I had an odd question pop into my mind recently.
What was the happiest day of my life that didn’t involve other people?
So that rules out falling in love, wedding days, anything involving children or other family members.
As trite or even corny as it might seem at first, the day I came up with was the first time I was ever on television. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was in April 1967 as my senior year of high school was winding down.
I’ve always been amused by people who get so excited about contact with the media. The first time I had my name and/or picture in the paper, I was 11 years old and writing a weekly column on junior high sports in my Ohio community.
It isn’t like I haven’t had plenty of media exposure. I chose a career as a newspaperman and I had my picture in various papers as a column logo at least a couple thousand times. I’ve done numerous radio appearances, one at recently as earlier this month to promote a book.
And I’ve been on television five times that I can remember, including a profile done about me on a local PBS station when I was working in California.
Heck, I even got my picture in Sports Illustrated in January 1987. Me on the left, John Elway in the center.
The feature on PBS in Riverside, California, was 13 years later, and it was probably the high point of my media appearances.
But television for me began in the late spring of 1966. “It’s Academic” was a fixture in Washington, D.C., a high school version of the “College Bowl” quiz show. Each D.C. area high school sent a group of juniors down to the WRC/NBC studio to try out for the show.
I believe there were 15-20 in our group, and we sat in a semicircle facing the questioner. It took about an hour, and one of our guys — let’s call him Ralph — dominated the hour by answering 25 questions correctly — and first, of course.
He was incredible. Except for one other person, no one in our group got more than 6.
That one other person got 18 right.
That was me.
Within the next few days, our school selected 10 boys — not sure why, but there weren’t any girls — to be the “It’s Academic” team and train to be on the show sometime in the next school year.
Only three of us would actually be on the show and a fourth would be the alternate. We got together once a week during the lunch hour and practiced. Ralph dominated every practice. I was second nearly all the time, but if you look at the 25 and 18, it wasn’t that close.
When it came time to pick the three lucky guys, of course Ralph was picked first and I was picked second. A somewhat quiet guy named Jim was third. Showing her wisdom, our faculty sponsor picked Jim to be the captain.
When the day came, I learned an important lesson about performing under pressure. Ralph froze big-time. Deer in the headlights stuff. I think we were halfway into the show before he even buzzed in and tried to answer a question. Jim was a little better, but not much.
Note to reader: Here’s where I brag a little.
I saved the day.
OK, a lot. Remember, it’s supposed to be the happiest day of my life.
I buzzed in. I answered.We got points.
We actually beat the other two schools fairly easily. I wound up scoring 75-80 percent of our points, once again confounding all the really smart kids at our school. You see, I had turned myself into the classic underachiever in high school. In the 16 academic classes I took in four years of high school, I never got anything better than a B for the year.
We came back a week later and lost. No perfect day for me. I missed two questions for a swing of 80 points and we lost by 75. I blamed myself for our loss, but someone pointed out to me that I had once again accounted for most of the points we did score.
Yeah, a really great day.
Particularly the first one.
That was where it all started for me.