NORFOLK, Va. — April 1950: that's when our station first went on the air. Now, 75 years later, we caught up with someone who was behind the scenes during WTKR's early days.
We recently gave Morgan Evans, 98, a special tour of News 3. He worked as an engineer at the station, which back then was WTAR, more than seven decades ago.
"I mean, what we had was completely different. That's why I wanted to see it," said Evans.
Evans started in 1952, about two years after our station first went on the air.
"I did everything—I mean, as far as engineers, I did camera work..." Evans explained. "You worked video switching, your audio switching, you worked camera control."
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One of his assignments running camera was when TV host legend Ed Sullivan brought his show to Hampton Roads.
Evans shared what that experience was like: "Well, impressive... because I was standing there waiting for him to come out before the show and he walks out, sticks his hand out, and he says, 'Hi, I'm Ed Sullivan. What's your name?' You don't usually get celebrities to do that to you, right? I mean, he was just down-to-earth. He talked to me a while. He went around and talked to everybody that was working."
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Evans says the cameras they used back then were incredibly heavy, which he quickly discovered when he started going out on assignments.
"See, I did one from the Portsmouth ball stadium on the tin roof. I was up there for two hours on the tin roof with a rope on the camera and a rope on me," he recalled.
Evans also remembers one time where an announcer unintentionally let a curse word slip out.
"I'm working audio. All I hear is, 'Shut that d*** thing off!' I turned around to the guy on video switching, I said, 'did that go out over the air?' He says, 'You heard it on speaker, you know it did.'"
Keep in mind, this was 1952! Evans says the phone lines lit up: "They burned the switchboard down."
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As Evans continued his tour throughout his old stomping grounds, he also shared a memory of one night he didn't make it to work.
"I was on Bainbridge Boulevard in South Norfolk... It was about 9:30 or 10:00. I had to do camera on the 11:00 news show," he said. Evans then gestured with his hands how the driver ahead of him was driving slowly and swerving all over the road. "And I had a '52 Olds (Oldsmobile) that would move. I hit the accelerator on that and I went by him. There was a policeman right [behind] me just that quick."
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Evans says he was short on bail money."They were gonna put me in jail if I didn't get... it was $21.25. I only had $15 cash and we got paid on Mondays then. So I called the station. I said, 'You're gonna have to find somebody to work camera because I'm in jail... and when you finish the news show, take up a collection and bring me some money.'"
And they did just that—they later came and bailed him out! His work family came through for him, and that's something Evans shared in a broader sense: He remembers the friendships during his time here, which is something other longtime employees have reflected on during our 75th anniversary coverage.
