DETROIT – There is so much to say, and yet, the simplest way to end my roughly 29 years at WDIV is to offer a heartfelt “thank you” to Metro Detroit!
Thank you for watching Local 4, for being so kind, so welcoming, for being the best news town in America! For allowing me into your homes regularly, and for not changing the channel when my stories popped up.
Also, thank you for helping me find and tell so many remarkable stories. It is humbling to consider just how good this town has been to me and my family. Thank you, Metro Detroit, for helping us find a good and true home. Through God’s grace we came here, settled in, and prospered.
So many have asked, ‘Why now?’ The easy answer: The time has come.
There is context here, summed up in a question: “Where were you when [fill in the blank].” 9/11, the shuttle Challenger, GM, Chrysler, and Detroit’s bankruptcies. My version of the game is, “Where were you the day John Hinkley shot President Ronald Reagan?” Perhaps you were not even born. My answer is in my new boss’ office at WABI-TV News in Bangor, Maine having taken my first TV job sight unseen on March 30, 1981. As it was at the height of a very nasty recession, he was explaining how little money I would make when the sports director leaned in and asked, “Did you know the president has been shot?” Quite the start to a news career!
Thus, for the past 43 years, I have worked days, nights, weekends, holidays, given up vacations, and toiled on every possible shift, to bring you the news. Yes, it is what it sounds like: all consuming! That is the charm and the curse.
Over the years, people have often asked who in management did I anger to send me out and spend my life on snowy overpasses, or dodging raindrops among downed wires and trees, or on a frigid picket line. No one forced me to do any of it. This is what we all sign up for getting into this crazy business. We long to be in the middle of the action. We’d often defy speed laws and jump before the camera two seconds before the anchor toss to include the very latest detail.
We high five each other after breaking a big story. This is a tough, demanding job and one I believe the good lord himself put me on this planet to do. Long before March 1981, in sixth-grade, my friends put a studio TV camera in my hands in the junior high media center. The notion hit me that one could make a living in television, and there was no turning back.
Yes, the job comes with great highs and sometimes terrible lows. Still, more than anything, it offers the promise and opportunity to meet so many wonderful people like you. But, let’s face it, 43 years is a long time to live with those kinds of daily deadline pressures and long hours.
There is also an elephant in the room. Many have asked whether WDIV pushed me out the door. No, that did not happen. My wife and I already decided since my contract was set to expire at the end of 2024, I would retire then. Unexpectedly, WDIV offered me the opportunity to begin that retirement six months early and paid me well to do so.
The company also gave the option to stay if I wanted, but it was too good a deal to turn down. I leave with my head held high, a big smile on my face, grateful to the company that allowed me to make a very good living and enabled me and my wife to put three children through Michigan colleges. I also say thank you to my agent Pam Pulner, who told me in 1995 that if I did this job right and well, I could last 15 to 20 years. This has wildly exceeded my expectations, and she helped make that possible.
There are so many memories, so many places this job has brought me, and these past couple of weeks have made me a bit nostalgic. I flew everywhere across the state and into Ohio and Canada in the Local 4 helicopter. Went cross-country chasing Detroit stories in Washington D.C., Chicago, New York. The names like Iacocca, Wagoner, and Ford; Yokich, Gettelfinger, and Jones; Kilpatrick, Conyers and Cushingberry; Engler, Granholm and Snyder are the ones that quickly come to mind. The subjects covered varied from bankruptcy, economic down turns and upturns, to big federal court cases and heartbreaking crime.
The big breaking stories like the power outage that lasted days and hit the entire eastern seaboard, the protest in Lansing to install Right to Work, the COVID protests, all come rushing back. Still, considering I turned two and three stories a day, 230 or so days a year, over 28 years, the math says there are roughly 15,000 pieces in our archive next to my name. There is so much there I cannot remember.
One of our managers recently asked me the best question: Who is the most famous person you’ve met at work? I answered, “Met Clinton, Obama, yet in Kitty Hawk, N.C., had pleasure of interviewing Chuck Yeager, Buzz Aldrin, and Jim Lovell for the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers Flight.” For a space-race kid, speaking with the “right stuff” guys was a take-to-the-grave memory!
Yet, for all of the famous people I’ve met and interviewed, I still find the most interesting people are Michiganders with a dream; entrepreneurs who had that unique, money-making idea; the regular people out to make the best life for their families and are doing the best they can with what they have. Michigan is chock full of those salt of the earth viewers! You are the best.
Finally, I want to thank my wife Karen. She has been a news warrior. She never once blanched when I told her we had an opportunity to move to Miami, Tampa, Saginaw, or Detroit. She supported me in every way, every day and suffered through the many long and lonely nights, double shifts, cancelled vacations, missed dinners or school events, spending long weekends entertaining our children while I studied for the Certified Financial Planner exam.
She was patient, loving, and understanding when many other wives would have said, “Make the choice: the job or me!” Yes, I immodestly say, I worked exceptionally hard. She worked harder! She took on the lion’s share of the parenting duties without me around. So now, as we head toward our 40th wedding anniversary, she and I get to walk away together, hand in hand, to live in the home we’ve been renovating for the past seven years; all with this moment in mind. She is my rock and deserves this retirement more than I. To leave on this high note assures us God has blessed us in every possible way!
So, in the end, once again, I say “thank you” to Metro Detroit for giving what has been one incredible ride and a deeply fulfilling journey. One last time; reporting from Detroit, Rod Meloni, Local 4.
---> From our GM: 4 longtime WDIV journalists, others are retiring in July. Here’s why