Dr. George Fischbeck is 90 and effusive as ever, his giddiness over the phone like someone speaking to a long-lost friend.Dr. Fischbeck was my childhood inspiration!
To those of us who grew up in Albuquerque in the ’50s and ’60s, he was a friend – a funny, frenetic one with a bushy mustache and bow tie who beamed black and white through the magic of television into our fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms to teach us science.
Oh, he was a zany one, this science guy, creating his mad little world out of beakers and boxes of spiders and snakes and anything he could come up with to prove his hypothesis that his world, our world, was pretty wonderful:
Wall of Fame dedication: 11:30 a.m. July 8, Alvarado Transportation Center. Reception to follow.
Dr. George Day at the Ballpark: 7:05 p.m. July 9, Albuquerque Isotopes Stadium.
Book signings also planned at various locations. “Dr. George – My Life in Weather” is available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and local bookstores.
What Fischbeck proved along the way was that he was pretty wonderful, too.
“Adios, muchachos, muchachas,” he’d say as he wriggled his mustache at the close of each program, filmed in the tiny studios of public broadcasting station KNME-TV, Channel 5. “See you again, real soon!”
We saw him again for 12 years. And then we didn’t.
In 1972, Fischbeck left for the bright lights of Los Angeles to become one of the most celebrated TV weather guys in Southern California history – still a teacher in many respects, but with a much bigger classroom.
...Fischbeck’s memoir chronicles his life from his earliest days as a New Jersey farm boy to his unexpected rise to fame as an LA weather guy Marlon Brando called personally for forecasts.
Fischbeck’s memoir also reflects upon on his love affair with Albuquerque, lured here by the anthropology program at the University of New Mexico and rooted here by the students he came to know.
In 1959, the KNME program director asked Fischbeck, then five years into his teaching career, whether he might be interested in an experimental 30-minute TV science program for Albuquerque students. A year later, “Science 5″ was launched. The program later expanded its audience to schools in 25 cities across the country.
“It was an absolute joy to be a part of,” he writes. “I wasn’t nervous, because it didn’t seem like television. It was a classroom, and I was the teacher.”
In 1970, he was approached by KOB-TV, Channel 4 – then second in ratings to KOAT-TV, Channel 7 – to anchor the weather report for the 6 and 10 p.m. weekday news alongside news anchors Johnny Morris and Gordon Sanders and sports anchor Mike Roberts.
Within weeks of his joining the news team, KOB shot up to the top-rated news program in New Mexico.
He was the first TV Celebrity I ever encountered. I remember taking a train trip (of only two in my childhood - and, I think, maybe ever in my life) from Albuquerque to Lamy, NM, and back. I think it was part of a Cub Scout activity, probably about 1966. Dr. Fischbeck was on the trip. I sidled up to him while he sat at a table and pondered a chess board with three other Cub Scouts, and murmured something like: "Good morning, Dr. George Fischbeck." Lost in thought, he didn't hear me. I sidled off, appalled by my foolishness at approaching someone as famous as he, and expecting a response.
Nevertheless, he remained my hero. I was also impressed how, for a time, as he conquered the LA television scene, he still did the unheard-of thing of traveling back to Albuquerque on weekends, just because he liked to do so.
Here he is in 1980:
No comments:
Post a Comment