While I was serving at NATO Headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia in 1958, I met a new Navy draftee a couple of years older than I.  He had been a parttime disc jockey on a Washington, D.C. radio station since he was 14 years old so he was assigned to public relations while I worked in Operations.

       His name was Willard Scott and we soon became friends and it wasn’t long until he got a parttime job as a  deejay on a station across the river in Portsmouth.  Since the work at NATO was temporary assignment away from the Navy, we had open gangway, which meant weekends off and no evening watches–a true 9 to 5 job.

     I began hanging out at the studio when Willard was on the air and began to become enamoured with the business.  He suggested I make some demos and apply for a job.  I did and 13 weeks later I was hired by a c/w station in Norfolk to host the wake-up show 5 to 7 a.m. weekdays and nearly all day Saturday and Sunday.  It was considered a a full time job.

       Willard’s station also had a sister TV station in the same building and soon he was chosen to become the evening weatherman.  That was in the days of lo-tech graphics when cut-out clouds, suns and lightning bolts were stuck on the weather map with a sort of paste.  Already a funny guy,  before the forecast was over, he had pasted the graphics all over his face and the Arco gas attendant uniform he had to wear.

       The Popeye cartoon host’s persona was Poopdeck Pappy who had a live parrot as a mascot.  That parrot was kept in a cage overnight in a hallway Willard used to get from the TV to the radio studios.  Each evening as he would pass the bird’s covered cage he would say, “Poopdeck Pappy is an (expletive deleted).  As far as I know the parrot never did learn to talk.
                  
     Willard was the very first Ronald McDonald and has made humor a great part of his life even as the weatherman on the NBC Today Show for many years.  His dedication to senior citizens is well known and he still makes occasional appearances to congratulate those who have reached 100 or more years of age.

     One of his favorite stories is one he told me during a Lakeland ,Florida interview a few years ago.  He asked a very old lady if she had ever been bedridden.  She replied, “Oh my goodness yes.  Hundreds of times and once in the back of a buggy.”