Posted by Gerry Wilkinson on September 11, 1998 at 14:07:38:
On Wednesday, September 9, 1998, I attended the monthly meeting of the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneers. At our table four old WRTIers; Ed Cunningham, Ed Eisen, John Roberts and myself. Ed Cunningham was his usually self. I had never met Ed Eisen (from 1954 to 1958, WRTI) until that day. I really liked him. His story is now up on our site. But the main man of the day was Professor Roberts. I mean, he's like that pink Energizer Bunny. He just keeps going and going and going and....
Well, Sid Mark was the speaker of the day. He told one story where he went in 1950 to Roberts about attending Temple. When he showed his transcript to the Professor, John said, "Gee, is that the best you could do? Maybe, you better think about going into a different line of work than broadcasting." Afterwards, John said to me that what he really told Sid was that there were not too many spaces available and with grades like those (what were those grades?), there wasn't much chance of getting admitted to Temple.
The next meeting (October) is celebrating the 50th anniversary of WCAU-TV. Cost of the lunch is $16.00 and reservations can be made by calling Jo Oristaglio at the Pioneers at (610) 642-1150. You do not need to be a member to attend but you then must be an invited guest of one of the members. You can say that you are my guest or Jerry Klein's guest. We are both members of the Broadcast Pioneers as are many other WRTIers including Mike Muderick, Bob Backman, Jane Norman, Ed Cunningham, Ed Eisen and Al Maslin.