Frankly, I believed Trudy Haynes would live forever.
What a dynamo!
Even the last time I saw her, though she was, reluctantly, using a walker and enlisted the service of a full-time aide, she was sharp, sassy, and full of ideas for a television show and the segment she’d like me to do on it.
That was pure Trudy, always thinking ahead, always seizing on the next project, the next step she could make to remain active in a field she loved and helped to invent.
Her impetus was less to be in the limelight than to keep going and use her abundant, seemingly endless energy to continue with an historic career than was not only long but versatile and creative.
In some ways, Trudy was like a local journalistic version of Madonna or Lady Gaga, always reinventing herself and finding an avenue to be on camera communicating with the audience she loved.
When Channel 3, which secured her place in broadcast history, began decreasing her on-air presence as a news anchor and reporter, Trudy developed beats that would retain her a featured spot on newscasts. One, called “Silver Tips,” Involved advice for seniors that could range from how to get discounts to traveling conveniently. Another, “Trudy’s Grapevine,” a concept she continued in ways for the last several decades of her life, dealt with entertainment and gave her an outlet to share everything from gossip to friendly, lively interviews. At Channel 3, and for long after she left it, you could find Trudy, dressed to the nines, hair meticulously in place, and not a visible wrinkle on her, with mike in hand talking to audiences leaving movies, usually after having a taped a segment with a star or director.
Her motivation was eternal, her drive relentless, and her desire to work and get to the next opening, the next show in Atlantic City, or the next TV spot a crucial part of her ebullient being.
No wonder I thought she was invincible.
Alas, no one is.
Not even the marvelous Trudy Haynes, as ambitious and active as a nonagenarian as she was in the prime of her career, which we in the Delaware Valley were lucky enough to witness for more than 30 years at KYW-TV and 30 more years on various cable platforms from Philly to Chester.
Trudy Haynes died last week at age 95.
Her corporal being can pass. To anyone cognizant of her myriad achievements, her memory and place in television history never will.That place was cemented in 1965, when Al Primo, the general manager of KYW-TV, newly restored after seven years of legal haggling to Westinghouse Broadcasting, or Group W, from NBC, decided to revolutionize television news in a way that would have international repercussions.
Among Primo’s innovations was to diversify his news team. Marciarose was hired to be the first woman anchor on a Philadelphia newscast. Malcolm Poindexter would be first black reporter in the market.
And then came Trudy Haynes.
Trudy was already on television when Al Primo called her and asked if she’d like to join his staff in Philly. She was the weather anchor of the ABC affiliate in Detroit.
Primo’s genius was to look beyond a weather berth for feature spot for Trudy. He offered her a role as a reporter and anchor.That made history.
For the first time even in local television history, which dated back to 1947, the year Jackie Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers, a black woman would be an integral and significant member of a television news team in a role in which she presented the news.
As Trudy would be the first to tell you, Michelle Clark, the late sister of the late Channel 10 reporter, Harvey Clark, was the first black woman to appear as a staff reporter on a national newscast, on CBS, but Trudy would be the first black woman to have an everyday role at a local outlet.
By receiving that historical honor, she paved the way for thousands of women of color at hundreds of television stations throughout the United States and beyond.
Channel 10, for instance, immediately recruited the late and much missed Edie Huggins, who found in an almost Lana Turner-like scenario in a New York nightspot and brought to local television.
Her meeting with Channel 10 executives and the offer to be on Philadelphia television would never have been extended if Trudy Haynes had not smashed what seemed like a thick concrete ceiling at Channel 3.
Orien Reid, Elleanor Jean Hendley, Linda Munich, Joyce Evans, Beverly Williams, Lisa Thomas-Laury, Toni Nash, all now retired, as well as Alex Holley, Erin Coleman, Sharrie Williams, Shawnette Wilson, working today, and national figures who emanated from Philadelphia, such as “Today’s” Sheinelle Jones, who was supposed to be the featured figured in today’s column, owe their much deserved places in television news and public affairs to the historic breakthrough of Trudy Haynes.
I was lucky. I met Trudy Haynes in 1977, when I began writing the first daily TV column in Philadelphia newspaper history for the fledgling Philadelphia Journal. I called her about a story. We took to each other, and she enlisted me for some extracurricular project that she had put in the hands of her intern, a woman of destiny herself, Maria Shriver. (Sidebar: I met with Maria about three times when she said to me. “It’s so nice of you not to ask all kinds of questions about my family.” “What about your family?” She said, “Shriiii-ver, Kennn-e-ddddy.” I said, “Oh, what do want to tell me?” We laughed. I did not keep up acquaintance with Maria Shriver, and I doubt she’d remember me, but it was fun working with her.)
The point is Trudy attracted people and asked them to pitch in with whatever she thought would be good for them and the show, project, or task at hand.
My greater luck is Trudy Haynes and I saw each other constantly since 1977. We worked together on numerous occasions as she recruited me to do interviews for her various television adventures. We always had a good time. Trudy was always professional but always kind in giving instruction. She taught me to do my own makeup, which I was spoiled enough to have done for me at Channel 6 and CN8.
Best of all, I got to know Trudy Haynes and had many conversations of a depth Trudy often hid on the air under a persona of woman about town and friend of all entertainment celebrities.
One of the more difficult answers to get was why Trudy thought she was the “first,” why Al Primo chose her to break a shameful color barrier that prevailed for local television’s first 18 years.
Trudy didn’t know. She credited her hard work and her drive. She knew she had a pleasant personality, and everyone knew that if Trudy wanted something, particularly a story or an interview, she was not going to take “no” for an answer. I don’t think “no” was in Trudy’s vocabulary. Linda Munich once told someone, in front of me, that I would call Jesus Christ for a quote if I had His telephone number. I quipped, “You’re thinking of Trudy Haynes.”
Pat Ciarrocchi would agree. In response to a Facebook blurb I wrote when Trudy passed, she commented that Trudy was now in heaven telling the angels she wanted to meet God, and the angels were obeying.
Back to why Trudy was the “first.”
I figured it out. The reason was obliviousness.
Obliviousness of the best kind, the kind that doesn’t divert you from your path and keeps your target in front of you whatever the obstacles.Trudy knew the obstacles she faced. She didn’t let them daunt her.
She, a native of Harlem in New York City, was doing radio on a Detroit station when she heard of weather berth at the ABC television affiliate. She applied. Everyone and their cat told her she’d never be hired, but she persisted in seeking the job. She studied for it by reading children’s books about weather.
“I heard everything everybody said,” she told me. “But I wanted that job, and knew I could do it. I figured I’d compete for it. Let the station tell me to my face I couldn’t have the job, if they dared. I wasn’t saying ‘no’ to myself or letting what seemed like the reality of the day stop me. Good thing I didn’t.”
Detroit led to Philadelphia, and Philadelphia to history and stardom. Heaven bless obliviousness and persistence. And creativity and craft and the crazy business of television.
Heaven bless Trudy Haynes, not just a trailblazer and perpetual ball of energy but a magnificent human being who touched and influenced many lives and, best of all, was my friend who I already miss terribly.
Amanda Green has songs in her heart
Amanda Green earned my unending esteem when she introduced the “sticky subject of perfect rhyme” to a class she was conducting for song lyricists.
“It may sound like a funny idea,” she told them, “but perfect rhyme is the coin of the songwriting realm and part of the challenge and art of being a lyricist. Perfect rhyme is next to godliness.”
Amanda Green would know. Last night, she was a nominee for a Tony Award for her lyrics for the Broadway musical, “Mr. Saturday Night,” starring Billy Crystal. When I saw “Mr Saturday Night,” I commented to the friend who was with me that the lyrics are old-fashioned in the right way. They develop a story, like a short play, and rhyme beautifully.
Green, like many writers and creative folks, has several musicals, stories, and ideas percolating simultaneously. The most immediate is a new musical, ‘Female Troubles,” which has a workshop presentation 7:30 p.m. Saturday at New Hope’s Bucks County Playhouse.
Green, who has written new lyrics for “Peter Pan Live” and other TV shows collaborates with Emmy-winning composer for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Curtis Moore, and book writers Jennifer Crittenden from “Seinfeld” and Gabrielle Allan from “Veep.” Amanda calls them Jen and Gabi.
Green’s songwriting laurels are impressive and self-earned, but she is one of the few composers who have a strong family lineage. Her father was the über-witty and ultra-prolific Adolph Green (Think “Just in Time”), and her mother was the exuberantly versatile actress, Phyllis Newman.
“Growing in my house, humor was everywhere and everything, “Green says by telephone. “I knew how to tell a good joke by the time I was seven.
“I didn’t set out to be a lyricist or songwriter. I knew I belonged in the theater, but I wanted to be an actress. I went to school for it and did plays and cabarets.
“For the cabarets, I began writing some songs. I loved it, the performing and the writing. By age 30, I was a writer. It took me that long to figure out that’s what I’m meant to be. Because it’s where I excel.”
“’Female Troubles” deals with a contemporary subject, women’s reproductive rights, but Green says it takes a light and distant touch because it’s set in 1810, Jane Austen’s England, and deals with a woman and her maid, neither married, who each become pregnant.
“Curtis, Jen, Gabi, and I wanted to address current issues but do it in a comedy. Our goal was to be show how age-old women’s issues are while remaining funny and avoiding being preachy. Saturday’s show allows us to see how an audience responds to what we’ve done.”
Growing up in a house when, between average chores like getting groceries, parties were thrown at which Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne, and Leonard Bernstein could be found at the piano, Green was accustomed to a world of wit and sparkle. In her work, I see her carrying on that tradition.
Neal Zoren’s television column appears every Monday.
Source: Berkshire mont
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