Tom Jolls - Buffalo Stories Archives & Blog

Rocketship 7 & Commander Tom

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting

Unquestionably the most popular local kids’ show of the 50s and into the 60s, Uncle Mike’s Playhouse on Ch.4 was Mike Mearian’s lasting legacy on Buffalo media.

The 1956 Sylvania TV Award nominations described Uncle Mike this way:

“Mr. Mearian’s genius as a humorist plus the best available children’s cartoons add up to youthful entertainment fun that is always in the best of taste.”

Uncle Mike’s faithful puppet sidekick, Buttons, was a marionette operated by Ellen Knetchel and voiced by Mearian.

By the time Buttons and Uncle Mike left Buffalo for a Big Apple acting career in 1967, Buffalo rug-rats had already found fun new TV shows created just for them over on Ch.7.

Jay Nelson was a disc jockey on WKBW Radio, but is perhaps best remembered as the host of Ch.7’s Jungle Jay Show.

Jungle Jay Nelson, WKBW-TV

He wore a pith helmet and a leopard print jacket while playing old Tarzan clips when kids got home from school.

The shtick was so popular that even after he left Buffalo for his native Canada to work at CHUM Radio in Toronto, he continued calling himself Jungle Jay, and continued wearing the pith helmet.

The show was just as popular north of the border as it was in Western New York, and the nickname stuck with Nelson for decades.

Sheena Queen of the Jungle (actress Irish McCalla) felt right at home on a promotional visit to Jay Nelson’s Ch.7 show.

Depending on your age, you remember him best as the host of Dialing for Dollars or the host of Rocketship 7.

Mr. Beeper, Dave, and Promo

Dave Thomas spent 16 years at WKBW-TV, starting in the newsroom anchoring newscasts and weather reports. The native of Buffalo’s West Side attended Holy Angels grammar school and Bishop Fallon High School.

His 16-year run on Rocketship 7– one of the most beloved programs in the history of Buffalo television–began on September 10, 1962. Eventually Dave would be joined by the Sweetleys, Mr. Beeper and Promo the Robot.

During the show’s run, there were two different Promo costumes and five different men who played him, including Dialing For Dollars accordion player Johnny Banaszak, who spend many years switching between his Promo and “Johnny and Jimmy” identities between shows.

Dave Thomas—real name Dave Boreanaz—left Buffalo for Philadelphia in 1978, where using the air name Dave Roberts, he was a weather man at WPVI for 31 years.

Both in Buffalo and Philadelphia, Dave was involved with the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, rising to National Vice Chairman.

His son is the actor Dave Boreanaz, who has played in the TV shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bones, and SEAL Team.

When Dave Thomas wasn’t palling around with Promo the Robot and Mr. Beeper, he was hosting Dialing for Dollars with Nolan Johannes and Liz Dribben.

Rocketship 7 was a must watch for many Buffalo kids through the 60s and 70s, before Dave Thomas blasted off for that new job in Philadelphia in 1978.

This is the second paint job for the original Promo the Robot. A different costume was used in the mid-70s. John Banaszak played Promo during the part of the show’s run. Each day, he quickly shed the clacking Promo suit to grab his accordion and entertain on Dialing for Dollars.

Dave Thomas and Mr. Beeper

Buffalo’s longest running—and most salubrious– kids’ show starred Ch.7’s All-American weatherman Tom Jolls as Commander Tom– who eventually took to TV wearing the bright red jacket of a Canadian Mountie.

He performed with his puppet pals which early on, were mostly made from his kids’ old stuffed animals. Among them as voiced by the Commander himself, were Matty the Mod– a young, energetic, but slight dimwitted alligator; the sensitive and gentle Cecily Fripple, trying to recapture her glorious past; and trusty, faithful Dustmop– watchdog of Central Command, despite of his old age and failing eyesight.

Commander Tom’s first assignment was with Bat Head, as host of “The Superman Show.” Eventually, Bat Head flew back to his cave and it was just Commander Tom.

The last Ch.2 produced show which captured the imagination of the youngest viewers starred weatherman Bob Lawrence as Captain Bob. He did local cut-ins during a string of wildly different programs.

Not too long after the station signed on, he was the local host of an NBC cartoon called Colonel Bleep. After that show was canceled, he entertained kids during Ch.2’s playback of old 1930s Three Stooges shorts.

Captain Bob also hosted the local presentation of The Mickey Mouse Club afternoons in the late 50s and early 60s.

Although hostess “Miss Joan” made frequent personal appearances at Buffalo-area toy stores, the Romper Room program that was broadcast on WGR-TV in the late 60s was a national version of the show, aired on dozens of stations around the country.

Puppeteer Jim Menke worked on Ch.2’s Captain Bob Show as well as on WNED-TV’s “Mr. Whatnot” and “Barnaby & Co.” programs.

All through the 60s from Thanksgiving to Christmas, Ch.4 created holiday excitement with Bill Peters as Santa, Johnny Eisenberger as Forgetful the Elf, and Warren Jacober as Freezy the Polar Bear.

J. Michael Collins and Vince Saele host a WNED-TV pledge drive in the late 1960s.

Sister Mary Margaretta, Superior of St. Nicholas School, was a regular guest on Ch.4’s “The Bishop Visits Your Home.”

This page is an excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online.

The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.

Irv, Rick, & Tom

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting

Irv Weinstein used to joke that Ch.7 was the fourth station in a three-station market when he began anchoring the news there in 1964.

For most of the station’s early years, there were ABC network shows and lots of old movies—and legally, not enough of anything else. In 1963, the FCC withheld the station’s license renewal request “pending additional information on local, live programing” on the station.

Enter Irv.

It took a few years for the Eyewitness News approach to catch on and become number one in Buffalo, but even as early as Irv’s first year at Ch.7 and a year before Tom Jolls would come over from Ch.4– the approach of dispatching news cameras to every corner of the city was gaining traction in an era where the other stations in the market were comfortable with a news anchor reading into a camera with no video or graphic accompaniment.

“They can hear about it on the other channels,” said Ch.7 General Manager Robert King, “but they see it on Ch.7.”

Irv Weinstein with Bill Gregory. When Irv first came to Ch.7, they co-anchored the news.

Irv Weinstein led the team that informed and entertained generations of Buffalonians with his unmistakable style in writing and delivering the news. Together with Rick Azar and Tom Jolls, Irv was a part of the longest running TV anchor team in history, and their story is the story of Buffalo over the last half century.

WKBW-TV Ch.7 signed on in 1958, 10 years after Ch.4, and four years after Ch.2, and the new station had a hard time gaining traction.

“The ratings at Ch.7 were worse than the signoff test patterns on Ch.4 and Ch.2,” said Weinstein.

When Weinstein left WKBW Radio to join Ch.7 alongside Rick Azar in 1964, the evening newscast went on the air at 7:20pm to avoid competition from the other stations’ 6 p.m. newscasts.

A few years later, Tom Jolls joined the crew, and the Irv, Rick and Tom team that dominated Buffalo TV news in the ’70s and ’80s was complete.

The three men, plus addition of more local newsfilm, better tight writing and a display of personality and human interaction unseen before on local TV made Ch.7 — and Irv Weinstein — No. 1 in the market, virtually uninterrupted, from the late 1960s through Irv’s retirement in 1998.

“Basically, the other stations’ approach was very conservative, you know, the globe on the desk and the clocks in the background and the mature, deep-voiced guy sitting there,” explained Irv. “We were aggressive, we were razzle-dazzle. We covered every fire there was because it looked great.”

Irv also credited the styles and personalities of the three men — and the mix of those personalities — with the larger success of “Eyewitness News” during those years.

Tom Jolls, 1964

“You had Tom, every mother’s son; the flag, and apple pie, and all of those things that make for a fine American,” said Irv. “That’s what you saw, that’s what you got. That’s what Tom was, that’s what Tom is.

“Rick was more of a broadcasting personality,” said Weinstein. “Solid professional, knowledgeable, debonair, good looking guy. Very smooth, Mr. Smooth, the Latin Lover.”

And rounding out the trio?

“Me? I’m an ethnic type,” Irv said of himself. “Definitely an ethnic type. I felt very proud of the fact in a heavily Catholic, heavily Polish town, this Jewish kid was accepted.”

“Accepted” is an understatement. Irv Weinstein is remembered as one of — if not the — greatest personalities in the history of Buffalo television.

He got his start in radio as a child actor growing up in Rochester in the 1940s. After working in various radio and TV jobs, he wound up as a newsman at WKBW Radio in Buffalo. There, he became the news director and was instrumental in the rock ’n’ roll style newscasts that matched the music KB was playing in the late 50s and early 60s.

It was at KB Radio where Irv perfected the ra-ta-tat-tat staccato delivery style that he’d be remembered for; it’s also where he developed the sharp writing style, filled with alliteration and bigger-than-life phraseology that was the engine for that delivery.

There were no firemen tamping down a house fire. “Buffalo fire eaters” “battled spectacular blazes.” “Death was waiting along the side of the road” for someone struck and killed by a car. A teenage hold-up man was a “knife-wielding delinquent,” if he wasn’t a “pistol-packing punk.”

After leaving WKBW Radio for WKBW-TV in 1964, it took Weinstein some time to get used to being on camera and to adapt his writing style for television delivery, but over the next several years, he became comfortable with TV and Buffalo became comfortable with him.

By the time Irv Weinstein came to Ch.7, Rick Azar had already been there for six years. Azar was the announcer who signed the station on the air in 1958.

He had been an actor who took radio jobs at WUSJ in Lockport, WWOL in Buffalo and WHLD in Niagara Falls between acting gigs, and also served as a sports and weather man on Buffalo’s short lived WBUF-TV Ch.17 staring in 1956.

In the early days at Ch.7, he delivered weather, sports and news, along with general announcing, and even hosting “Buffalo Bandstand,” the local version of the Dick Clark show.

It was in sports broadcasting, though, where Azar became a long-remembered and trusted household name.

As a TV sportscaster, a play-by-play man for college basketball, and one of the voices of the Buffalo Bills in the 1970s, there were few broadcasters better known, liked and appreciated that Azar.

Rick Azar in the lockerroom.

In 1975, the fact that the “Eyewitness News” anchor team might have been the hippest guys in town might be reflected in the fact that there was a special edition Oldsmobile on sale called “The Azar.”

If Rick was hip, Tom Jolls was everyone’s favorite neighbor. The youngest of the three, Jolls and Azar actually met when Jolls was a junior high school announcer in Lockport and Azar was a disc jockey on WUSJ using the name “Dick Corey.”

Jolls eventually became the morning man at his hometown WUSJ. He also had early TV experience at another short-lived Buffalo TV station, WBES-TV. After a stint in the Army, Jolls returned to WUSJ before moving to WBEN AM-FM-TV in 1963. He was seen on Ch.4 and heard on 930AM for about two years before joining Irv Weinstein, Rick Azar and Dustmop at Ch.7 in 1965.

Commander Tom was more than just a weatherman, he was a beloved TV uncle who guided us through days that were stormy as well as salubrious, but also made sure we were entertained with the puppets he and his wife crafted from their children’s old stuffed animals.

Tom Jolls on a salubrious night on the original Weather Outside set on Main Street.

But even mild-mannered Tom Jolls was a part of the spice of “Eyewitness News.” For decades, it was Jolls who asked, “It’s 11 o’clock. … Do you know where your children are?”

Together, the facts say that at 24 years, Irv, Rick and Tom were the longest-running anchor team in the history of American television. The hearts of Buffalonians say they were also probably the most beloved.

Rick Azar broke up the band with his retirement after 31 years at Ch.7 in 1989. The following year, at age 59, Irv Weinstein gave up the 11pm newscast and was seen only at 6pm.

He stuck around in that 6pm anchor chair for just shy of a decade, retiring from Ch.7 in 1998. Jolls followed suit with his retirement in 1999.

The Eyewitness News team included Irv Weinstein, Nolan Johannes, Barbara Pawelek, Paul Thompson, Bill Nailos, Don Keller, Alan Nesbitt, John Winston, and Tom Jolls.

Aside from Dialing For Dollars, Liz Dribben anchored morning newscasts on Ch.7 through the second half of the 1960s. Among Buffalo’s first woman broadcast journalists, she became a CBS News writer and producer, working with Mike Wallace and Walter Cronkite among others.

The heavy promotion of Irv, Rick, and Tom as a team began after Ch.7’s early newscasts moved to 6pm in 1971.

This page is an excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online.

The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.

Around the TV dial through the 60s

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting

Van Miller spent the 60s as the play-by play voice of the Bills and one of Ch.4’s top sportscasters, but he was also one of WBEN Radio’s most popular personalities as well. Van hikes the ball to Jack Kemp

Van interviews radio comedy legend Jack Benny (above) and Hollywood beauty Jayne Mansfield (below).

*Van Miller, news; Chuck Healy, sports; Ward Fenton, weather*

Ch.4 had an ever-changing team of news, sports, and weather announcers.

*Chuck Healy, news; Van Miller, sports, Ken Philips, weather*

In 1964, Tom Jolls was the weatherman on the Ch.4 newscasts anchored by Chuck Healy leading into Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News.

Ward Fenton, Bill Peters, Martha Torge, Mike Mearian, and Tom Jolls recording “The Life of FDR.”

Before he made Dustmop come to life and made the phrase “Back to you, Irv,” part of Buffalo’s lexicon, Tom Jolls was celebrated as the host of Kaleidoscope on WBEN Radio. The program was filled with daily musical themes and dramatic productions often written and produced by Jolls—including the one shown above.

“I would commend Mr. Jolls for his show, its freshness, variety, presentation and the obvious effort which goes into the program. Mr. Jolls always makes Kaleidoscope sound like fun day after day,” wrote one Toronto critic.

Virgil Booth, as a host and news reporter, brought nature to Ch.4 viewers.

During the station’s first 11 years on the air, Chuck Poth was a familiar face to Ch.2 viewers as one of the station’s most visible newscasters.

The South Buffalo native attended OLV grammar school and Baker-Victory High in Lackawanna. After serving in the Army during World War II, Poth held a string of jobs at WUSJ Lockport, WJJL Niagara Falls, WBNY, and then the short-lived WBUF-TV.

After working at WGR-TV from 1954-1966, he worked in politics, writing speeches for Robert Kennedy, then running for county legislature and congressional seats, before working in Buffalo City Hall during the Griffin administration.

By 1964, Roy Kerns (above) and Frank Dill (below) were familiar faces in Buffalo, both having been on Ch.2 since the station signed on a decade earlier. They were seen anchoring news and weather leading into NBC’s Huntley/Brinkley Report.

After retiring from the Buffalo Bills, Ernie Warlick became the first Black member of a Buffalo TV anchor team when he became a sportscaster at Ch.2. While his duties generally included interviewing sports figures like Bills quarterback Tom Flores (below), they also included some news duty—like chatting with Mayor Frank Sedita during a bus strike (above).

Skating champion Peggy Fleming chats with photographers Roy Russell from The Buffalo Evening News, Don Keller (Yearke) from Ch.7, and Paul Maze from Ch.4.

The press covers the Dome Stadium controversy. At the table: reporters Jim Fagan, WKBW; Allan Bruce, UPI; Jim McLaughlin, WYSL; Milt Young, WBEN-TV, Ray Finch, WBEN-TV. Dick Teetsel, Ch.2 sits in back, and Don Yearke shoots film for Ch.7.

This page is an excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online.

The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.

Buffalo’s Forgotten TV Pioneers: WBES-TV & WBUF-TV

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting

For five years, WBEN-TV Ch.4 was Buffalo’s only television station.

Then in 1953, two more stations came to the market—but most Buffalonians needed special equipment to watch them.

Buffalo’s WBUF-TV Ch.17 and WBES-TV Ch.59 took advantage of the federal government opening up a much wider spectrum of television broadcasting frequencies. Ultra High Frequency or UHF channels 14-83 were opened up in 1952.

Up until then, televisions were built only with VHF receivers, and could only pick up channels 2-13.

Encouraging sales of special converter boxes was only part of the uphill battle for WBUF-TV and WBES-TV.

Sales of new televisions and converter boxes skyrocketed in 1953.

VHF stations 2-13 offered much better reception, and there were a number of interested parties in Buffalo petitioning to become the license holders for stations on Ch. 2 and Ch.7, which allotted to Buffalo, but not yet assigned to licensees.

As those cases were being made in Washington, two local investment groups rolled the dice on UHF here– but those two groups had entirely different stomachs for gambling.

WBUF-TV was founded by a couple of friends looking to strike out on their own.

Sherwin Grossman was a 28-year old Lafayette High and UB grad working in his family dry cleaning plant and Gary Cohen was managing his family’s movie theater business at Tonawanda’s Sheridan Drive-In. (That family business is now run by Rick Cohen at Lockport’s Transit Drive-In).

The pair first set sights on bringing television to Jamestown—until an investor convinced them to aim for a bigger market just to the northwest.

On December 18, 1952, the FCC granted them the construction permit for WBUF-TV, Ch.17 in Buffalo.

Further up the dial, the group that founded WBES-TV had much more on the line, both reputationally and financially.

Western Savings Bank President Charles Diebold, Davis Heating & Refrigerating President Joseph Davis, and attorney Vincent Gaughan were the leadership team who were granted an FCC permit for WBES-TV, Ch.59 in Buffalo, five days after WBUF-TV on December 23, 1952.

In less than a week, Buffalo went from a one-station market to what promised to be a three-station market.

Up until the time that new stations signed-on, Ch.4 was in the catbird’s seat—having the prime pick of programming from the CBS, NBC, ABC, and DuMont television networks.

Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night staple— known as “Toast of the Town” before it was renamed “the Ed Sullivan Show” in 1955– was one of many nationally popular shows which Ch.4 chose not to air. In the time just before WBUF-TV signed on, Ch.4 was running game show “the Big Payoff” during the Ed Sullivan time slot.

Ch.4’s owners, The Buffalo Evening News, covered developments at WBUF and WBES with the paper’s usual reserve. But over at the Courier-Express, daily blow-by-blow developments were compared and contrasted, and it was made into a race to which station might go on the air first.

“Buffalo’s two new UHF stations open a hopeful new chapter in the Western New York television story,” reported the Courier-Express as both stations were poised to begin broadcasting. “UHF means considerably more free home entertainment, and a delightfully specific opportunity to turn the dial.”

WBUF-TV purchased 184 Barton Street—later the home of WGR-TV and then WNED-TV– dubbing it “Television City.” There, they built and equipped a full television studio complex.

When the station first signed on, WBUF-TV’s mascot was Buffalo Bill.

WBES-TV moved into the penthouse at the Lafayette Hotel, and built a tower on the roof—which at the time, was Buffalo’s tallest structure. The lower portion of that tower still stands on the building today. The space inside the station was limited—but included offices, a small studio, and the station’s transmitter plant. There were also promises to put the hotel’s ballroom to use as the home of a huge, audience participation kids show.

“We think we have found the three keys to ultimate success and public acceptance,” Gaughan, the father of Buffalo attorney and regionalism proponent Kevin Gaughan, announced. “They are power, personnel, and programming. With these assets, WBES-TV can offer the people of Western New York the very best in television.”

Ch.59 made splashy hires of known and beloved Buffalo personalities. Roger Baker, who was still occasionally announcing sports, was also WKBW’s General Manager when WBES-TV hired him to run the new station and to be the station’s newscaster. Woody Magnuson, longtime WBEN announcer and children’s host, was hired to become the station’s program director.

“Life begins at 59” was the headline sprawled across a full-page ad in the Courier-Express. “The best in television… a great range of fine programs to delight and interest your entire family (through) the miracle of UHF.”

WBUF’s staff hires weren’t quite as newsworthy, but they also had a full-page ad that was just as over-the-top, billing themselves as “the modern miracle that gives you what you want — when you want it — in your own home” and “solace and comfort, laughter and joy, tears and sighs, company in loneliness and solitude in crowds, escape and challenge, fact and fiction… Aladdin and his wonderful lamp, Alice and her miraculous mirror, Jack the Giant Killer, Paul Bunyan the Great American.”

It was WBUF-TV Ch.17 that made it on the air first by a month, with a schedule of mostly network programming starting August 17, 1953. WBES-TV Ch.59 signed on September 23, 1953.

In the WBUF-TV control room, with coffee from Your Host restaurants.

Ch.59, however, fell out of the gate. Technical problems delayed the station’s signing on, and sponsors were slow to sign up. WBUF-TV had many of the same issues, but WBES-TV’s investors soured immediately to the station’s hemorrhaging of money, and on December 18, 1953—less than a year after being awarded the station and 13 weeks after signing on—WBES-TV, Ch.59 returned its license to the federal government.

Being alone as “Buffalo’s other TV station” helped Ch.17 a bit, but it, too was losing money. The station’s saving grace came in the form of the National Broadcasting Company, trying to outfox the federal government’s limit on the number of VHF stations that a television network could own.

Jack Begon was an NBC foreign correspondent who was brought to Buffalo as a news anchor on WBUF. He spent much of his career stationed in Rome for NBC and later ABC.

In 1956, after WBES-TV signed off and WGR-TV Ch.2 had already signed on, NBC bought WBUF-TV as an experiment to see whether the network would be able to build a UHF station which rose to the standards of its other VHF properties.

NBC built a state-of-the-art television facility at 2077 Elmwood Avenue, and brought in network-level talent from around the country to staff local programs.

Like Ch.4, Ch.17 also carried live wrestling from the Aud.

The Today Show broadcast live from WBUF’s new 2077 Elmwood studios, shown here. Less than four years later, the building would be home to WBEN and Ch.4.

After two years, the network called the experiment a bust, with the station still losing money and Buffalo’s ratings on network shows lagging well behind the network averages.

WBUF-TV’s Mac McGarry gives a weather report, 1957. McGarry covered President Truman’s inauguration for NBC in 1948. After leaving Buffalo, he returned to Washington, and anchored NBC News updates through the 70s and 80s. He also hosted the Washington DC version of “It’s Academic” on NBC-owned station WRC-TV for 50 years.

WBUF-TV went dark on October 1, 1958. NBC donated the license to the group that formed Buffalo’s educational public TV broadcaster, WNED-TV.

With public broadcasting on Ch.17, Buffalo would be without a commercial UHF station until WUTV Ch.29 signed on in 1970.

Frank Frederics was the only on-air personality who was seen regularly through most of WBUF-TV’s tumultuous history. He was the News Director when the station signed on, and was the only original announcer retained when NBC bought the station. During the NBC years, he anchored a newscast sponsored by Milk For Health. Live commercials during the newscast were hosted by Jan Okun— who later spent more than 40 years as the Food Editor at The Buffalo News.

It’s not the end of the story, though. Even if we don’t remember their call letters, the legacy of Buffalo’s UHF pioneers lives on.

Ch.17 operates as a public service in Buffalo to this day.

The studios built by Ch.59 at the Lafayette were the first home of Ch.2 and then the home of WNED-TV.

WBUF-TV’s Barton Street studios were the second home of Ch.2, and in a familiar pattern, became the home of WNED and Western New York Public Broadcasting when WGR-TV moved to Delaware Avenue.

And the Elmwood Avenue studios built by NBC have been the home of Ch.4 since 1960.

Rick Azar was WBUF-TV’s Atlantic Weatherman.

Both stations also served as the dial spot where a handful of later well-known Buffalo television personalities got their first chance in front of the camera, most notably, WBES-TV’s 20-year-old staff announcer Tom Jolls (below) and WBUF-TV’s sports reporter and “Weathervane” host, Rick Azar.

And at least one local star of Buffalo’s early UHF stations has been seen on local TVs over the last several years. Doris Jones—who was Doris Sherris as your “Phoenix (Beer) All Weather Gal” on WBES-TV continues to help on pledge drives on WNED-TV.

This page is an excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online.

The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.

Out of the Past: Hoeber’s Foodland, Armor

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

At least two generations of Hoebers served Armor as grocers.

*Donald Hoeber can’t believe how many groceries Mrs. Courier was able to get into her basket during a shopping spree she won as a part of the Hoeber’s Foodland grand opening in 1969.*

Joseph Hoeber opened a food store next to the Armor Inn in 1944. His son Donald took over the business in 1962, moving Hoeber’s Foodland to a new larger space on Armor Duells Rd. in 1969.

A staff of 35 operated the 7,400 sq. ft. store which was described as “brilliantly lighted with wide aisles and easy to reach grocery and produce shelves” in The Sun when it opened.

*WKBW-TV personality Tom Jolls, in his full Commander Tom regalia, was at Hoeber’s signing autographs as a part of grand opening festivities.*

Later known as “The Armor Supermarket,” the building was destroyed in an arson blaze in 1987.

Irv, Rick & Tom and the sights and sounds of Eyewitness News

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

BUFFALO, NY – When Irv Weinstein, Rick Azar, and Tom Jolls teamed up in 1965, it’s probably fair to say that more people would have been watching Channel 4’s test pattern than the news on Channel 7. But by the time Rick Azar retired in 1989, the three had not only become the longest running anchor team in history, but also gained an iconic status unparalleled for any other triumvirate in television news history.

For me personally, Irv, Rick, and Tom have been a part of my life as long as I can remember. My dad and I watched the news together every day. My mom tells anyone who’ll listen that “IRV TINE-TINE” was among my first words, and I would run around the house singing my own version of the Eyewitness News Theme (ba-ba-BA, BA-BA, Badabadaba, ba-ba-ba-BA-BA, BADABADABA!).

When they went into the Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2000, I snuck behind the stage to get a photo with the greatest triumvirate in the history of Buffalo. They had no idea who I was. Ten years later, I wrote a book about them.

Commander Tom and his pals Davey and Goliath kept me quiet and entertained, and left me having a great desire to have a red jacket with yellow epaulets. And then there was the time my Grandmother nearly passed out when we all met Rick Azar AND Mike Randall at the Broadway Market one Easter… “He’s so handsome, He’s so handsome,” Grandma repeated over and over.