If you think we looked like we were G-Men, its because that is who we thought we were. - Don Rhyne, Veteran WOC TV 6 Davenport, Iowa Newscaster

The 1960's WOC News Team: Row 1; Chuck Roberts, George Johnson, Jack Thomsen - Row 2; Al Carter, Bob Kay, Dick Scott, Bill Gress - Row 3; John Bauman, Don McGonegle, Don Rhyne, Tom Hecht

Chuck Roberts was a reporter. We were all hired for radio. The television which we did was for talent fees. That was true for all of us except for Al Carter and Justis Smith who were photographers so they had their role on TV. So, again, we were all radio guys and it kind of just evolved into television. Later on they split the radio and TV and you pretty much did not do both anymore. George Johnson and Bob Kay were both reporters. Dick Scott was the lead anchor, I took his place on the 10 o'clock. In those days you were a reporter/anchor. Tom Hecht was a reporter as well.

A Conversation with Mr. Don Rhyne

My interest in broadcasting began when I had a speech and English teacher in school, a guy by the name of Jim Andrews who was very good. Jim was excellent at speech and drama and got me interested in it. After I got out of school I simply followed this into a career. I went to school in Minneapolis in what is now Brown Institute. Back in those days it was the American Institute of the Air.

I started out in Platteville, Wisconsin in 1955 at what was then WSWW. I worked there for about a year and then headed back to my hometown of Sterling, Illinois radio station WSDR where I stayed for a year and one-half to two years. WRDB in Reedsburg, Wisconsin was the next stop in my career until I left for Safford, Arizona. I love the desert in Arizona and I decided to take any job I could find out there and work my way into Phoenix or Tucson. Soon I became the program director in Safford at a radio station there and when I checked into opportunities in Phoenix, I discovered that I was making more money as a program director than I would as a staff announcer. As a result, I came back to the midwest and joined radio station KCLN in Clinton, Iowa for two years followed by my stay in Fairfield. While at Fairfield I heard of a job opening at WOC and decided to come and spent the rest of my career here in the Quad Cities.

PAETZ PARTY LINE was the name of the show and Paetz Super Value in Clinton, Iowa was where it took place. I was working sign-on at the station and got off the air at 9 a.m. and would hurry over to the grocery store for what was likely a two hour program. This show aired every day and was basically an electronic want ad service. People were selling and buying and occasionally the callers and I would get into a conversation on whatever the subject of the day was. It was basically a radio rummage sale. If you squint you can see packages of Kool-Aid on the top shelf from 1960!

This picture in which I am wearing a derby was at radio station KMCD in Fairfield, Iowa and was taken most likely in 1961. The occasion was St. Patrick's Day. The other guy's name is Don Schoonick. I was working at that station just before I joined WOC.

Bill Gress - I took his place in the newsroom. WOC's Anita Sundin was kind of responsible for getting my job for me because they wanted to get Bill out of the newsroom and get him set up into public affairs. Our manager Ray Guth had told our news director Bob Frank to get a replacement, to get this thing moving. Bob and Anita were scheduled for a celebrity tour of Spain and Bob was kind of procrastinating. I did not find this out for a year or two later but Guth told him one morning that "look, if you do not get a replacement hired, you are not going on the trip!" That happened to be in the morning and that same afternoon I called and said that I understood that he had an opening and he hired me over the phone!

Jack Thomsen was the lead news man for around twenty years. When I came aboard, Bob Frank was the news director. Jack was his assistant and Jack was doing the 10 o'clock news. There was a day shift and a night shift and Jack was part of the night shift. Bob retired and went over to Modern Woodman and then Jack became news director. Thomsen was from Clinton, Iowa. He was an exceptionally good news man and in those days that is exactly what it took since we did not do a lot of self promoting. During the time period that he did the 10 o'clock news, it was a fifteen minute show. Huntley and Brinkley were just starting to make an impact on the network. I got in kind of at the tail end of this era but at that time it was all new. It was all put together by trial and error. Everybody was learning together. Jack gave the impression of being a tough guy but he was not that devoid of compassion. I know this from experience as he was a great help to me.

He was a good news guy. For example, when I stared, all of the news releases and so forth were embargoed until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. That was so the afternoon paper could get it before we went on the air. He is the one who engineered a change in philosophy by pointing out that most of these philanthropic organizations needed us a lot more than we needed them. So if we did not have it at 10 o'clock the night before, it was not going on the air the next day. If we did not have it before the newspapers did, it did not get used. It was a bloody fight but we finally got our way.

Special thanks to Doug Dahlgren for this scan.

I mentioned that the news was only a fifteen minute show. If you check the television schedule from say 1960, you will notice that the news is broken up by listing as news followed by weather followed by sports. A reason why they did this was because by breaking the weather out of the news they were able to pick up another three or four commercial spots. Another factor was prior to 1963, we did not have video tape capabilities so anything that went on the air went out live. That is how the news/weather/sports was sliced up into neat little packages. The times for the news when I was involved were at 12pm, 6pm and 10pm. There were also news breaks at 7:25 a.m. and 8:25 a.m. which were Today Show cut-ins.

The 1960's WOC News Team: Jack Thomsen, Jerry Jorgensen, Don Rhyne, Justus Smith, Chuck Leonard, Don McGonegle, Dick Scott, Phil Fleming, Max Lindberg

This picture must have been taken in 1964 because John Bauman was on the staff when I came but then he went for two years into the Army. He arrived back in 1965 and is not in this picture so I presume it was taken in 1963 or 1964. The car in the picture is a 1964 Chevy, I am told, so it appears that it was 1964. That car had WOC stamped on the side and it was the only car provided. Justis Smith, the chief photographer drove that. The rest of us drove our own cars and most of us had radios installed. Thankfully we were paid milage! John Bauman did the 6 o'clock news and I did the 10 o'clock news for a long long time. Eventually he went off the air and became an assignment editor and they turned both jobs over to me.

You may recall the flood of 1993 in Davenport, Iowa. The great flood of 1965 was like that only it was all the way up and down the river. No one had any flood protection to speak of so we were trying to cover it from Burlington to Dubuque since all of the cities were flooded. It was after this flood that all of the cities put up protection except for Davenport which resulted in the flood of 1993.

We had our hands full. WOC had a nine man news department and we were working fourteen hour days for six or eight weeks during this time. One of the striking parts of the great flood was the volunteer work. There were countless images of college students filling and stacking sandbags and that sort of thing. There are many pictures including those of the kids filling sandbags over by the old Rock Island Armory to help protect the downtown. I believe that the picture of myself on top of the man-made levy was taken in Davenport but I am not positive.

In the Quad City Times TV Guide picture we started out with jackets from one of the local clothing stores. We were all told to wear the same kind of jacket. For starters they were brown and there was another color which we alternated with. You may recall the yellow jackets which were a later generation jacket at WOC. At some point we ended up with a station manager who thought that every dollar going out was coming out of his pocket. He was from Kansas City and in K.C. there is a clothier called King Louis who markets clothing such as bowling shirts. So you had gold, red (in this picture) and another color. They were not the top of the line jackets as you can imagine with the cost restraints that were put on us but I guess they looked fine on the air.

The shot of Bill Bailey, myself and Wally Boller was probably taken in the mid 1970's. Bill Bailey was was with WOC for quite some time and then went to Chicago and then came back to Channel 8 WQAD and was then let go after a short time. They seemed to forget that he was on WOC for a couple of years before he really caught on. Everybody at WOC just loved him and he was a local icon for us. He had a pet skunk that would startle you when you saw it. Thankfully it was descented! Wally Boller was on for a long time and he took the place of Ed Zack. Wally was followed by Mike Berry I do believe and Thom Cornelis came soon thereafter.

John Collins was around for some time. John Popovich was here for three or four years. He was outstanding at his job as a sportscaster. Everyone even to this day marvelled at how he knew everybody in sports. He was just a really great outgoing guy.

John Collins, Don Rhyne and Denny Shaw.

 Special thanks to legendary WOC engineer Jon Book for scanning the images.

Special thanks to Greg on youtube for the above three scans of Don Rhyne on KWQC Newscenter 6.

07/29/2008 ... Over the decades I lived in my hometown of Davenport, I recall bumping into Don Rhyne at the old Candlelight Standard gas station in 1983 at W. Locust and Harrison in Davenport (now The Eye Pavilion), but most memorably at Nino's Steak House (now Kaplan College) at Northgate Plaza in Davenport in 1970.

I was a busboy there, at Assumption High School and saving for college I would be attending in one year. I was a busboy and classmate with now well-known Quad City cardiologist Dr. Michael Giudici.

I visited with Don and told him how much I enjoyed the then-new format, still used today on local news, where the news, weather, and sports shared the same desk. The atmosphere was no longer the stiff, formal set of prior years. The banter between the individuals was new for local television news.

Michael Jansen

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If you have any memories or pictures of Don Rhyne's time at WOC or would like to leave a message for him, please email me!