I've been sitting on a tape of anchorman Richard Ross's final day at a newsdesk for some time now, waiting for the right opportunity to stop warming it with my butt. The time of his death seemed right.
For those who've never been to Portland yet are reading this anyway, the significance of this guy is thus: he was the Northwest's premiere TV newsman. Not just in Oregon; the entire Northwest.
He got started in 1939, on the radio in Spokane. His army years had him serving as a radio announcer as well, bringing the news to troops overseas. By the dawn of the 1950's, Seattle's King Broadcasting Company was about to launch its first TV station and hired Ross as the anchor to its first newscast, based on his prior media experience.
Ross was Seattle's newsman until 1956, when King launched KGW-TV in Portland and he accepted an offer to move there. He was Channel 8's anchorman from '56 until 1975, and Channel 2's from '75 until 1986. At the time of his retirement Ross was one of the most recognizable faces in the state, and his long, long anchor career in one location has yet to be topped in this vicinity (Tracy Barry is coming up on his record, but she still has ten years to go).
Ross's final newscast was on July 31, 1986--quite retro itself now, it stars Melissa Mills, Steve Arena, Jeff Gianola, The Boz, and Captain Combover. Leading news events of the day: two people are fighting for control of the Chief of Police seat! A small airplane crashed into a residence in Vancouver--but no one was hurt! Firefighters rescue kittens! ...What were the murderers doing that day? I guess it was just too nice outside.
Indeed, he couldn't have asked for a better day to retire. Bad news was mild, and the sun was beaming. These days retirement from the news gets you a minute-long retrospective at the end of the hour; in 1986 Richard Ross got several minutes up front, as well as the entire 6:30 newscast devoted to him. No news, no weather; if you wanted that you had to get it from someone else. It was all about Ross that day.
And they pulled out all the stops when it came to guest stars: anchors who hadn't been seen in years made one final appearance to bid Ross farewell, as well as heavy hitters in government. KATU even went so far as to display something I've never seen happen since...
They allowed people from the competition to say goodbye. Now that's some class.
There were segments on Ross's family, his volunteer work, and his involvement with the Rose Festival. One thing poked at several times is Ross's hard-edged, zero-tolerance attitude toward the English language and proper diction. Ross was one of those annoying people who insisted Glisan Street was pronounced "glissen." According to the Oregon Historical Society "glissen" is correct, but I don't care; majority overrules it. Ross also regretfully mentions the time he mispronounced "Goldschmidt"--and someone Emailed me months ago claiming he could get me an uncensored clip of this, but he still hasn't done it after much badgering.
Ross made frequent use of his huge heavy dictionary, and by request, he left it with the station after retirement. Melissa Mills promised she would "never leave my participles dangling again."
The final scene was the entire KATU crew gathering behind Ross's desk to applaud thirty years of servitude. It was an impressive sendoff that led to a nice loooong retirement of over twenty years. But before that, Ross gave one final speech to the viewers: