I'm Outta Here: this is fun but I am off to work on a Habitat project

[yellowdogintexas]

before it gets too hot!

see you folks later!

[Richardo]

1. Have fun, you do-gooder you.

:hi:

[Radio_Lady]

2. "Bye-bye for a while, and keep a smile." (Skipper Chuck Zink's sign off for years.)

This was on our Miami children's TV show in the late 1950s.

From: http://cassanello.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html


"Skipper" Chuck Zink (he actually passed away from a massive stroke on 01/03/07)

This is late news however I wanted to mention that "Skipper" Chuck died. He hosted a kid's TV show on Sunday mornings in South Florida on WTVJ in Miami. Back before there was cable or much original programming, kids TV was usually old cartoons from the 1950s, the Little Rascals or the Three Stooges. "Skipper" Chuck was the few attempts at original programming for children. According to his obituaries he introduced an integrated audience and abandoned the practice of a segregated studio audience.

This is from his Miami Herald Obituary

"Zink didn't claim to be broadcasting educational television -- ''I'm not an educator. I'm an entertainer,'' he once said. But Zink took a courageous moral stand in the 1950s when he insisted that in-studio audiences for Skipper Chuck's Popeye Playhouse no longer be racially segregated. This was unprecedented for a southern TV station of the day -- which earned Zink national praise."

"In its early days, Zink said, the playhouse had been playing either to all-black or all-white studio audiences. One day, he heard the program's reservation-taker asking a phone caller, ''Are you colored?'' Incredulous, he ordered the person ``never to ask that question again.''

"The show went through ''pure hell'' making the policy stick, Zink said."

This here is from his WTVJ obituary:

"Throughout his career, Zink was a catalyst for social change, with Skipper Chuck leading the way."

"Somewhere along the line, he found out they were segregating the audience and went into Col. Wolfson's office and said, 'I can't do this.' So, the colonel said, 'OK, yes, integrate the audience.' Someone blew up his mailbox at home one day. That's the way it was back then," former WTVJ reporter Ed O'Dell said."

This was all before my time, how what I do remember was at the end of every show he would hold up three fingers and say "peace, love and happiness." To me at the time it seemed like a nod to the 1960s generation. Thinking back on it now, I am sure it was odd that someone from the previous generation would continue to practice the idea of free love like that. Of course this was the 1970s so maybe he was just behind the times then, either way he will be missed.

[yellowdogintexas]

3. great story, and thanks nt