Diana Lewis--WXYZ-TV's Grande Dame of Detroit Nightly News

Diana Lewis

Thirty-four-year-old Diana Lewis burst onto the local Detroit television news scene when she was chosen to co-anchor the 5:30 pm, Channel 7 Action News with bombastic Bill Bonds. Detroit Free Press television critic Bettelou Peterson wrote that "Diana Lewis comes across with strength to balance Bill Bonds' strong personality. She might have overwhelmed the more easy-going Jac Le Goff or John Kelly, Action News' other nightly news anchors." Finally Bonds met his match.

"It was amusing to watch Bonds and Lewis the first week they teamed for Channel 7's new 5:30 pm newscast. Bill knew he had tough competition and wasn't about to give Diana too much room. I don't think he actually looked at her once. He tossed her cues by saying "Diana" while looking resolutely straight at the camera," Peterson wrote.

To promote the 5:30 pm newscast, WXYZ-TV Channel 7 ran daily 3/4 page ads in the Detroit newspapers launching the team of Bonds and Lewis. Over a short time, they became more comfortable on-air together, and within a year, they were the news team to beat in the local Nielsen ratings race competing head-to-head against Channel 4's Mort Crim and Carmen Harlan, and WJBK-TV Channel 2's Joe Glover and Beverly Payne.

***

Diana Lewis did not follow a lifelong ambition to be a television newsanchor. She grew up Diana Robinson in Coatesvill, Pennsylvania. After her schooling, she worked as a psychiatric social worker at Emreeville State Hospital working with troubled youth and as a public special education teacher at Scott Intermediate High School. Both experiences prepared her for the job she was destined to have co-anchoring with Bill Bonds.

In 1968, Diana Robinson's stepfather showed her an article in the Phildelphia newspaper. Phildelphia's WPVI-TV Channel 6 needed a part-time, assistant producer for a program named Black Book about issues that were important to the Black community. The next day, Ms. Robinson asked her students if they thought she should apply for the job. The next thing she knew, Diana was filling out an application.

The moment that changed her life occurred while writing a script and preparing for an appearance of author Maya Angelou. Just before the broadcast, Angelou cancelled because she wasn't feeling well. Diana went to the producer and asked what they were going to do.

"Kid," he said, "you're on!" That was the first time she had appeared on camera, and Diana realized she was good at it. "That day, I claimed my voice, so help me, to be a voice for the people."

Diana was long married to Glen Lewis, a sound editor for Paramont Pictures and Universal Pictures. They had two daughters, Donna and Glenda. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1974, so Diana could take a job with KABC-TV as a consumer investigative reporter. She began using her married name professionally--Diana Lewis.

After two years beating the pavement in Los Angeles for KABC-TV, Lewis received a phone call from a young, unknown actor/screenplay writer named Sylvester Stallone. He told Lewis he liked her investigative reporting. "I like your no-nonsense, hard edge. That's what I'm looking for."

"Looking for what?"

"Someone to play a TV reporter in a film I'm making."

The film Rocky premiered in 1976 in time for the United States Bi-Centennial Celebration. Playing herself in the film, the director placed an Afro wig on Lewis' head and pointed her toward the cameras. She interviewed Rocky Balboa, a washed-up pug, as he tenderized a side of beef hanging in a packing house. The scene has since become one of the most memorable sequences in film history.

WXYZ-TV program director Phil Nye had hired Lewis when he worked in Los Angeles. Now he was the top programing person at Channel 7 looking for someone who was confident and could handle co-anchor Bill Bonds, who had his difficult on-air moments. Lewis had a levelheaded, calming influence that counterbalanced Bonds. The pair developed mutual respect for one another and dominated Detroit local news for many years.

One year into their run, the early 5:30 pm broadcast came in strong in the Nielsen ratings attracting the biggest audience of women 18 to 49 years old, the demographic advertisers love most. Men were watching too. Bonds and Lewis drew about 37 percent of the viewing audience the first time ratings data was available for the 5:30 pm Action News. The following year, the ratings were 44 percent, almost twice as much as Channels 2 and 4 together. Newspaper TV critic Chris Stoehr dubbed Bonds and Lewis the "King and Queen of Local Newscasts."

Bonds and Lewis

 

By August 1977, Lewis hosted her own daytime show called AM Detroit where she tackled controversial issues of the day. Market research found that viewers felt she was too abrasive and aggressive for a morning audience of housewives. The station wanted her to be more likeable and less threatening, so they softened Lewis' hair, makeup, and wardrobe.

One good thing about working for Channel 7, each of the anchors had a yearly clothing allowance. In a behind the scenes interview with Channel 7's News Director Phil Nye, he explained the station's dress code. "The station pays for the news team's clothing, mostly purchased from Gwynn's in Birmingham. Bob Gwynn makes clothes to order for each reporter and anchorperson. Diana is an absolute pleasure to work with because she is dynamic. As for Bonds, he's a paradox; he swings from wild to conservative.... We don't want the clothes to upstage the content of the program. Their clothes should be subdued but stylish and fairly conservtive."

Detroit Free Press celebrity watchdog Bob Talbert, often publicly at odds with Bill Bonds, could not resist using Diana Lewis to bludgeon Bonds in his March 10, 1980 column. "You don't realize how good Diana Lewis is until you watch her take the lead anchor spot while Bonds is on vacation. You don't even notice Bonds is gone."

In 1982, The Detroit television market had no shortage of competent women co-anchors including Beverly Payne, Doris Biscoe, Kai Maxwell, Carmen Harlen, and Robbie Timmons. Diana Lewis' popularity and ratings led the field earning her a $500,000 three-year contract with a baby-blue Chrysler Imperial thrown in to sweeten the deal.

But when her contract was up in 1985, Lewis became the casualty of the contact wars when her contract was not renewed. Channel 7 once again raided Channel 2's talent pool and hired Robbie Timmons for the 5 pm newscast and Dayna Eubanks for the 11 pm newscast. Diana moved her family to Los Angeles, California, where her husband Glen was a film editor and sound effects man for Paramount and Universal Pictures.

Glen and Diana Lewis

One thing Lewis learned from her tenure with Bill Bonds was to land on your feet after a crisis. Lewis went national and took a position in October 1986 with CNN in Atlanta, Georgia, which lasted all of one week. "I didn't realize what a jolt it was going to be being a long-distance mother."

She didn't want to uproot her twelve-year-old daughter Glenda out of school in the middle of a term, and her twenty-year-old daughter Donna needed to finish college. Diana dusted off her SAG (Screen Actors Guild) card and took some television bit parts including reprising her role in Rocky 5.

After Lewis' three year absence, Channel 7 announced they would not renew Dayna Eubanks' contract. Eubanks and Bill Bonds had no on-screen chemistry and did not get along, so the station rehired Lewis in 1988 for an estimated $150,000 to co-anchor the 11 pm newscast and stop the ratings hemmoraging. Lewis admitted to the press that she missed the money and her celebrity status. She was happy to be back. Channel 7's public relations team did a hard sell advertising the on-air reunion of Bonds and Lewis.

Lewis (69) stayed with Channel 7 until her last broadcast on October 3, 2012. After forty-four years in television news, including thirty-five years at WXYZ-TV, Diana Lewis signed-off by addressing her audience for the last time, "To everyone at home, God bless you. Thanks so much for loving me. I love you back. Good night."

Diana Lewis hoped to retire and travel around the country with her husband, but soon after, Glenn Lewis developed memory loss and PTSD from two tours of duty as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam. Diana back-shelved her retirement plans to become his caregiver.

In the meantime, her brother, who was suffering from kidney disease, took care of their 101-year-old mother Doris Spann in Pennsylvania. When he died suddenly from heart failure, Lewis made the funeral arrangements and moved her mother to Michigan into the family home in Farmingham Hills. 

The Lewis women with family matriarch Doris Spann

Lewis and her daughters did the best they could, but when Diana's back went out while lifting her mother, Diana asked for help from ProMedica Hospice in Southfield. Something she vowed she would never do. Diana was able to keep her mother at home until she passed away in 2022 at the age of 103.

In a heartfelt interview on April 23, 2023, with Cambrey Thomas from Hour Detroit magazine, Diana Lewis (80) spoke about the toll of being a caregiver. "Taking care of an ailing person can tax one's spirit more than I ever thought possible. We need to normalize the conversation... to recognize that asking for help and support should not be seen as a sign of failure or weakness but rather as one of courage."

Without realizing it, Diana Lewis embodied what her longtime co-anchor Bill Bonds would say when he signed-off at the end of every broadcast, "Stay classy Detroit!"

Bill Bonds and Channel 7 Action News

Ypsilanti's Hutchinson House Built with S&H Green Stamp Fortune

Hutchinson House

In 1896, Thomas A. Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson went into the S&H Green Stamp business together. The New York Times business section described this newly formed company "the first independent trading stamp company to distribute stamps and books to merchants."

Not much is known about Mr. Sperry. He was an Easterner. His home was destroyed by fire in 1912, with damages estimated to be $150,000. He was an avid art collector and a number of valuable paintings went up in flames. A year later, Sperry contracted ptomaine poisoning on a return ocean cruise from Europe. When he returned to the United States, he was so ill he couldn't travel to his home in Cranford, New Jersey. He was forty-nine years old when he died.

Sperry's brother, William Miller Sperry, inherited his brother's business interests and gained control of the company. In 1921, Shelley Hutchinson sued the estate of Thomas A. Sperry alleging that Sperry defrauded him of his full share of dividends to the tune of $5,000,000. Secret funds were diverted from company funds to Sperry. Hutchinson won the suit. The founders' family successors sold the franchise in 1981.

Much more in known about Shelley Hutchinson. His grandparents were among the first settlers in Ypsilanti, Michigan, still little more than a frontier outpost. Shelley's father Stephen Hutchinson married Loretta Jaycox on November 26, 1862. Shelley was born two years later in a log cabin in Superior Township on October 19, 1864. From 1874 until 1894, the Hutchinsons lived in a four room wood frame house at 509 N. River Street, across the street from the Champlain mansion. As a kid, he attended the Union School through the eighth grade--a typical education for a nineteenth-century boy.

Shelley was ambitious and intelligent. While working at a family shoe business with his father and brother in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the 1880s, he conjured up the idea for a trading stamp business he could promote to merchants as a customer retention program. On a small scale, the idea was promising, so a regional headquarters was established in Jackson, Michigan, chosen for its central location between the state's eastern and western borders.

Three years later, Hutchinson met Sperry in New York--an Easterner with money and business connections. Soon after they went into business, stamp redemption centers sprung up in many of Michigan's major cities. With early success, the promotion was expanded eventually growing into a nationwide coast-to-coast business concern. Sperry and Hutchinson made money hand over fist.

 

Shelley Hutchinson met Clara Unsinger, who was a stenographer in the company. Clara was the granddaughter of an Ypsilanti deacon. They were married on April 27, 1894. By the turn of the century, Hutchinson had amassed enough money to build his dream house. He considered building in New York, but his father urged him to build in Ypsilanti to be reunited with family and friends.

Feeling a boyhood affinity for the area, Hutchinson decided to build his thirty-room Richardsonian Revival mansion across the street from where he grew up--the site of the deteriorating Champlain mansion on the corner of North River and East Forest streets. Construction began in 1902 and was completed in 1904. Hutchinson called his mansion Casa Loma--Spanish for house on the hill. The site was believed to be Ypsilanti's highest point--on the east side anyway. He moved in with his wife, three children, parents, and brothers and sisters.

See the link below for more views of the house.

Building his mansion on Ypsilanti's east side was a social mistake for the wealthy millionaire. The Huron River was the town's dividing line. The east side was the working class neighborhood, and the west side was primarily for the wealthy and social elite. Hutchinson was never accepted into Ypsilanti high society because he was "new money" and shunned the "old money" denizens. He and his wife Clara rode around town in a fine phaeton carriage with matching horses. The newly rich pair wore only the finest clothes, and the "Stamp King" wore a silk top hat. During the height of his success, Hutchinson bought diamonds by the pocketful from Tiffany's in New York.

In an early undated Ypsilanti Daily Press article, the reporter wrote a "rags to riches" story about Hutchinson. Quoting merchant A.A. Bedell, "Hutchinson was always immaculate in dress, dark haired and handsome. One day, he stood in (my shoe store in Depot Town) and a shaft of light struck his diamonds, a glittering array. He had half-caret diamonds in each cuff link and wore two diamond rings, one of three carets and one between seven and eight. His shirt stud had a three and a half-caret stone." People said when Hutchinson walked in the sunshine, he sparkled.

But the domestic situation at Casa Loma was less than stellar. The Detroit News reported on July 3, 1906, that Mrs. Hutchinson deserted "the mansion on the hill" in anger taking her three children with her to live with neighbors across the street at 629 N. River Street. Clara had had it with her Hutchinson in-laws and complained to the reporter that she was forced from her home penniless--except for some diamonds she left with. Hutchinson's father and sister publicly claimed they wished Clara would return to manage the place. As for her husband, Shelley retreated and went south for his health. The domestic situation was intolerable for him too.

As the story goes, Shelley had been gravely ill and entrusted his wife with his diamonds. Upon recovery, he asked for them back. Clara refused saying he gave them to her. She hid the diamonds away, but while she was sleeping one night, her husband found her hiding place. Shelley locked the diamonds in a tin box and placed them in his roll-top desk in his locked home office. Two could play at that game. Clara took her husband's key and unlocked the office door. After a brief search, she found the tin box and opened it with a can opener. Then she left the mansion taking her children.

The Ypsilanti Daily Press reported on January 14, 1910, that a divorce was granted giving Clara custody of the three children, $9,000 cash paid out over five years, and her husband's diamonds. She sold the largest one to a neighbor and the rest to a diamond broker in Detroit. In 1912, Hutchinson's mansion was sold at public auction to the Ypsilanti Savings Bank to satisfy an unpaid mortgage and back taxes. The home has been used for a commercial property in the past but now houses the Highscope Education Research Foundation.

In an Ypsilanti Press interview in 1955, the ninety-one-year-old Hutchinson was living in New York. He was quoted as saying, "Some of the people (in Ypsilanti) were jealous of me because of the big house, but they had no reason to be. I was good to everybody." Shelley Hutchinson returned to Ypsilanti one last time time in 1961 for burial in a family plot at Highland Cemetery--several blocks north of his mansion. He was ninety-seven.

Most people in Ypsilanti are familiar with the outside of the Hutchinson House but have never seen the interior. Check out this link to see just how extravagant it is. https://www.flickr.com/photos/sjb4photos/sets/72157622572604360/

For more detailed information about the Hutchinson family, read Janice Anschuetz's article "River Street Neighbor's Gossip and the Hutchinson Marriage," which appeared in the Ypsilanti Historical Society's September 27, 2010, newsletter Ypsilanti Gleanings. http://ypsigleanings.aadl.org/ypsigleanings/37044

S&H Green Stamps--Emblem of a Bygone Age

Sperry and Hutchinson Company were the originators of S&H Green Stamps--as much an American cultural icon as anything. The company began offering redemption stamps to American retailers in 1896. Stores bought the stamps and offered them as bonuses based on the dollar amount of the purchase. S&H Green Stamps was the earliest retail customer loyalty program selling and distributing stamps and books to merchants. With a unidirectional cash flow, this shoppers' incentive made its originators multi-millionaires.

Stamps were issued in denominations of 1, 10, and 50 points. Stamp pages were perforated with glue on the reverse side to mount in twenty-four page collector booklets. Each booklet contained 1,200 points. Reward gifts were based on the number of filled books required to obtain the object. Green Stamps had no real cash value.

S&H Green Stamps could be obtained at supermarkets, department stores, and gas stations. Completed booklets were redeemed at one of 800 distribution centers located around the country. Most popular in the early 1960s, S&H boasted that its reward catalog was the largest publication in the United States. They issued three times more stamps than did the United States Postal Service.

Economic recessions in the 1970s reduced sales and decreased the value of the rewards. Shoppers began to see the stamps as not worth the trouble, and stores started to drop the program. In 1981, the founders' successors sold the business.

Green Stamps entered the realm of pop art iconography when Andy Warhol used a three step silkscreen process to print a 23"x22.75" canvas in 1962. Three years later, he used offset lithography to print the classic green stamp images on forty-nine 7'x7' panels to act as wallpaper within a gallery exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Philadelphia. A single panel recently sold at auction for $6,250.

S&H Green Stamp founder https://fornology.blogspot.com/2016/12/ypsilantis-hutchinson-house-built-with.html

Michigan's Struggle for Statehood

The British officially turned over Fort Detroit to the United States and evacuated on July 11, 1796. At noon, the Union Jack was lowered and the American flag was raised. Michigan was officially part of the United States under control of Territorial Governor Arthur St. Clair.  

On July 13th, United States Colonel John Hamtramck arrived with 400 soldiers to secure the Detroit command. Detroit consisted of a wharf, a fort, and a citadel of about 100 houses, shops, taverns, and Ste. Anne's Church. Ribbon farms extended on both sides of Detroit from the St. Clair River up stream to the Rouge River downstream.

The first United States Federal Census in the Michigan Territory was in 1800. Detroit's numbers were so small that they were lumped in with Wayne County's numbers. It was estimated that 500 people lived within the stockade with another 2,100 living on nearby farms. 

In 1810, the first Michigan Territorial census counted 770 people living in Detroit while the rest of Michigan territory showed a population of 4,762. With a combined population over 5,000, Michigan was entitled to three seats on the Northwest Territory's legislature. By 1815, Detroit was incorporated as the City of Detroit with its own governing board.

Population growth was slow in Michigan because the Surveyor-General of the United States issued a faulty land report based on flawed and incomplete information that the territory was nothing but lakes, swamps, and sandy land. Most settlers hoping to homestead farmland out West opted to follow the Ohio River water highway to Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. The erroneous account delayed Michigan's development.

The inaugural trip of the steamship Walk in the Water, named after a Wyandot tribal chief, left from Buffalo, New York for its destination of Detroit, Michigan in 1818. This marked the beginning of regular steam service carrying passengers and goods between the East and Detroit. Steamship travel on Lake Erie opened up Michigan and the Great Lakes area for farming, timber, and mining interests from New York City. 

The 1820 census showed Detroit's population to be 1,442 while Michigan's population grew to 8,927. Government-funded post roads were built radiating from Detroit helping to develop small towns and farming communities inland. On a public safety note, City Fathers erected a public whipping post near the intersection of Woodward and Jefferson avenues to discourage petty crime and drunkeness. It remained in use until 1831. As a result of the Greek War for Independence, 1822 saw a huge influx of Greek immigrants to the Detroit area.

Travelers headed to Buffalo, New York.

The United States' second wave of immigration consisted mostly of Irish and Germans. Many of these newcomers constructed the Erie Canal between 1817 to 1825. The Irish with horses and mules dug 363 miles of canal while German stonemasons engineered bridges and built thirty-six locks that raised freight boats and other canal traffic 565 feet in elevation from east to west. When the canal opened on October 26, 1825, it set off a land boom in Michigan and Detroit until 1837.

The 1830 census of the Michigan Territory counted 85,000 people which qualified Michigan for statehood. There was a delay because of the Toledo Strip dispute with Ohio in 1835. This was the original Buckeye/Wolverine rivalry. The so-called Great Toledo War was a stalemate settled with ink rather than blood.

Michigan was admitted to the Union on the condition that the Ohio boundary be accepted. Ohio got the Toledo Strip and Michigan got the entire Upper Peninsula with some of the most gorgeous and extensive lakefront property in the United States. Statehood was granted in 1837. 

Michigan soon adopted its state seal and motto designed by Lewis Cass in 1835. The bald eagle symbolizes the United States, while the elk and the moose holding a shield symbolize Michigan, with the Latin word "Tuebor" meaning "I will defend." The state's motto is "Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice" (If you are looking for a beautiful peninsula, look around you), all on a field of dark blue.

Erie Canal Populates the Great Lakes Region

Detroit's Pfeiffer Brewery and Johnny Pfeiffer

The Johnny Pfeiffer plaster-of-paris figurine depicts a Revolutionary War minuteman playing a fife. Designed by Walt Disney Studios in 1951 for the Pfeiffer Brewing Company, the back bar statuette was made by the Plasto Corporation in Chicago. A company spokesperson says Pfeiffer Brewing commissioned eight different versions of Johnny over the 1950s. Two thousand of the 7.25 inch figurines were produced every month making it the most common and least valuable statue they ever produced, currently selling on Ebay for $25 to $45 depending on condition and the motivation of the buyer.

Brewery founder Conrad Pfeiffer brought the original beer recipes from Germany in the late nineteenth century. The original styles were "Pfeiffer's Famous"--a light lager--and "Pfeiffer's Wurtzburger"--a dark lager. Their brew masters used only new seasoned white oak kegs and barrels to insure consistent quality and taste. Pfeiffer became Detroit's third most popular beer brand behind Stroh's and Goebel before Prohibition took effect in 1920.

Repeal was passed by Congress and signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in December 1933, ending America's nightmare experience with Prohibition. Beginning in February 1934, Pfeiffer restored the exterior beauty of its original building built in 1889. The interior of the plant was completely remodeled, enlarged, and modernized. Legal beer shipments resumed on May 15, 1934.

Pfeiffer gained considerable market share after Prohibition repeal largely due to heavy-handed distributors who intimidated vendors and tavern owners to take their beer products over other brands. Complaints from vendors prompted the Michigan Liquor Commission to investigate Pfeiffer distributorships.

On February 22, 1935, Michigan Assistant Attorney General Gordon E. Tappan testified at a Liquor Commission public hearing that "(Pfeiffer Brewing Company) made no attempt to screen its distributors for character, qualifications, morals, or police records." Tappan charged the company and its agents with using strong-arm tactics to muscle in on Michigan's beer industry. The company made no attempt to rid itself of underworld influence.

The Macomb Distribution Company had Mafia boss Joe "Uno" Zerilli and his underboss William "Black Bill" Tocco on their board of directors with Anthony Lambrecht, Alfred Epstein, Abe Rogoff, and H. Armin Weil, who also had police records. The board of Meyer's Products Company--another Pfeiffer distributor--included Donald F. Gray--president; Charles Leiter--vice-president and Oakland Sugar House Gang co-boss; Henry Shorr--treasurer and Sugar House Gang co-boss; Elda Ruffert--secretary; James Syla--manager; Sam "the Gorilla" Davis--company agent and known Purple Gang enforcer; and Henry Toprofsky--company agent and known Purple Gang enforcer. 

Pfeiffer Brewery officials were required by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission to show cause why their brewing license shouldn't be revoked. Then president William G. Breitmeyer pled ignorance and said the company was having trouble keeping up with demand. They didn't need to force their products on anyone. On April 10, 1935, the company agreed to bar all persons with criminal records from serving as beer distributors and suspended their contracts. Despite the bad Depression-era publicity, Pfeiffer became Detroit's most popular brand overtaking Stroh's and Goebel by the end of the 1950s. But trouble was brewing on the horizon.

In the 1960s, Budweiser, Miller, and Pabst sought to become national brands. Because of their assets, access to capital, and huge advertising budgets, the Big Three brewers put many regional brewers out of business--not because of superior products but because of marketing and financial resources.

To compete with the Big Three, Pfeiffer changed its corporate name to Associated Brewing Company (ABC) in 1962. ABC acquired and consolidated smaller Midwestern brands and breweries to position itself in the national market, but they overextended themselves and became overburdened with debt. The old Pfeiffer brewery and bottling plant on Beaufait Avenue closed in 1966, and by 1972, the rest of ABC's remaining assets were sold off.

Detroiters are left with some aging memorabilia and a few random facts. In some small measure, the microbrewery movement of the twenty-first century is nipping at the heels of the national brands and cutting into their profits. Many of the old-style beers are once again available for our quaffing pleasure.

Many thanks Renee Reilly-Menard for gifting Johnny Pfeiffer to me along with the Vernor's gnome. The Detroit Historical Museum already has Johnny Pfeiffer in its collection. He looks good on my mantelpiece. I think I'll keep him.

Home for the gnome: https://fornology.blogspot.com/2019/01/vernors-gnome-found.html

WXYZ's Fred Wolf and his Wacky Wandering Wigloo

"Master of Sparemonies," the "Old Percolator," "Swampy Joe," and "King of Detroit Morning Radio," Fred Wolf.

Pioneering Detroit WXYZ sportcaster Fred Wolf was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on May 26, 1910. When Fred was six-years-old, his father died. Fred's mother remarried and the family relocated to Detroit in 1920. The young boy grew up to be a gifted athlete courtesy of the Detroit Recreation Department and their community sports programs. 

Fred played baseball when he attended Cass Technical High School and had aspirations to play in the major leagues. As with most high school athletes, that dream never materialized. After high school, Fred studied engineering in a Ford Trade School apprenticeship program.

At the age of twenty, Fred worked as a pinsetter and began to bowl on a league. Within a year, he bowled his first perfect 300 game, he was hooked on bowling and became instrumental in popularizing what was once a pastime into a professional sport.

After Wolf completed his Ford apprentiship, he was hired in 1934 to work in Chrysler Corporation's engineering department. By World War II, he rose through the ranks to become a superintendent at the Chrysler tank plant in Warren, Michigan, where he supervised 450 employees. While at Chrysler, Wolf was captain of the Tank Arsenal team in their company's ten-team bowling league. Other team names were Dodge Main, Super-finishers, and De Soto Engineers, etc. 

Fred also bowled on a the Stroh's Keglers team in the industrial league where he was their strongest bowler. On April 29, 1941, he won the individual competition in Detroit's American Bowling Conference out of a field of 32 of the city's top bowlers. He bowled 647 [three game total] while the next best competitor totaled 619. Fred clearly had found his groove.

***

On August 14, 1944, at the age of thirty-four, Wolf hurt his back playing softball which forced him to retire from the semi-professional bowling circuit. He was made manager of the Stroh's Keglers and introduced the bowlers over the public address system and reported scores. Norman White of radio station WJR asked Fred if he ever thought about doing a bowling show on radio. "What would it take?" Fred asked. White answered, "Get a guest, write an interview. Write the whole show--opening and closing--but leave two spots for commercials."

While recuperating from his back injury at home, Fred was listening to the World Series on the radio and wondered outloud to his wife Emily if a bowling tournament could be broadcast the same way. "Why not?" Emily answered. 

Fred shopped the idea around to Detroit radio stations before finally being accepted by WXYZ-Radio beginning his long broadcast career. His first weekly show was named The Ten Pin Talker. It was only fifteen minutes long, sponsored by E&B breweries. Wolf reported bowling scores from around Detroit and profiled top bowlers. Broadcasting opened up the bowling and the professional sports world for him.

Radio's The Ten Pin Talker led four years later to television's Make It and Take It, a program where local bowlers would try to make some of bowling's most difficult combinations for cash. Following the success of that program, WXYZ gave Wolf a bowling series called Bowling Champions in 1950. Wolf began live, lane-side broadcasting which became popular locally.

Championship Bowling title card

In 1956, the American Broadcasting Company, WXYZ's parent company, asked Wolf if he would like to announce a coast-to-coast program called Championship Bowling for ABC Sports. That program began a twelve-year national run which did much to popularize bowling nationwide and advance the sport.

In the early days of television, bowling was a winter sport, so the WXYZ station manager asked if Wolf could report on something besides bowling. Soon, he was reading baseball scores, announcing boxing and wrestling matches, commentating at golf tournaments, and hosting the popular Hot Rod Races from the Motor City Speedway where midget race cars competed in 25 lap races, and as an added bonus, there was a demolition derby event which Detroiters took an instant liking to.

Demolition Derby Carnage

While Fred Wolf was pioneering television sports programming, he was also a WXYZ-Radio morning deejay beginning in 1950 until 1965. His show was broadcast from 6 until 9 am every weekday morning. WXYZ-Radio originally broadcast from the Mendelssohn Mansion on East Jefferson Avenue. 

To gin up interest in his early, music radio program, Wolf asked the station manager if he could have an eight-by-ten foot broadcast booth built three feet off the ground in front of the mansion. He also wanted it to have large windows on three sides so motorists and pedestrians could see him spin records. It was a quirky idea, but the mini radio studio was paid for in radio endorsements for Peterson glass and Chaplow Lumber Company, so the project was given the go-ahead. 

Fred christened the booth "Wolf's Wacky Wigloo." It became an overnight sensation drawing in 35% of the morning radio audience. People drove by the Wigloo on their way to work and honked. Wolf told a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, "I like broadcasing from the Wigloo. I can see my listeners drive or walk by. It is more interesting than working in an enclosed studio."

WXYZ had outgrown its downtown studios and urban renewal was about to decimate the Black Bottom area where the studio was located. The station decided to build something they called Broadcast House in Southfield, Michigan. The radio station was slated to move into their new digs in June 1959. Wolf realized he was losing his Wacky Wigloo in the demolition process. On a personal note, he did not want to drive to Southfield from Grosse Pointe Woods. He would have to get up at 3:00 am to make it to work.

As he had done with the original Wigloo, Wolf came up with an original idea. He asked McDonald Trailer Sales if they could modify a thirty-foot trailer and replace the back end with glass on three sides. The station would install the turntables and other broadcasting equipment to make the trailer into a mobile radio studio. 

The cost of the trailer would be paid for with radio endorsements. WXYZ management was skeptical but approved the project on the strength of Wolf's popularity and his success bringing in new sponsors and advertising dollars.

Fred Wolf and his Wandering Wigloo.

The first stop for the newly rechristened Wandering Wigloo was the University of Detroit campus on the corner of Livernois and McNichols. Wolf pulled up at various familiar locations around town like the State Fair Grounds, City Hall, Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detoit Zoo, and private businesses, especially car dealerships. The Wandering Wigloo would broadcast from businesses for a week if they bought 5 spots a day of targeted advertising for 26 weeks. The Wandering Wigloo soon proved its worth.

The promotion was so successful that radio stations from around the country sent their people to Detroit to witness this public relations innovation. WXYZ soon built a second trailer for deejay Paul Winter, a third trailer was located in Dearborn, and a permanent broadcast booth was installed at the Sears Shopping Center in suburban Lincoln Park. Radio engineers were doing remote broadcasts from 6 am until 10 pm everyday. 

Everything was fine until a change of management tightened up their radio broadcasting programming. In short, the dee jays were to talk less, run jingle advertisements, and play music taken from a Top 40 play list. This was the radio industry's response to payola scandals in the music recording and broadcast business in the late 1950s. "Pay for Play" was illegal, and the play lists were the only way radio stations could insure against it. AM radio became repetitive and boring.

Wolf, who was generally a team player, let management know he was displeased. "I play happy music for my morning listeners as they get ready for work. I refuse to play rock & roll." Music trends had changed and his show's ratings dropped.

Wolf decided to retire from his morning radio show in August 1965, but Fred was too valuable to WXYZ to let him go, so he was bumped up to Vice President of Public Relations and official Channel 7 spokesperson. Wolf continued to do special broadcasts like the annual Port Huron to Mackinac Island Gold Cup Races and the Buick Open Golf Tournament.

***

In 1978, a stroke partially paralyzed Wolf and left him unable to speak, though he continued swimming using only one arm. At the age of ninety on August 7, 2000, Fred died in his Grosse Pointe Woods home of complications from a second stroke with his wife Emily by his side. The Wolfs were childless. Fred had a private funeral service and was buried in Roseland Park in Berkley, Michigan.

Emily Rybacki Wolf followed her husband to the grave two years later. At her husband's death, Emily said of him, "Fred was a very upright, kind man and a natural athlete." She must have been a remarkably supportive wife for her ambitious husband who worked long, irregular hours with a punishing broadcast schedule. Whatever they endured together over the years, they were married for sixty-five years. 

Fred Wolf produced over 800 local bowling shows on WXYZ radio and television, including 272 hours of announcing nationwide on ABC's Championship Bowling series. Wolf was a championship bowler in his own right and was inducted into the American Bowling Congress Hall of Fame, the Michigan State Bowling Association Hall of Fame, the Greater Detroit Bowling Hall of Fame, and he served as president of the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association.

A full accounting of Fred Wolf's awards and honors are too numerous to list here, but one stands out in particular. Fred held the American Bowling Congress' record for the most years between his first 300 game and his second in 1975--forty-four years. I am sure that factoid was a source of merriment at Fred's induction to their Hall of Fame. Fred was a bowling champion to be sure, but there have been many bowling champions before and since. Fred was one of a kind.

Shock Theater and Mr. X

The Coca-Cola Santa Story

Santa's origin can be traced back to ancient Germanic folklore and the Norse god Odin. The modern character of Santa was embraced by America with the December 23, 1823 publication of Clement Clarke Moore's 56 line poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas," better known as "Twas the Night Before Christmas." Here is Moore's description of the jolly fatman:

 

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself

 

Bavarian immigrant Thomas Nast became America's first political cartoonist. He is responsible for creating the American image of Santa Claus on January 3, 1863, for the illustrated magazine Harper's Weekly. In an wooden engraving named "Santa Claus in Camp," the mythic figure is presenting gifts to Union soldiers during the Civil War while wearing a costume patterned with patriotic stars and stripes. Santa manipulates a Jefferson Davis toy [effigy] dancing on the end of a string.

 

In 1881, Nast created the first of many Santa images based on the description in Clement's narrative poem. These illustrations were without the political and military context of his earlier work. With thirty-three Santa illustrations to his credit, Nast immortalized the figure of Santa Claus we are familiar with today.

Muskegon born Michigan artist Haddon Sundblom painted the iconic image we now recognize as the modern Santa Claus, for the Coca-Cola company from 1931 until 1964. His friend was the original model for his Santa paintings. It is believed Sundblom made $1,000 for his first commission, good money during the Depression era.

 

 

Haddon Sundblom at work.

 

Sundblom's Santa images have appeared in Coke's print advertising, store displays, billboards, posters, calendars, and on television commercials. He helped make Santa the most recognizable and successful pitchman in advertising history.

 

Haddon Sundblom, Santa, and Playboy Magazine