senator's death. A spokesman for the senator confirms that the senator is alive, and our report was wrong."

It would be the last story I would ever write for WTVR TV.

I watched the 7 p.m. newscast in numb silence in the newsroom. When it ended, I telephoned the station manager. He was not at home, but I left a message for him.

I knew then -- and now -- that the erroneous report on "News/90" was my fault. I had not asked the right questions of the young reporter who had taken the hoax call. I had acted too quickly during the heat of a live broadcast. As a journalist, I had made a bad mistake.

That was on a Friday night. On Saturday, the hoax was the lead story on the AP wire and in the newspapers. The furor continued on Monday morning, when I got an early call from the station manager's secretary asking me to report to his office right away.