by G. Jack Urso
During my time at WAMC 90.3 FM
Northeast Public Radio, one of my assignments was to serve as the arts editor. This meant sorting through
piles of announcements of events for art, music, dance, opera, theater, etc. I
got to interview some of the Baby Boomer-era celebrities passing through the area, like actors
James Whitmore and Kim Hunter (both from Planet
of the Apes), Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck, Tales of the City), Juliet Mills (Nanny and the Professor), and musician Paul Stookey (Peter, Paul, and Mary), among
many others.
I also produced short pieces featuring the local angle in the arts, and here I am interviewing Michael Ryan, producer of the film, Eagle Scout: The Story of Henry Nichols, an award-winning documentary produced by HBO in 1993, before it makes its debut at a local theater. I also had a chance to interview Henry himself as he talks about the struggles young AIDS victims faced in the 1980s and 1990s.
Nichols hailed from Cooperstown,
NY. I found him to be articulate, intelligent, and easy to talk to. As I had
been a Boy Scout as well (achieving the Star Scout rank), we had something in common. After the film, Nichols continued his work as an activist, slowing down only as his medical condition took its toll. Unfortunately,
he died in an automobile accident in 2000. Henry had a natural sense of
leadership and decency that is missed.
Technical Notes: In the era before computer audio editing software, this
report was produced using the old-fashioned way using crayons, razor blades, and
editing tape. After recording the interviews on reel-to-reel tape, I would play
back the tape and mark off with a white crayon on the tape the beginning and end of sound
bites to use for the report. Then, after recording my own narration, I would
splice one piece of tape to another over a splicing block — a small metal block with slots to lay and cut the tape over it. I had about ten splices
for this piece. Once the report was completed, I would record it over onto a cart,
an 8-Track tape-like device, for later playback on air. The source tape, now riddled with splices, could not be reused and so got tossed.
The above segment from March 3, 1995, aired
during the afternoon and evening drive time news shows.
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