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Former TV News Anchor Makes News, Laughs

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By PAUL CATALA pcatala@mediageneral.com

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 11, 2009

The placid golf community of Sun City Center is where Gary Geers calls home, but it's just a shadow in the limelight of a broadcast career that spanned four decades.

Born Oct. 4, 1926, in Deerfield, N.J., Geers grew up in Media, Pa., a small town 12 miles west of Philadelphia. In his youth, Geers kept his ear to the radio, listening to Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Eddie Cantor and other comedians and radio personalities. Absorbing their skills, he also took to singing, entering contests in the Earle Theatre in Philadelphia.

Through those experiences emerged a television and broadcast career that spanned more than 50 years around Pennsylvania and the northeastern United States, reporting hard news stories and weather and interviewing big-name celebrities like Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck and Dana Andrews.

After Geers' broadcast career wound down, he and his wife made their way to Sun City Center 15 years, where he still performs stand-up comedy routines for area church and civic groups. It's a lifestyle of relative anonymity he said he's quite happy with after nearly five decades in front of the camera.

"I'm proud of my career, the whole thing. To be able to get a broadcasting job and stay there so long, it's amazing to me," Geers, 72, said from his South Pebble Beach home he shares with his wife, Roseann.

After graduating high school in Media and a stint in the U.S. Navy from 1944-46, where he honed his skills as an impressionist covertly imitating his drill instructors, Geers got a job with WNAP in Bridgeport, Conn. His pay was no more than $40 a week. He went on to get a bachelor's degree in speech from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and worked as an announcer for the college station WNUR and commercial station WNMP.
Geers returned to Philadelphia and got his first TV job with WCAU radio in 1951, working with a young host named Ed McMahon, who later became Johnny Carson's sidekick, making him a living link to early local television. He moved to WFIL radio. When Geers moved back to television, he was replaced by future radio and TV icon Dick Clark.

Geers' career took him on to a stint teaching speech and radio at Temple University and TV work in Delaware before heading to Philadelphia's NBC affiliate WPTZ, in 1953, which evolved into KYW, where he remained for the rest of his career.

In those days, Geers was responsible for doing live commercials for products such as Wonder Bread, Silly Putty, and GE Appliances, and was assigned the early morning shift, hosting the "Farm, Home and Garden" show at 5:20 a.m. He had gained a level of expertise in that field through working for his father as a youth on a family plant nursery and the show focused on household hints, healthy eating, food shopping, gardening and agriculture.

In addition, he hosted a Sunday morning religious news show, "Connections," and "Sunday Side Up," for eight years.

During the early days, like most young newsmen just getting their feet wet, Geers said he had some blooper moments.

"I remember I was promoting a movie on TV called, 'High Noon.' I told the viewers 'Don't forget to miss it,'" he said.

During his career 41 1/2-year career at KYW-TV, Geers also worked alongside some prominent news people, including NBC's Today Show hosts Willard Scott and Bryant Gumble and former Dateline host Jane Pauley. He was also the announcer for the Mike Douglas show, where he met Steve Allen and Jerry Lewis and worked with future NBC and PBS reporter Jessica Savitch, who died in 1983.

One of his KYW-TV co-anchors, Kim Adams, a former Dallas television news anchor, the court reporter for the syndicated TV show "Judge Mills Lane" and now a New York City-based freelance TV news anchor, said she worked with Geers when she first started in the industry in the late 1980s. She said he helped calm the just-starting jitters

"He really made things comfortable for me. I was young and just getting started," said Adams. "He's got the best voice I've ever heard and could put a story together very quickly."

Another Tampa Bay area news anchor, WFTS-TV channel 28 fill-in meteorologist Linda Gialanella, WFTS's weekend meteorologist from 2003 to 2008, worked with Geers when she was chief meteorologist for KYW-TV prior to joining WTSP in Tampa in 1993. She said Geers was known as the "reliable rock".

"Rain or shine, he was there dark and early to forecast the day's weather. Gary was the familiar face in town," she said. "To me, he was always wise, warm, knowledgeable, accurate and reliable. He was someone I could always count on, and it was a pleasure to call him my colleague."
Geers said he now spends most of his off-camera years playing tennis, biking and traveling around the world, but relishes the time he spent he spent getting the news out from behind the microphone and in front of camera.

"I feel very fortunate that I had a great career with a job I loved," he said. "Now, I'm enjoying my time here in Florida and in Sun City Center."

Reporter Paul Catala can be reached at (813) 865-1554 or pcatala@mediageneral.com

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