Gordon Peterson – Retired Journalist and Legendary News Anchor

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Gordon Peterson on conversation with colleague Glenn Brenner after they began to work together at Channel 9 ~

“He says to me one day, ‘I need to talk to you. This is serious.’ He says, ‘I’ve been fired from every job I’ve ever had for the stuff I’m doing here and you keep throwing gasoline on the fire. I’m trying to figure out if you’re with me or against me.’ I said, ‘I’m with you, baby, just trust me.'”

Andy Ockershausen: This is Our Town with Andy Ockershausen. Like all the rest of us, so much of our guests have grown up in the news business here in Washington. We just decided we wanted people on that everybody knew about, so we’ve been trying to get this man for the last year, and we finally got it.
Gordon Peterson was at one time the dean. I hate to say that, the dean of anchors, but you were. You were older than anybody except Bryson Rash, who died. But the names and people we have on the show talk about Channel 9, and they talk about Gordon Peterson, and inevitably, guys like Sonny Jurgensen who worked with you, the new chief of police is from Worcester.
Gordon Peterson: I knew that.
Andy Ockershausen: He told me that. I was sitting right here. Then, even your TV director, Ernie Baur.

Ernie Baur on Gordon Peterson as “Guy LeGuy”

Ernie Baur: So we decided, to do a show with the Caps. This is in January, or something like that. It was 7:30, live audience. Boom. It starts snowing around 9:00 in the morning. Now it’s getting deeper, you know? So now I call the Caps up and I go, “You guys think you’re going to be able to make it?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. We’re hockey players.”
It’s Guy Charron, Danny Belisle, I don’t know. So now, we’ve got eight, six feet of snow, and the audience can’t get there and the Caps are stuck in College Park. But we still have to do a show. So I gathered everybody in the station to be in the audience, and you see in the audience, Mike Buchanan, Pat Collins, Susan King. I don’t know if Andrea Mitchell was there. You know, but all the talent-
Andy Ockershausen: All the talent.
Ernie Baur: And a couple of the engineers. But we have no guest. So first comes out Gordon and Glenn and Sonny and we get Gordon Barnes on, who was doing weather. And somebody throws a snowball, hits him right in the groin.
“Oh, God.”
So now we’re scrambling, you know? So Gordon Peterson, God bless him, wanders around and we said, “Why don’t you come on?”
So he comes on, and he comes on as Guy LeGuy.
Andy Ockershausen: Yeah, world-famous.
Ernie Baur: He’s a Venezuelan… He’s an American imitating a Venezuelan hockey player with a Swedish accent, okay? And he’s Guy LeGuy. And it’s great. He talks about, you know, in an accent that I can’t do, you know, “It’s tough to be a hockey player in Venezuela because the ice keeps melting,” and all this stuff.
Andy Ockershausen: Great line.
Ernie Baur: Then so we… Any questions from audience? And Chris Gordon raises his hand, “Yeah, how long have you been ‘Guy’?”
Andy Ockershausen: Chris Gordon is still on the air.
Ernie Baur: Absolutely.
Andy Ockershausen: How about that, buddy?
Ernie Baur: And Gordon Peterson says you know, “Of all the things I’ve done, this is what I’ll be remembered for. Guy LeGuy.” And people still tap me on the shoulder about that one.
Andy Ockershausen: So here he is live and in color, the erstwhile Gordon Peterson.

The Guy LeGuy Backstory

Gordon Peterson: Ernie Baur was the first guy who cued me on television at Channel 9. And here’s how he cued me.
Just before the mic gets hot and the lights go on, he says “Hey, dummy, when I point, you talk.” And he points. So the lights come on and I’m laughing. And after the broadcast, my boss says, “What was so funny at the beginning of the broadcast?”
I said, “I don’t know, I just was in a good mood, I guess.” Now, the backstory on this thing that he told you, the studio was, we had plenty of people because they’re all employees. Nobody could go home and they had-
Andy Ockershausen: Terrible snowstorm.
Gordon Peterson: They had stands. But Dancing Crab was open, so I was over there having my dinner. And Brian Fischer, the producer of that program, came over in a panic. He said, “They’re dying in there.”
I say, “Who’s dying?” He said, “Sonny and Glenn. The Caps are supposed to be on and they can’t get in. I don’t know what to do.”
I said, “Well, have them introduce me as the Canadian, French Canadian hockey player.” I come on and he says Guy LeGuy and everybody…
He says, “I’m not familiar, where do you play?” I said, “Guatemala.”
“Really? There’s a league down there?” “Oh, yeah.” He said, “What’s the game like?” I said, “Very fast. We use a clear puck.” And he said, “And we have to keep moving because it’s hot down there and the skates will rust because the ice keeps melting.”
Andy Ockershausen: Who’s asking you the questions, Glenn?
Gordon Peterson: Glenn. And I keep calling Sonny “Mr. Jurgenmen.” So I look over and there are the Caps. They’ve showed up. And Glenn wants to get me off.
“Well, thanks very much Guy, it’s been-”
I said, “No, I’ve got all the time in the world for you guys, really. Really. What else would you like to know? Let’s talk about my…”
He’s trying to get me off. I wouldn’t get off. So 52 years in the news business, that’s what they remember me for.
Andy Ockershausen: I was going to say, that’s true about the Guy LeGuy. But you did it sometime in the news, you do it, but isn’t that incredible? All the things you’ve done in your stellar career, people still think of Gordon: Guy LeGuy.
Gordon Peterson: They stop me in the street.
Andy Ockershausen: Who did not watch that show?
Gordon Peterson: Well, everybody was trapped at home.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, the weather at the time-
Gordon Peterson: And, you know-
Andy Ockershausen: That was Sidelines, wasn’t it?
Gordon Peterson: Redskins Sidelines, yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: Very popular.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, it was. And, of course, in those days, Channel 9 had a huge audience.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my God, enormous, Gordon.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, that was the epitome of broadcasting was CBS and Channel 9. Now, what ever happened to-
Gordon Peterson: Well, we had the Redskins, you know?
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, absolutely. What ever happened to the channel when it was WMAL-TV? Now it’s TV-7, and 4 is WRC, I grew up with, but now it’s News 4 Washington. What about the call letters? They don’t mean anything anymore.
Gordon Peterson: I don’t, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. People still stop me on the street and say, “Channel 9 News.”
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Gordon Peterson: I spent 10 years at Channel 7, but they-
Andy Ockershausen: Yeah, I know.
Gordon Peterson: And 10 great years.
Andy Ockershausen: They’ll always remember you for Channel 9.
Gordon Peterson: 10 great years, by the way. It was wonderful.
Andy Ockershausen: Thinking about Gordon Peterson, to read about you and all the things you’ve done, to be remembered for Guy LeGuy is unbelievable. But let’s go back to Gordon Peterson. Massachusetts. Worcester. Were you born in Worcester?

Before Our Town – Worcester, Masschusetts

Gordon Peterson: Born in Worcester. Yep. Worcester, Mass.
Andy Ockershausen: And, uh, did you go-
Gordon Peterson: High school …
Andy Ockershausen: Grammar school and all that?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. Grammar school, high school, I went to St. Johns on Temple Street, which was a dump. Now it’s a beautiful place.
Andy Ockershausen: That’s a high school, correct?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. All boys, of course.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, we had a, I was connected with Channel 27, we was owned by Channel 50’s owner in Washington, so Janice and I visited Worcester and loved the town. A great place. I didn’t work there, but it was great to see it. I had not known about Holy Cross to see the school. And that’s a fabulous place.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. I graduated from Holy Cross. Started at Georgetown.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, really? Instead of opposite? Why were you at Georgetown?
Gordon Peterson: I spent a year at Georgetown and I loved it, had a great time. Good Irish Catholic boy, I decided-
Andy Ockershausen: I was going to say that.
Gordon Peterson: I was going to become a Dominican Friar afterwards.
Andy Ockershausen: It’s a Jesuit school, Holy Cross, right?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. So is Georgetown. So I spent 18 months with the Dominicans. But I didn’t care for their dating policy, so I left.
Andy Ockershausen: And back to Worcester? And you finished school in Worcester.
Gordon Peterson: I finished… My father said, “You’ve got to stop fooling around. Go up to Holy Cross and get a degree.”
Andy Ockershausen: Your family is all from Massachusetts, of course?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: And you went to school and then why would you stay in your hometown to go to school? Because you were home. You can sleep at home, right?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. Well, by that time, I’d been floating around a little bit. My father was beginning to think I was going to float around forever.
Andy Ockershausen: So how did you get to W… I knew that when I first heard of Gordon Peterson, you had to be a radio guy. Grew up in radio.

From the Marine Corps to Journalism – Peterson Learned the Art of Information Gathering – Important to Put a Face with a Name

Gordon Peterson: Well, I got out of the Marine Corps-
Andy Ockershausen: You were a reporter.
Gordon Peterson: I wanted a job. I didn’t want a real job, you know? So I got a job at a local radio station, a CBS affiliate.
Andy Ockershausen: Powerhouse WEEI.
Gordon Peterson: No, no, no. This is in Worcester.
Andy Ockershausen: Before that? Oh, okay.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, and then the news director had a heart problem, so they asked me if I’d be the news director. I said okay. And I had a list of phone numbers: hospital emergency rooms, the jail, police department, all this stuff. And I made it a point to go out and meet these people so they would have a face.
Now, I don’t know anything about government. I’m making it up as I go along. Although I knew how to gather information because-
Andy Ockershausen: Good idea, though.
Gordon Peterson: Well, I did a lot of that in the Marine Corps, so I knew how to get people to talk to me. And, uh, our competitor was a radio station owned by the newspaper. The newspaper kind of ran the town. And the newspaper reporters didn’t like the radio guys.
Andy Ockershausen: Naturally.
Gordon Peterson: . . .a their company, but they liked me. So I used to meet them at a place called the Cypress Room at night and they’d slip me information. But the other thing was, once people got to recognize the name with the face, they would start calling me with information. So I did that for a couple years-
Andy Ockershausen: That’s being a news director.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: Having the contacts.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, it was fun.
Andy Ockershausen: It’s important.

WEEI – Tumultuous Time in Boston

Gordon Peterson: I got offered a job down in Boston with WEEI, which was news and talk. Big powerhouse radio station-
Andy Ockershausen: Absolutely.
Gordon Peterson: In those days. It was good. A lot of stuff going on then. And it was before the busing crisis.
Andy Ockershausen: Big stuff in Boston.
Gordon Peterson: But it was starting to bubble up the racial tension and the anti-war stuff was big.
Andy Ockershausen: But you mentioned the Marine Corps. That was the first time you brought that up. You were a Marine before you were a broadcaster.
Gordon Peterson: Yes. Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, that’s unusual. Did you learn that in the Marine Corps at all?
Gordon Peterson: No. No.
Andy Ockershausen: But you were an officer. You had to know something.
Gordon Peterson: Well, apparently. They kept paying me.
Andy Ockershausen: Did you go through Quantico?
Gordon Peterson: They didn’t send me to the brig. Probably should have a couple times.
Andy Ockershausen: Did you go through Quantico?

Peterson’s Military Service – From OCS at Quantico to Beaufort, South Carolina to Japan

Gordon Peterson: I went through OCS at Quantico, and then we went to the basics school at Quantico.
Andy Ockershausen: So you had a little Washington experience way back?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: Coming to the bars in the city.
Gordon Peterson: It wasn’t covering news, let me just say that, okay? The less said about that, the better, I think.
Janice Iacona Ockershausen: Mm-hmm
Andy Ockershausen: There used to be a saying, there were more Marines killed on US-1 back and forth to Quantico than were killed overseas.
Gordon Peterson: Shirley Highway, yeah. Yeah. Ain’t that the truth? Or on the way to Mary Washington College, which was all women then.
Andy Ockershausen: And all those little bars on 14th street, the strippers. The Marines were big there.
Gordon Peterson: I never went to those. No absolutely not.
Andy Ockershausen: But you graduated from OCS and went back to Worcester.
Gordon Peterson: No, I went down to Beaufort, South Carolina. When they tell you to go someplace, you have to go.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, absolutely.
Gordon Peterson: So I went down to Beaufort and then I ended up in Japan.
Andy Ockershausen: Ah hah.
Gordon Peterson: I did a tour in Japan.
Andy Ockershausen: Was there a war going on or did you start-
Gordon Peterson: No, I was Cuban Missile Crisis.
Andy Ockershausen: Okay.

“I kept Krushchev out of Florida. Don’t thank me it was my job”

Gordon Peterson: I kept Khrushchev out of Florida. Don’t thank me it was my job.
Andy Ockershausen: I used to say that I helped keep the Koreans out of Los Angeles but now they own it, of course. They’re taking it over. It’s like Pyongyang or whatever it is.
So, now, back to Boston, and that’s your radio career. And then how do you get from radio in Boston to TV in the capital city of the world?

From Boston Radio to Washington DC TV

Gordon Peterson: The guy who hired me, I think he ended up as a Vice President of CBS in New York, so he called me, and he said, “Listen, there’s a guy in Washington you ought to talk to. He’s an old friend of mine. He’s currently the Washington producer of the Cronkite show and Kay Graham has hired him to put an all-news radio station on the air and I think you guys could get along.”
He said, “He’s like you. He thinks he’s invented the medium.”
Andy Ockershausen: Right.
Gordon Peterson: So, okay. So, I get on, I meet Jim Snyder.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, boy.
Gordon Peterson: And I’m talking to him and I said, “I think I can learn a lot from this guy.” And he offered me a huge cut in pay and I took it.
And then he had the nerve to say, “I supposed you want me to pay your moving expenses.” I said, “Yes, I would prefer that, yes.”
Andy Ockershausen: He was a good company man, evidently, right? Paying the moving.
Gordon Peterson: He was an amazing news guy.
Andy Ockershausen: Great guy, Jim Snyder.
Gordon Peterson: He’d been with the Westinghouse for years and ran the Westinghouse bureau and he hired a stable of really, really smart people.
Andy Ockershausen: Hire the good talent. Put them on the air. He did that.
Gordon Peterson: Oh, yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: And besides being a great guy… I knew Jim Snyder very well.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: And, um, he hired the production people too, did he not? I mean, everybody was loyal to Jim Snyder.
Gordon Peterson: Well, he was tough. I mean, you know-
Andy Ockershausen: Oh boy.

Working with Jim Snyder – Channel 9

Gordon Peterson: He would say to me, “What was going through your mind when you wrote that lead?” Or, he called me in one day and he says, “What’s wrong?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “What’s wrong? I know there’s something wrong.” I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said, “I haven’t had a new idea out of you in two weeks.”
I said, “Well, I come in with these ideas and you don’t use them.” He said, “Nevertheless-
Andy Ockershausen: That’s a news director, right? Keep trying.
Gordon Peterson: So he’s the one… Warner Wolf left.
Andy Ockershausen: WW. Listen, I helped recruit him. I used to take him to lunch and dinner and everything to beg him to come to ABC because they needed Warner, you know? And Roone Arledge apparently worked like a bitch to get him, I know that.
Gordon Peterson: Well, they go him.
Andy Ockershausen: And then Warner will tell you, once he got the job, he didn’t talk to them. He’ll tell you that.
Gordon Peterson: But Warner leaves, and I loved Warner.
Andy Ockershausen: Spectacular guy.

Meeting Glenn Brenner – First Impression

Gordon Peterson: We still have a good relationship. Anyway, and they tried a couple of other guys, and in comes this six-foot-five-inch Irish giant, Glenn Brenner. And first night we’re on the air, I’m going, “Whoa. Whoa. Wait a minute, this is something different. This guy knows.”
So I go into see Snyder and I say, “You just hit a grand slam home run. You hit it right out of the ballpark.” He said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “This guy Brenner is going to be the biggest thing that ever hit this town.”
Andy Ockershausen: Boy, was he.
Gordon Peterson: So years later I would remind him of that conversation. He would say, “It’s strange. I don’t remember that conversation.” He used to bust my chops.
Andy Ockershausen: But the first time I met Glenn, I thought the same thing. It was a University of Maryland football luncheon. It wasn’t on the air. He was just there as the reporter. What a great guy just sitting to talk baloney with back and forth. He’s from Philly.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: So he was giving me Philly stories and I said, “Really, I don’t care, Glenn.” He said, “You will someday.” Was he right.
Gordon Peterson: Oh, yeah. He says to me one day, “I need to talk to you. This is serious.” He says, “I’ve been fired from every job I’ve ever had for the stuff I’m doing here and you keep throwing gasoline on the fire. I’m trying to figure out if you’re with me or against me.”
I said, “I’m with you, baby, just trust me.”
Andy Ockershausen: What a great thing. I mean, did you have the same relationship because you worked with females. You were one of the first anchors to work with a female anchor, as I recall.
Gordon Peterson: Well, I-
Andy Ockershausen: You had two of them.

Max Robinson – CBS Local to ABC Network

Gordon Peterson: And Max Robinson was the first African-American.
Andy Ockershausen: Correct.
Gordon Peterson: Great guy.
Andy Ockershausen: And then got promoted to network, didn’t he, in Chicago?
Gordon Peterson: Well, then Roone grabbed him.
Andy Ockershausen: Right.
Gordon Peterson: Roone grabbed him and moved him to Chicago.
Andy Ockershausen: Right.
Gordon Peterson: Max.
Andy Ockershausen: It didn’t work.
Gordon Peterson: Well, it was a triumvirate. He had Frank Reynolds.
Andy Ockershausen: Yeah.
Gordon Peterson: And then Peter Jennings doing the international stuff, and then Max doing the Midwest and stuff.
Andy Ockershausen: Didn’t fly at all.
Gordon Peterson: It just didn’t work. It was awkward, you know?
Andy Ockershausen: I felt sorry for Max because they hung him out.
Gordon Peterson: And I liked Max a lot.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, the talent you worked with, the females, though-
Gordon Peterson: J.C. Hayward.
Andy Ockershausen: J.C. was magnificent when she started.
Gordon Peterson: Maureen Bunyan.
Andy Ockershausen: Maureen. You ended up with her.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. Yeah. And Andrea Mitchell was with us. I mean, we had a lot of really wonderful…
And in radio we hired, Jim hired, Ann Taylor, who ended up at NPR.
Andy Ockershausen: The anchor guys. Well, Gordo, your career in television is unbelievable and I want to finish talking to you about radio, so we’re going to take a break now. This is Andy Ockershausen. This is Our Town.
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Announcer: Our Town with Andy Ockershausen.
Andy Ockershausen: Glenn Brenner was such a big, important figure in my mind as a guy in Our Town.

Gordon Peterson Remembers Glenn Brenner

Gordon Peterson: People ask me about him almost every day, how much I miss him still.
Andy Ockershausen: 15 years, he died.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. He died in January of ’92. And we had a great rela…
We used to talk for an hour, hour and a half every day before we went on the air.
Andy Ockershausen: Right.

Peterson Decides to Meet Brenner at Marine Corps Marahton Finish Line

Gordon Peterson: And he was very smart, and a very good writer. He pretended to be a dummy, but he wasn’t. He was very, very bright. And he was running the Marine Marathon, and I woke up and I told my wife, “I think I’m going to go and be at the finish line.”
She said, “Why?” I said, “I don’t know, I just have a feeling.” And he came across the line, he wasn’t smiling, said, “I’ve had a headache the whole time,” and he wouldn’t… you know, they give you these little, like, metal blankets to put on-
Andy Ockershausen: Yeah.
Gordon Peterson: And he didn’t want one of those. He wasn’t sweating. He wouldn’t take any water. He wouldn’t take any oranges.
Andy Ockershausen: Wow.
Gordon Peterson: So I said, “Let’s go up to the medical tent.” He said, “I’ll be all right.”
But he was walking. I didn’t like the way he was-
Andy Ockershausen: Wobbling.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, I didn’t like the way he sounded. Finally I convinced him to go up and he collapsed on the way up. We brought him in and people were kind of celebrity-stricken, but there was a Navy hospital corpsman and those guys are unbelievable. Ask any Marine about those guys.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, yeah.
Gordon Peterson: And I said, “Can you get me a doctor?” He said, he brings his flight surgeon in, and the guys, “Look…”
And Glenn is saying to me, “I’ve had a stroke, because I can’t feel my side.”
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my God.
Gordon Peterson: So the doctor said, “Well, sometimes after a run, it mimics this, but you better get him to an emergency room.”
So we got him down to GW, and he never quite recovered from that. I mean, it was, at first it was diagnosed as a cerebral bleed, and-
Andy Ockershausen: Was a misdiagnosed, at first, correct?

Coma After Surgery – Friends’ Support 24/7 at Hospital

Gordon Peterson: Yeah. And eventually it was a huge tumor.
Andy Ockershausen: Holy, oh my God.
Gordon Peterson: And I remember Dr. Kobrine had to operate to find out what was in there and then he went into a coma, Glenn, and he never came out of the coma.
Andy Ockershausen: George Washington, yeah, the hospital.
Gordon Peterson: George Washington, and their daughter, Suzie and Glenn’s daughter, Ashley, said, “He’s got to have his friends around him here.” He’s in the coma. He’s got bandages and all that, so they opened up a hospitality room next to his room.”
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my God.
Gordon Peterson: And there was somebody there 24 hours a day. And one day I went home, I had to take a shower and then I came back. The whole town is invested in this.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, I lived through it. I know what you mean.
Gordon Peterson: Everybody is talking about it. And there was a homeless woman, she had her back up against the well, sitting on the ground, she had a portable radio, she said, “Hey, mister, mister.” I went to give her some money, she said, “I don’t want your money.” She said, “I just want you to know I’m praying for your friend.”
Andy Ockershausen: Wow.
Gordon Peterson: I don’t know if you believe in a higher power, but I tell you, I had a feeling then that somebody was talking to me.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my.

A Miracle – Brenner Responds to Sister Marie Louise

Gordon Peterson: And then he had the nun, Sister Marie Louise, used to do Redskin pro picks.

Andy Ockershausen: The nun was priceless.
Gordon Peterson: She was 4-11. They… She had a 90th birthday and they had a party for her at Visitation and Glenn and I were the MCs and he gave her a set of golf clubs.
They’re cloistered. They’re cloistered nuns. They can’t leave the building. Anyway… I’m going down to get some coffee in the hospital and the door opens and there’s Sister Marie Louise. Weezy. I said, “How’d you get out?” She said, “Never mind that. I’m praying for a miracle.”
So I take her in the room. Now, he hasn’t moved. He’s in the coma. He’s in a sitting-up position. Bandages were on him. I said, “Hey Glenn, Weezy’s here.” And he waves.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my.
Gordon Peterson: People standing around the bed start to cry. She says, “I want a miracle.” I said, “Don’t push your luck, Weezy, you just had one.”
Andy Ockershausen: He just moved.
Gordon Peterson: I mean…
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, Gordon. That must have been a tough time for you.
Gordon Peterson: It was a tough time for everybody.
Andy Ockershausen: The whole town. I know that. And Sonny was keeping me informed. He’d go visit him.

Glenn Brenner’s Best Friend Steve Dickstein

Gordon Peterson: He had a best… His best friend was named Steve Dickstein, I don’t know if you ever met him.
Andy Ockershausen: I heard that name.
Gordon Peterson: He was a Philadelphia lawyer.
Andy Ockershausen: I was going to say a lawyer.
Gordon Peterson: They grew up together.
Andy Ockershausen: Right.
Gordon Peterson: Great, great, wonderful guy. And he, of course, he was there the whole time as well and started to tell me some stories about their childhood.
Andy Ockershausen: They must have been something else.
Gordon Peterson: And some of the stuff I really can’t repeat on the air, but it was great stuff.
Andy Ockershausen: Actually he was a very good athlete and good pitcher, wasn’t he?
Gordon Peterson: Yes. He had one season up with the Mets. He was a little wild. He hit a guy in the on-deck circle.
And I’m walking by his desk one day and he’s writing left-handed. I said, “You’re left-handed?” He says, “No, bleep.” I said, “Well, wait a minute, you throw right-handed. No wonder you were wild.” He says, “I’m more wild with the left hand.”
But he had several years in the minors.
Andy Ockershausen: I knew that. He was a very good pitcher.
Gordon Peterson: And he was going to go down and play in Mexico, but the guy who owned the team got thrown in jail so then he decided-
Andy Ockershausen: I lived through that with you, even though it was a different company, it was part of Our Town. And you guys were so important to the whole broadcast industry. It was great. And hearing you talk about it, it’s not about you, but it is about you because you were such an important part of his life.
Gordon Peterson: Well, that’s the nice thing about doing this news business in Washington because you really do get to know each other and the people respect each other.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, absolutely.
Gordon Peterson: I can remember one time-

Willard Scott and Ed Walker – The Joy Boys

Andy Ockershausen: Talking about Eddie Walker and Willard Scott. They were friends of yours, but they were never opponents.
Gordon Peterson: I went over, I did their last radio show-
Andy Ockershausen: The Joy Boys?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. I went in and apparently there was a jurisdictional problem because our photographer has a different union, IBEW, and-
Andy Ockershausen: Right, and then. . .
Gordon Peterson: So I wanted to film the open with the “We are the joy boys of radio.” Well, there was an argument, so they just kept playing the theme over and over and over again.
Finally I managed… Somebody snuck me into the building anyway. I finally managed to get the interview and we put the story on the air.
Andy Ockershausen: Their last night, that must have been special.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. Eddie was a spectacular guy. I loved Eddie.
Andy Ockershausen: He was a very important part to WMAL when we were a radio station that had music. Eddie brought a lot to the table because he had knowledge and he was so important part of WMAL at the time, as was Willard, because even though they worked with Channel 4, they helped us at WMAL, you know? We were friends.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: And that, I don’t know if that exists anymore, Gordon, because I’m not in the business anymore, nor are you, but it was a small town as far as broadcast was concerned.
Gordon Peterson: It was. It was.
Andy Ockershausen: You knew everybody, they knew you, and they would help you. Like Bill Mayhew, with his all-night program, I know you-

Bill Trumbull Roast of Warner Wolf

Gordon Peterson: I loved Bill Mayhew. He was fabulous, yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: He was always there when nobody else was up.
Gordon Peterson: Bill Trumbull. I loved Bill Trumbull. He was great.
Andy Ockershausen: Smart guy, boy. He had great talent.
Gordon Peterson: We were doing a roast for Warner Wolf one time, and Bill Trumbull gets up and he says, “And after Warner Wolf graduated from the Jewish School for the Incredibly Short…”
Andy Ockershausen: Which was true. He was incredibly short.
Gordon Peterson: Warner was fabulous.
Andy Ockershausen: What a character. A local guy, really, right? Went to Roosevelt* High School.

Warner Wolf

Gordon Peterson: Oh, absolutely. He said to me, “Gordo, ask me why the Redskins lost.” I said okay. “So Warner, why did the Redskins lose?” “Because the other team scored more points, that’s why.”
Andy Ockershausen: He set you up.
Gordon Peterson: Always.
Andy Ockershausen: Didn’t he have the “Boo of the Week”?
Gordon Peterson: The other thing that people don’t know about is “Let’s go to the videotape.” He didn’t type.
Andy Ockershausen: Uh oh.
Gordon Peterson: Now, in TV, directors need a script so they can have a few seconds-
Andy Ockershausen: A follow the time thing, right?
Gordon Peterson: Well a few seconds to get a roll cue to get something going. So that became his roll cue. “Let’s go to the videotape” became the director’s roll cue.
Andy Ockershausen: Really?
Gordon Peterson: Because he used to write out his scripts in longhand and then ad lib off… He’d make himself some notes and ad lib off them. He never did, he never typed up a script.
Andy Ockershausen: But he had to tell. . .
Gordon Peterson: Which is why he was so effective.
Andy Ockershausen: Right. It was all ad lib. He didn’t read anything.
Gordon Peterson: He was spontaneous and real. It was genuine.
Andy Ockershausen: And then he had the radio show with the kids. Like, somebody used to say, if you chew bubble gum, you can’t listen to the program, and. . .
Gordon Peterson: You know what he used to do, he did a radio program for women who didn’t know much about football.
Andy Ockershausen: Is that right?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. “Alright, ladies, this is what a linebacker does.”

Ed Walker Umped Softball Game – WMAL v. Channel 9

Andy Ockershausen: Oh, Gordon, you have so many great memories of your talent, and I considered them our talent because they were all part of Our Town, and that’s what’s so great about… Everybody helped that. We had a softball game with Channel 9, WMAL Radio against Channel 9, and we brought Eddie Walker out to be the umpire.
They said, “You can’t do that.” I said, “He works for us. He’s going to be the umpire.” And Janice knows, they said he can’t see. I said that’s immaterial. But that was Channel 9. I forget the guy’s name that was the manager over there, but they cooperated with us with everything and-
Gordon Peterson: Well, we had Jim . . ., was a great guy.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my God, yes.
Gordon Peterson: Terrific guy.
Andy Ockershausen: There was a lady’s name, was a program director over there and went to Channel 5.

Betty Endicott – Former News Director Channel 9

Gordon Peterson: Oh, Betty Endicott.
Andy Ockershausen: Betty Endicott.
Gordon Peterson: No, she became the news director.
Andy Ockershausen: At Channel 5.
Gordon Peterson: No, at Channel 9.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, is that right?
Gordon Peterson: I talked them into hiring her as the news director because I knew her as . . on the street
Andy Ockershausen: Great talent.
Gordon Peterson: Great news guy, news reporter. So she came in as the news director. Then she went from there to Channel 5 as the general manager.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, the reason… I knew Betty because she played in that game. I’m sure you were there. And Gordon was there and Sonny was there and Maureen was there and J.C. All the talent showed up.
Gordon Peterson: Who won?
Andy Ockershausen: So we carried it with Eddie Walker. We had our own umpire. And Eddie went along with it. He called balls and strikes. He said, “I can hear them.”
Gordon Peterson: I can tell by the sound whether it was-
Andy Ockershausen: This is Andy Ockershausen, this is Our Town. I’m chatting with Gordon Peterson. It’s a revelation about what he knows. Then we’ll be right back.
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Announcer: You’re listening to Our Town with Andy Ockershausen, brought to you by Best Mark Communications.
Andy Ockershausen: This is Andy Ockershausen. This is Our Town. And talking with Gordon and reading and knowing so many things about him that he did a fabulous Inside Washington program for years and years. I say, it was started by… Martin Agronsky used to be a newsman. Did you know that at WMAL radio? He did the show for ABC from our studios. Frank Harden did, the guy that covered the Congress that we got paid for, and Jackson Weaver was the announcer for Martin Agronsky. 8 a.m. every day.

Gordon Peterson Moderates Agronsky & Company after Martin Agronsky Retired

Gordon Peterson: Well, it was, Agronsky’s Washington was one of the first talk shows-
Andy Ockershausen: That was the talk show . . .
Gordon Peterson: I think it was the first talk show of its kind in Washington. They had James J. Kilpatrick and Hugh Sidey and Carl Rowan and Elizabeth Drew. Really, really good people.
Anyway, Jim Snyder told me, I loved being out in the street, covering news.
Andy Ockershausen: You started as a reporter.
Gordon Peterson: Well, that’s… I loved… I never stopped being a reporter.
Andy Ockershausen: Right.
Gordon Peterson: And he said-
Andy Ockershausen: But a lot of these news guys had never done that, like you and Vance and the people that started in radio and did street reporting then became anchors. They understood what they were doing.
Gordon Peterson: Oh, yeah. I mean, I loved it. And if I didn’t have a week when I first got here that I wasn’t covered with tear gas, I thought I was doing something wrong.
So, anyway, he said back in the early 70s, he said, “I want to have Max anchor the news.” I said, “That’s great.” You know, no African-American anchors.
Andy Ockershausen: Never happened before.
Gordon Peterson: Said, “I want you to sit with him. I want you to anchor with him.” I said, “Yeah, that’s fine, but I don’t want to do that. That’s not what I do. I go out in the street.”
And he said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll make a deal with you. You sit here during the sweeps, during the rating periods, the rest of the time, you can do what you want, go out and cover what you want.”
I said, okay. It’s a good deal. Well, I always used to say, this anchoring thing, that’s not…
So he said to me, ‘You know, you accused me of turning your brain to oatmeal when I made you an anchor?”
Andy Ockershausen: Like most anchormen.
Gordon Peterson: He said, “I’m going to give you a chance to exercise your intelligence, what’s left of it.” And he said,“Martin Agronsky is retiring. I’d like you to take the show over.” I said, “Okay, we’ll do that.”
And so, as I said, we had Hugh Sidey, and I liked Martin a lot. In fact, I did this whole-
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, I know. Local guy too. He’s an Our Town guy.
Gordon Peterson: I did some pieces with him before he retired.
Andy Ockershausen: He had a little bit of an English accent too, and I said, “Martin, you ain’t from England”
Gordon Peterson: Well, he had been an international reporter.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, I know that. World-class guy.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, yeah. But we had James J. Kilpatrick and-
Andy Ockershausen: Great writer with Richmond, right?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. Well-
Andy Ockershausen: Southerner.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. There’s some question. We won’t go into that. Anyway-
Andy Ockershausen: Yeah, many, many secrets that we don’t want to tell.
Gordon Peterson: Well, it’s really not secrets, but he was not particularly favorably disposed toward integration in those days when he was writing for the Richmond newspaper and I was. Over time-
Andy Ockershausen: Talent, talent.
Gordon Peterson: We brought Charles Krauthammer on and, you know-
Andy Ockershausen: He was in a wheelchair, of course, when you first started it.
Gordon Peterson: And we had, we brought in Evan Thomas.
Andy Ockershausen: Newsweek.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. Then we brought in Colbert King of the Washington Post.
Andy Ockershausen: Washington Post.
Gordon Peterson: We brought in-
Andy Ockershausen: Colby’s still on the air, isn’t he? I see him occasionally.
Gordon Peterson: Periodically. Used to go on with Jim Vance during elections.
Andy Ockershausen: Right.
Gordon Peterson: And, you know, we brought a lot of… Nina Totenberg.
Andy Ockershausen: You had a great cast.
Gordon Peterson: Mark Shields. I brought him on.
Janice Iacona Ockershausen: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Andy Ockershausen:Then you were syndicated but you also did NPR, didn’t you?
Gordon Peterson: It went to public television stations around the country.
Andy Ockershausen: Right.
Gordon Peterson: So it was-
Andy Ockershausen: But in Washington, it was commercial. You all had a sponsor.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. Once a week, toward the end when I was doing the show, the same guy would call me every week saying, “I’m never going to watch your show again. Too liberal. I’m not… You and Shields, they ought to ship you out of the country.”
Same guy, he called me every week. “I’m never going to watch it again.” And a woman would call me from the West Coast, say, “If you don’t get rid of Charles Krauthammer, I’m never going to watch your show again.” She didn’t like the conservatives.
Andy Ockershausen: So you were doing something right?
Gordon Peterson: Every week, they’d call. “I’m never going to watch it again.” This went on for a couple years. So when I finally took it off the air after 25 years, I get a call from the West Coast. She says, “I want to apologize.” She said, “I really got to like Charles Krauthammer at the end.”
Andy Ockershausen: And we ran him off.
Gordon Peterson: “I’m going to miss you guys.”
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my God. But, see, if you hadn’t have had that broadcast, I say that, that radio reporting experience, you could handle all those things.
Gordon Peterson: Oh, yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: Nothing was going to bother you, right?
Gordon Peterson: It was fun. Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: You loved doing it. When did you tape it, on Friday?
Gordon Peterson: We would tape it on Friday, yeah. When we were at Channel 9, it used to run, we used to sometimes just go live at 7:00 on Saturday nights.
Andy Ockershausen: Is that right?

Gordon Peterson Makes “Dump Out” Decision During Arkansas Comeback in Last Two Minutes of Football Game While President Clinton Watched On

Gordon Peterson: Yeah. Oh, here’s a bad one. Arkansas was playing somebody. It was a real big game and they were going to push us off or make us very late.
Andy Ockershausen: Right.
Gordon Peterson: And I was worried about… It’s an appointment television program, so I was worried that the audience would go away. So somebody in the control room says, “There’s only like two minutes to go in the game, you want to dump out?” I said, “Yeah, let’s dump out.”
Well, Arkansas scored a big comeback win and the President was watching. Bill Clinton was watching.
Andy Ockershausen: Watching his team.
Gordon Peterson: They never asked me again if I wanted to dump out.
Andy Ockershausen: I’m sure you heard about that.
Gordon Peterson: It’s the last time.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my God. Just having these characters that you mention on the air made the program, which I think that television is still a cast of characters.
I’m glad you had the opportunity to work for Tim Brandt for a while.
Gordon Peterson: Oh, I love Tim. Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: Tim, I started Tim in broadcast because he had been in Maryland and he was a stringer for a guy who produced at Maryland and we brought him in and put him in at program and trained him and I remember his first opportunity, we had him do a heavyweight championship fight with Muhammad Ali and he was in a tuxedo. He said, “I’ve never done a fight before.” I said, “Tim, neither have we. You’re going to wing it, Timmy.”
But he was a great guy, local kid, and-

Broadcast Meet Ups During Retirement

Gordon Peterson: Well, about… Once a month, we have a lunch, which I call the OFBC, the Old Farts Broadcast Caucus, and it’s-
Andy Ockershausen: And you had a good cast.
Gordon Peterson: It’s me, Tim, Arch Campbell, Bob Ryan–
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my God.
Gordon Peterson: Leon Harris, who is not retired, who has left Channel 7, but he’s back at Channel 4-
Andy Ockershausen: He almost got retired.
Gordon Peterson: He’s wonderful. Wonderful guy.
Andy Ockershausen: Good guy to work with too.
Gordon Peterson: And sometimes… Bill Lord, who was our boss over at Channel 7 for 10 years. Wonderful guy.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, you know, doing that I think kept you alive and aware of what’s going on. We have a group like that that Ernie Baur started actually, but they’re all guys that have been writers with the Post or ex-broad…
We even got Charlie Brotman regularly. You know, Charlie’s going to be 90 next month.
Gordon Peterson: My God, really?
Andy Ockershausen: He’s still getting around, still active. And Ernie is great. Ernie brings us all together. Tim comes occasionally. But seeing all these people reminds me of what a great town this is and it was really different when we knew everybody, Gordon.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: We could have so much fun with our friends and talk about Eddie Walker and Willard and you did a lot with them and they appreciated you so much. And they would talk about you as much as they did their own show.
Gordon Peterson: Willard was… The funeral, huh? Eddie Walker’s funeral?
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my. Willard.
Gordon Peterson: Can you tell that story?
Andy Ockershausen: In the wheelchair.
Gordon Peterson: Can we tell the story about-
Andy Ockershausen: Go ahead. We’re live.
Gordon Peterson: So I’m at Eddie Walker’s funeral. Willard gets up and says-
Andy Ockershausen: We brought Frank Harden with us incidentally. It was his first day out. Frank was 92.
Gordon Peterson: Oh my God.
Andy Ockershausen: When we brought him to that funeral for Eddie.

Willard Scott at Ed Walker’s Funeral – Ed Walker Fulfills Dream Drives on Beltway

Gordon Peterson: So Willard says, when they were at AU, when they were in college, they were out, the Beltway just opened up and they were out and Eddie says, “You know, my greatest regret is I’ve never been able to drive.”
And the kid said, “You can drive, Eddie. Get behind the wheel.”
Andy Ockershausen: Been blind since birth.
Gordon Peterson: Okay, go left, go right, hit the brake, do this. Finally a police officer pulls him over. Says to Eddie, “Let me see your license.” He says, “I don’t have a license.”
Says, “What do you mean you don’t have a license?” “I’m blind.”
Andy Ockershausen: And Willard loved that, I’m sure. And that can’t ever happen again, right?
Gordon Peterson: I don’t know. God, I hope not.
Andy Ockershausen: The Joy Boys of Radio. Well this has been a wonderful experience with Gordon. Producer, do you have anything you’d like to add or throw in? You’re the boss here, you know?
Gordon Peterson: It’s obvious who the boss… Andy, it’s obvious who the boss is here.
Janice Iacona Ockershausen: Right.

Gordon Barnes “punk’d” by Colleagues at Local DC Restaurant

Andy Ockershausen: There will never be another. And then Gordon Barnes. The story that I heard about you guys and Gordon Barnes at a restaurant.
Gordon Peterson: Okay.
Andy Ockershausen: You and Glenn. Tell that story.
Gordon Peterson: Here’s the story.
Andy Ockershausen: Everybody remembers Gordon Barnes, the weatherman with Channel 9.
Gordon Peterson: First of all, Brenner, Glenn Brenner, used to bust his chops crazy. He said that we were going to have 12 inches of snow and it was sunny and warm. And Glenn and a bunch of other guys went out with shovels pretending to be shoveling snow. And they said Barnes is leaving and we said, “Let’s take him to dinner and we’ll stiff him with the check.”
Andy Ockershausen: Because he had been notoriously didn’t pay, right?
Gordon Peterson: Well, I don’t know about that, but we go down to Ruth Chris’ steakhouse, me, Glenn, Maureen-
Andy Ockershausen: Right down there on Connecticut Avenue.
Gordon Peterson: Including Barnes, yeah. So, and Billy McKnight was the photographer. We put him in the backroom with a camera. And we put the microphone in the bread basket. I think Mo left first. And then Glenn said, “I’ve got to go check with the station.” Then I said, “I’ve got to go to the head.” So I go to the bathroom. We get in the cab and Glenn says to me, “We’re not going to really stiff him for the check, are we?” I said, “Yeah, we are.”
Andy Ockershausen: You’d had dinner.
Gordon Peterson: So Billy’s got the camera on, and finally he says to the owner, said, “Where’d they go?” He said, “They all left.” And when we put it on the air, we had a clock spinning around as if he’d been sitting there for hours.
Andy Ockershausen: Did he have to pay the bill? That’s the funny thing about-
Gordon Peterson: We did stiff him for the check.
Andy Ockershausen: Only in America could that come off and get it on television. They set it up and he fell into it, didn’t he?
Gordon Peterson: Oh, yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: And everybody thought he was a joke anyway, I’m told now. That might not have been true.
Gordon Peterson: Well-
Andy Ockershausen: He was a peculiar guy.
Gordon Peterson: We used to try to crack him up, and one thing that always worked was I would have Glenn lean back in the chair while he was doing the weather as if I was dentist. That always worked with . . .
Andy Ockershausen: He’d go crazy. Well I don’t know if you had that much fun at 7 but I’m sure you did-

Gordon Peterson at Channel 7 WJLA-TV

Gordon Peterson: Oh, I did. I had a great time over there. Wonderful time.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, they’re wonderful people, and, you know, you knew each other and you grew up here and this is Our Town.
Gordon Peterson: Well, I had, you know, Fred Ryan who is now the publisher of the Post was the CEO of-
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, I know that.
Gordon Peterson: Allbritton Communications. Robert Allbritton. And then Bill Lord was my big, number one boss. Great guy.
Andy Ockershausen: Great news guy too.
Gordon Peterson: And a whole bunch of other people I knew over there, so I really-
Andy Ockershausen: Used to be WMAL-TV, you know?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, right. I was so lucky to spend 10 years over there because-
Andy Ockershausen: Absolutely.
Gordon Peterson: It would go in there every June and I would say to Bill Lord, because I’m going to be 80 next month, I think, if I make it, and I would go in and I would say, “How long do you want to keep this going?”
He said, “How long are you going to live?” He said, “My dream is for the two of us to walk out of here together.” Actually, we almost did.
Andy Ockershausen: Is he still… He left too?
Gordon Peterson: No, he left. With the new ownership, he left.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, that’s the Sinclair Group, but the more things change, the more they stay… I go back to Bryson Rash and Joe McCaffrey, we had all those people at the old Channel 7. And then Channel 9 and watching them grow up with Larry Israel and all those people.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: It’s been a great run for you. Reading all about you and being a Marine, too, I mean, you survived the Marine Corps.
Gordon Peterson: I did, yeah. Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: And you’re active, right? You still go to Marine events and so forth?

Monthly Meet Ups with Journalists Who Are Marine Veterans

Gordon Peterson: Once a month, a bunch of us who are journalists who have been Marines have lunch, and it’s Jim Dickinson, Jim Lehrer, Mark Shields, Mark Russell, Pat Ferguson, Nick Kotz.
Andy Ockershausen: Good names. Mark Russell.
Gordon Peterson: Jim Dickinson started it. He calls it “Remington’s Raiders.” So, it’s good.
Andy Ockershausen: Mark was one of our first guests on Our Town.
Gordon Peterson: Mark Russell or Mark Shields?
Andy Ockershausen: Mark Russell. And he did some work for WMAL at the time, so we had a lot of relationships with him.
Gordon Peterson: He’s a good friend.

WMAL AM630 Reported On Marine Corps Marathon in its Infancy

Andy Ockershausen: We did the Marine Corps Marathon. Bill Mayhew, when I was at WMAL, came in and said the Marines are going to start a run, and I said, “Well, maybe they won’t come back. Let’s be careful.” He said, “No, we’re going to have a marathon and I want you to come to meet some of these people and I want to broadcast it.”
I said, “Well, you know, a marathon ain’t that interesting in radio, but let’s see what we can do, Bill.”
So he took me down to meet PX Kelley, who was head of the Marines at Quantico.
Gordon Peterson: PX Kelley was an instructor at the basics school when I was there.
Andy Ockershausen: Is that right?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: He must have been a young officer there, right?
Gordon Peterson: Yeah. He used to talk about my company as the infamous golf company.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh my God. What a great guy was PX, though. And that was the first guy. And Bill Mayhew got us involved and he was there. And Janice used to be a producer for it and ride around in the truck, but I think our first race we had like four or five thousand. That’s all. And I said, “This thing is huge.” Now it’s 35,000.
Gordon Peterson: Unbelievable, yeah. Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: It’s been great for the Marines. And they run with it. And PX was a wonderful host, too. He was a great guy. And then he had his tragedies in the Marine Corps. But what a great guy.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, Beirut.

“My friends call me Bill”

Andy Ockershausen: But, Bill, thanks to you. Um, Bill…
Gordon Peterson: My friends call me Bill. You can call me Bill. It’s Gordon William.
Andy Ockershausen: I know that, Bill.
Who told me that? Ernie Baur said, “Don’t call him Gordon, call him Bill.” Ernie-
Gordon Peterson: You finally got there. It took you long enough to take that advice.
Andy Ockershausen: Gordo. I like Gordo.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, me too.
Andy Ockershausen: But I also like your Marine background-
Gordon Peterson: Gordo means fat in Spanish.
Andy Ockershausen: Is that right? What’s a nice guy like you doing at Channel 9 when you could have been at WMAL radio? But see, that was WEEI.
Gordon Peterson: You never made me an offer.
Andy Ockershausen: You’re right. But I told Tim Brandt, I said, “Timmy, you’re going to end up one day, you’re going to make a mistake leaving WMAL to go to Channel 7. You’re going to end up in like Indianapolis or Louisville or some place.”
So about three years later, he called me, said, “Andy, I want you to know I’m in Louisville. I’m doing the Kentucky Derby for NBC.” Did he have the last laugh?
Gordon Peterson: Oh, yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: Yes he did.
Gordon Peterson: Yeah, yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: But that was great. Gordon, thank you. Bill, thank you for everything you have done for Our Town.
Gordon Peterson: Hey, thank you.
Andy Ockershausen: Thank you for being such a big part of what we are and what we’ve been.
Gordon Peterson: Thanks.
Andy Ockershausen: And I hope this continues. Look, 80 is nothing. I remember it. They were great years. When Brotman can hit 90, you can hit 80.
Gordon Peterson: You remember when you were young and carefree and 80.
Andy Ockershausen: But I happened to be married to a very lovely, gorgeous woman. She produced Harden and Weaver for 10 years and lived. She was here every morning at 4:30.
Gordon Peterson: And lived through it.
J Ockershausen: That’s right. That’s exactly-
Andy Ockershausen: And now is a great talent and has her own business and we’re so happy and happy to have Bill… I think of Gordon Peterson as Bill Peterson, whatever it is.
Gordon Peterson: Whatever.
Andy Ockershausen: Thank God for you.
Gordon Peterson: Okay.
Andy Ockershausen: You’re a good man.
Gordon Peterson: All right, pal. Thanks a lot. Thank you Janice.
Andy Ockershausen: This has been Our Town. This is Andy Ockershausen. And we’ve had a wonderful, wonderful day with Gordon Peterson.
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