Jul 28, 2016 3 min read

As I heard the news that television icon Bill Cardille died, a memory came rushing back. It was a long-forgotten moment that affirms the outpouring of respect for the man universally described as decent and kind.

My very first appearance on television happened standing next to Bill. It was sometime in the late 70s, when I was in college and working as an intern at WKEG, an AM radio station here in Washington. I was representing the station in a short local spot at Channel 11 during the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.

I don’t remember what I said, or why exactly we’d been invited. It was a big deal for me, though, because I had set a career path for TV journalism, and it was my chance to be in front of a camera.

But what I remember most had nothing to do with my few seconds on the air. It was what I observed Bill doing right before that.

As I waited offstage for my turn to go on, I saw Bill crouching behind a table and some chairs in an unlit corner. His “Chiller Theater” sidekick Bonnie Barney, aka Georgette the Fudgemaker, had lost an earring or necklace, and Bill was on the floor helping her to find it.

This would not be remarkable except that this was Chilly Billy doing it. He was a TV star – as big a one as a kid growing up in Finleyville ever got to meet. On the screen these people are bigger than life, and maybe appear more important than the rest of us. Certainly too important to search on hands and knees for a co-worker’s lost trinket.

When my sisters and I were old enough to watch, we’d spend Saturday nights with Bill and his gaggle of strange sidekicks. The movies were usually pretty bad and probably not all that scary. But that was the point of the show. We all knew Chilly Billy, and he made the monsters OK.

Another memory returns to me now. My first real TV job was at a fledgling cable unit at KDKA-TV. I was 23, fresh out of graduate school, and green as a meadow. My first day there, I walked through the Channel 2 newsroom, seeing the faces of all the news people my family had always watched. And there, leaning against his desk was anchorman Ray Tannehill.

He was chewing gum.

It was almost shocking. Here was the handsome man of great authority and dignity, who came into our living room each evening. Turns out he was also a regular guy.

I wasn’t at the station long enough to get to know Ray, but by all accounts he was a kind and decent man.

My path never crossed again with Bill Cardille, either.

But when I learned last week that he had died, I was able to add my own good thoughts about him to the outpouring from all his fans. Everyone says he was a good man. I saw a bit of it myself.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.