Yet even as he settled into news, Henry had another calling, a fascination with spiritual issues going back to those days at Central Catholic, and underscored by his time in Paraguay. Encountering terrible poverty there, he said, ''I knew early on how limited our usefulness would be.'' While trying to help others, he also tried to help himself. ''It was a desert experience for 21/2 years for me where I was left truly alone,'' he said. ''I had wholesale quantities of empty time on my hands in a very foreign place to consider at a very young age, who I was and why I existed.'' Asked why he didn't pursue spiritual work, he said, ''How do you know I didn't? ''It's the single, overriding concern, interest, pleasure — next to my wife Jody — pursuit, line of inquiry, Ph.D. challenge I could ever face. . . . The last great mystery in life is the pursuit of spiritual understanding. . . . I intend to just simply switch hats on May 20 and stop reporting on Cleveland and Akron news, and maybe be a journalist more than ever before, in pursuit of spiritual understanding.''
Paraguay RPCV Ted Henry prepares to sign off as WEWS newsman
Anchor Ted Henry prepares to sign off
WEWS newsman has 40 years of broadcasting memories
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Published on Sunday, May 17, 2009
Theodore Charles Henry Jr. will say goodbye to local viewers on Wednesday, as the Canton native steps down as news anchor of WEWS (Channel 5).
It will end more than 40 years in local broadcasting for Henry — ''Ted'' to his audience. He said he would like little or no fuss. ''If I could just walk away, I would be very, very happy,'' he said.
But, with his departure coming as the local ratings period ends, this is a promotable moment. There will be looks back at his career on Channel 5's evening newscasts tonight through Wednesday. And the station will air an hourlong Henry special on May 26, after he is gone and sweeps are done.
Hoopla is a news-and-entertainment constant, even in a business that has changed a great deal since he started as a producer at Channel 5 in 1972.
The 63-year-old newsman remembers when producing the news was ''much freer, much looser. . . . As much as we sometimes had internal struggles about what was being covered, and how, by our TV station, nobody ever once critiqued or criticized or edited my selection of stories [as producer] for the 11 o'clock news. . . . On any given night, I would have no problem ripping up the lineup of the news show, based on a young man's gut feeling.''
And now? ''It is akin to advanced bioscience in the way it is produced and analyzed. And I am not knocking it. There are time-tested, proven, formulaic principles . . . for what constitutes a good news program.''
Future of news
Asked whom he would like to succeed him, he said, ''The business is changing so quickly now, I frankly don't know what type of individual would be the most likely to succeed. . . . [Former Channel 5 executive] Don Perris told me before he retired — this was back in the mid-'80s — that the day was coming quickly when there would be two or one TV stations in Northeast Ohio doing news. He was off by a couple decades, but it's coming.''
Henry believes Channel 5 will be the last one standing. But even as Henry looks toward a new chapter in life, he still remembers the love he has for broadcasting.
''I've had it in my blood to be in broadcasting since I was 7, watching our first TV set,'' he said. He recalled seeing commentator Dorothy Fuldheim and ''I think it was that live-wire, live television, unrehearsed, spontaneous emission from the gut and the heart that was really attractive to me.''
And a thing apart from what Ted Sr. had dreamed of for his son.
''My dad always wanted to give me the hardware store,'' Henry said. ''Lake B&S [Briggs & Stratton] Hardware in Hartville. Before that it was Lincoln Hardware in Canton. And I worked in the store until I got into broadcasting. But he knew my heart was in broadcasting. He knew that was what I wanted to do, that I begrudgingly worked in the hardware store.''
The elder Henry opened the door for Ted's future career when ''a salesman came around from [former local station] WTOF. . . . It was called the Tower of Faith, 24-hour religious programming, with commercials, from Canton. . . . [Ad time] was $3 a minute. I'm fuzzy, it was either a three-week or nine-week contract, three times a day in drive time. . . . [The store was in the] middle of Amish country. We didn't get too many people listening to the radio there. So anyway, the provision was, if I got to do the commercial, he would buy the contract. And I was so bad, they fired us.''
Henry struggled to find a way to capture what he saw in Fuldheim. ''Not that I could do it. I couldn't. In my case, I was one of the shyest, most easily embarrassed young boys I've ever known. . . . I was so self-conscious.''
At Central Catholic High School, he said ''the brothers would take me aside and say, 'You ought to be a brother. You ought to be a priest.' '' (''I was far too interested in girls,'' he said.)
It wasn't until he was in college that, with help from local radio man Jerry Immel and Kent State theater teacher William Zucchero, he was able to overcome his stage fright — mainly by taking a host of theater courses at Kent.
Radio and later TV work followed, as well as a stint in the Peace Corps in Paraguay. He finally made it to the anchor chair at Channel 5 in 1975, when John Hambrick left the station. But it took some doing.
Anchor job
He first approached the station after his stint with the Peace Corps — for an ad sales job. Ed Cervenak, then station manager, later told Henry that — with his Che Guevara mustache and cheap clothes — ''we sort of laughed you out of the building.'' But Cervenak kept Henry in mind for other jobs, brought him back in the news operation and eventually elevated him to co-anchor with Dave Patterson.
''The search for John's replacement had me sort of as a token — translate 'least expensive.' And there were some good guys from around the country . . . but I got it.''
''I was very nervous for quite a while,'' he said of anchoring. Henry even thought about getting into station management. But Perris — then the top man at Channel 5's parent company, and one of Henry's mentors — told him, ''You are in management. You are managing the very sensitive and fragile career of a TV anchorman. There's no more management skills I require of you other than to hold onto your job.''
As for anchoring somewhere other than Northeast Ohio, Henry said there were opportunities but this was his home — ''and I saw some really good people leave Cleveland — and die on the vine.
''A successful baseball player or sports star can take their bat and play successfully in almost any city, assuming the team they play with is good,'' he said. ''Local politicians and TV anchors have a constituency, and they cannot transfer what they're about to any other city. It's flattering when I had some pretty good offers . . . but the question to me was, what's the better odds? . . . Where I've built up a base and a constituency now, where people know my name, my face, know my work, whether or not they can trust me . . . or to be yet another new person out of the blue?''
Yet even as he settled into news, Henry had another calling, a fascination with spiritual issues going back to those days at Central Catholic, and underscored by his time in Paraguay. Encountering terrible poverty there, he said, ''I knew early on how limited our usefulness would be.'' While trying to help others, he also tried to help himself.
''It was a desert experience for 21/2 years for me where I was left truly alone,'' he said. ''I had wholesale quantities of empty time on my hands in a very foreign place to consider at a very young age, who I was and why I existed.''
Asked why he didn't pursue spiritual work, he said, ''How do you know I didn't?
''It's the single, overriding concern, interest, pleasure — next to my wife Jody — pursuit, line of inquiry, Ph.D. challenge I could ever face. . . . The last great mystery in life is the pursuit of spiritual understanding. . . . I intend to just simply switch hats on May 20 and stop reporting on Cleveland and Akron news, and maybe be a journalist more than ever before, in pursuit of spiritual understanding.''
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal, in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com and now on Twitter. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 and rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
WEWS News Channel 5 anchor Ted Henry edits a story. (Phil Masturzo/Akron Beacon Journal)
View more photos>>
Theodore Charles Henry Jr. will say goodbye to local viewers on Wednesday, as the Canton native steps down as news anchor of WEWS (Channel 5).
It will end more than 40 years in local broadcasting for Henry — ''Ted'' to his audience. He said he would like little or no fuss. ''If I could just walk away, I would be very, very happy,'' he said.
But, with his departure coming as the local ratings period ends, this is a promotable moment. There will be looks back at his career on Channel 5's evening newscasts tonight through Wednesday. And the station will air an hourlong Henry special on May 26, after he is gone and sweeps are done.
Hoopla is a news-and-entertainment constant, even in a business that has changed a great deal since he started as a producer at Channel 5 in 1972.
The 63-year-old newsman remembers when producing the news was ''much freer, much looser. . . . As much as we sometimes had internal struggles about what was being covered, and how, by our TV station, nobody ever once critiqued or criticized or edited my selection of stories [as producer] for the 11 o'clock news. . . . On any given night, I would have no problem ripping up the lineup of the news show, based on a young man's gut feeling.''
And now? ''It is akin to advanced bioscience in the way it is produced and analyzed. And I am not knocking it. There are time-tested, proven, formulaic principles . . . for what constitutes a good news program.''
Future of news
Asked whom he would like to succeed him, he said, ''The business is changing so quickly now, I frankly don't know what type of individual would be the most likely to succeed. . . . [Former Channel 5 executive] Don Perris told me before he retired — this was back in the mid-'80s — that the day was coming quickly when there would be two or one TV stations in Northeast Ohio doing news. He was off by a couple decades, but it's coming.''
Henry believes Channel 5 will be the last one standing. But even as Henry looks toward a new chapter in life, he still remembers the love he has for broadcasting.
''I've had it in my blood to be in broadcasting since I was 7, watching our first TV set,'' he said. He recalled seeing commentator Dorothy Fuldheim and ''I think it was that live-wire, live television, unrehearsed, spontaneous emission from the gut and the heart that was really attractive to me.''
And a thing apart from what Ted Sr. had dreamed of for his son.
''My dad always wanted to give me the hardware store,'' Henry said. ''Lake B&S [Briggs & Stratton] Hardware in Hartville. Before that it was Lincoln Hardware in Canton. And I worked in the store until I got into broadcasting. But he knew my heart was in broadcasting. He knew that was what I wanted to do, that I begrudgingly worked in the hardware store.''
The elder Henry opened the door for Ted's future career when ''a salesman came around from [former local station] WTOF. . . . It was called the Tower of Faith, 24-hour religious programming, with commercials, from Canton. . . . [Ad time] was $3 a minute. I'm fuzzy, it was either a three-week or nine-week contract, three times a day in drive time. . . . [The store was in the] middle of Amish country. We didn't get too many people listening to the radio there. So anyway, the provision was, if I got to do the commercial, he would buy the contract. And I was so bad, they fired us.''
Henry struggled to find a way to capture what he saw in Fuldheim. ''Not that I could do it. I couldn't. In my case, I was one of the shyest, most easily embarrassed young boys I've ever known. . . . I was so self-conscious.''
At Central Catholic High School, he said ''the brothers would take me aside and say, 'You ought to be a brother. You ought to be a priest.' '' (''I was far too interested in girls,'' he said.)
It wasn't until he was in college that, with help from local radio man Jerry Immel and Kent State theater teacher William Zucchero, he was able to overcome his stage fright — mainly by taking a host of theater courses at Kent.
Radio and later TV work followed, as well as a stint in the Peace Corps in Paraguay. He finally made it to the anchor chair at Channel 5 in 1975, when John Hambrick left the station. But it took some doing.
Anchor job
He first approached the station after his stint with the Peace Corps — for an ad sales job. Ed Cervenak, then station manager, later told Henry that — with his Che Guevara mustache and cheap clothes — ''we sort of laughed you out of the building.'' But Cervenak kept Henry in mind for other jobs, brought him back in the news operation and eventually elevated him to co-anchor with Dave Patterson.
''The search for John's replacement had me sort of as a token — translate 'least expensive.' And there were some good guys from around the country . . . but I got it.''
''I was very nervous for quite a while,'' he said of anchoring. Henry even thought about getting into station management. But Perris — then the top man at Channel 5's parent company, and one of Henry's mentors — told him, ''You are in management. You are managing the very sensitive and fragile career of a TV anchorman. There's no more management skills I require of you other than to hold onto your job.''
As for anchoring somewhere other than Northeast Ohio, Henry said there were opportunities but this was his home — ''and I saw some really good people leave Cleveland — and die on the vine.
''A successful baseball player or sports star can take their bat and play successfully in almost any city, assuming the team they play with is good,'' he said. ''Local politicians and TV anchors have a constituency, and they cannot transfer what they're about to any other city. It's flattering when I had some pretty good offers . . . but the question to me was, what's the better odds? . . . Where I've built up a base and a constituency now, where people know my name, my face, know my work, whether or not they can trust me . . . or to be yet another new person out of the blue?''
Yet even as he settled into news, Henry had another calling, a fascination with spiritual issues going back to those days at Central Catholic, and underscored by his time in Paraguay. Encountering terrible poverty there, he said, ''I knew early on how limited our usefulness would be.'' While trying to help others, he also tried to help himself.
''It was a desert experience for 21/2 years for me where I was left truly alone,'' he said. ''I had wholesale quantities of empty time on my hands in a very foreign place to consider at a very young age, who I was and why I existed.''
Asked why he didn't pursue spiritual work, he said, ''How do you know I didn't?
''It's the single, overriding concern, interest, pleasure — next to my wife Jody — pursuit, line of inquiry, Ph.D. challenge I could ever face. . . . The last great mystery in life is the pursuit of spiritual understanding. . . . I intend to just simply switch hats on May 20 and stop reporting on Cleveland and Akron news, and maybe be a journalist more than ever before, in pursuit of spiritual understanding.''
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal, in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com and now on Twitter. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 and rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
