March 28, 2024
ON THE AIR

Hale followed his dream all the way to Bangor Broadcaster earns lifetime achievement award

Fifty years ago, a Cleveland native who split his formative years between Jacksonville, Fla., and New York City had a choice to make:

Take a stable office job in a New York shipyard, close to friends and family in a familiar area, or strike out for parts unknown, a dual broadcasting job in radio and the fledgling television industry, and a rural setting totally unlike the buzz, bustle and bright lights of the Empire State’s major city.

“My dad got me the office job, but I decided to go to Bangor instead,” said George Hale, who would go from recently discharged U.S. Navy sailor to Maine media icon while ushering in the early years of TV in the Bangor market.

That man will be honored at a Tuesday, Oct. 18 dinner auction by the March of Dimes as its 2005 honoree for community involvement and lifetime achievement.

“They called me a couple months ago and asked if I would mind,” he said. “I’m not sure I deserve it, but it’s a pleasant surprise.”

So was his choice of where to settle down and raise a family. It wasn’t the location that drew Hale, who will soon celebrate a 34th wedding anniversary with wife Jean, so much as it was the job. As a child, he stuck knobs on the ends of sawed-off broomstick handles and pretended he was broadcasting games.

“I found out about the job by reading an ad while I was on the Staten Island Ferry. I came up to audition and it was one long bus trip. I remember that,” he said. “They [WABI] were downtown at the time and as I was walking over, I saw ‘Finest Talking Pictures’ on the marquee of the Park Theater. So I called my brother, who was an announcer in Scranton, Pa., and said ‘My God, they finally just got talking movies here!’ He couldn’t stop laughing.”

Still, he wanted the job, and three days after his interview, he received a telegram telling him it was his for the taking.

“There were only two things I ever really wanted to do and had passion for: Radio and airplanes,” said Hale, who made his radio debut in 1953 while working at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in Texas.

“I was in the Korean War as a medic and working with the wounded. I called up Armed Forces radio to start a base radio station and we set it up as a carrier current station using AC power lines on the base as an antenna. People could plug into the AC and get a signal for their radio.”

Afterward, he worked in Vineland, N.J., at WWBZ and trained under Fred Wood, one of the most popular DJs in the country at the time who had an overnight show on Philadelphia’s WIP.

A year later, he was at WABI.

“I was doing tournament basketball right after I came here. My first job was doing color and floor work for the games on WABI on TV,” Hale recalled. “[Late NEWS executive sports editor and columnist] Bud Leavitt did play-by- play along with John McCrae and Paul Dugas.”

Back in those days, WABI had to hire RCA to come up and do the production of all the tournament games since the Bangor station had no remote broadcasting equipment.

“TV was so fascinating at that time that people would be staring at you during the game while you were broadcasting,” said Hale, chuckling at the memory. “I grew up with it a little in New York and had some training in it, so I wasn’t awed by it.”

That’s not to say he didn’t have some flustering moments.

“I do remember my first commercial was for Viner Music and I held the sign upside down,” he said.

Hale, who has helped host the last 15 Muscular Dystrophy Telethons on WABI (Channel 5), says honors like the one from the March of Dimes help him take stock of his time here.

“Well, if you hang around long enough, people will recognize you, but I do love it here. It also reminds me how lucky I am that I’ve done almost my entire life something I would have done for free,” he said. “Awards are great, but I try to remind myself I’m not much different than the postman. I deliver the mail and I’m not that special.”

“It’s a privilege to be close to these student athletes and seeing them at their best and worst, and being a part of that. It’s a great experience.”

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net


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