Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 27, 1994 TAG: 9401280002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What happened to some of those faces who became a part of our lives? And do they remember Roanoke?
Many not only remember the Star City but have fond memories of the region.
Monica Shuman, WSLS (Channel 10) news anchor and reporter from 1983 to 1989, is now co-anchoring the noon and 5:30 p.m. news for WTVD, an ABC affiliate in Durham, N.C.
Shuman says she always checks the weather map to see what it's like in Roanoke and scans the news wires to see what's happening here. A 1983 graduate of Virginia Tech, she also is on the dean's board for arts and sciences for the university, so she comes back at least twice a year.
She says she was allowed to grow in Roanoke, and ``if there's a hometown, that's it.''
In her current job, she was sent to Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War for two months to cover the soldiers from North Carolina. Shuman also reported for all the ABC stations around the country, she says.
While abroad, she met her husband of 15 months, Army Maj. Lew Boone of the 82nd Airborne, who is stationed at Fort Bragg.
The most influential person for Shuman in Roanoke was Ken Srpan, WSLS anchor and news director during the 1980s. ``He gave me the foundation,'' she says. ``He molded me. He taught me all he knew. I wouldn't have done as well without him.''
Srpan left WSLS in 1988 but stayed in Roanoke. He manages marketing, admissions and other areas for Friendship Manor. After 22 years in television, he says it was time for a change. But he keeps his hand in broadcasting by hosting and co-producing ``Now and Then,'' a magazine-type show for senior citizens, on Thursday nights on WBRA (Channel 15).
A Cleveland native, Srpan stayed in Roanoke for many of the reasons other television alumni fondly remember it: low crime, mountains, four seasons and friends. His wife, Cam, teaches at Patrick Henry High school.
Also still in town is John Kernan, sportscaster at WDBJ from 1983 to 1992. He's working on a five-year contract with ESPN as a NASCAR reporter, and he flies to his assignments. His wife, Anita Bevins-Kernan, who was a reporter at WSLS from 1985 to 1987, also free-lances as an auto racing reporter/announcer.
Lyn Jackson was in Roanoke briefly at WSLS then left to attend graduate school for a year at Columbia University in New York. But she returned to Southwest Roanoke and is known more for her seven and a half years at WDBJ (Channel 7).
``WDBJ is really a very, very special place,'' she says. ``It's one of those things you take for granted. It's special and unique: the people, its news philosophy and how it's run.''
Jackson keeps in touch with many of the friends she made while at WDBJ, including anchor Keith Humphry.
She left in 1990 when she married David Stephenson, who had been noon weatherman and news producer at WDBJ. He had moved to WRAL-TV as a producer and is now vice president of a video communications company in Raleigh.
Jackson moved to WRAL as a producer, but she was interested in trying something new and is now an account executive for the Raleigh station. She says the most significant part of her life is her 10-month-old daughter, Kate.
After three years at WDBJ, Nesita Kwan spent two and a half years in Norfolk and is now a reporter and weekend anchor at KHOU-TV in Houston.
Entering a top-10 television market was a major move for Kwan, ``not because I felt like I'd arrived, but because of the difficulty of what I had to do,'' she says. Smaller markets tend to have less activity and have a slower pace. In Houston, ``you have to be that much more vigilant with people.''
Roanoke is ``probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever lived,'' she says.
``I do cherish the city so much because there was a pace of life in Roanoke I found very, very pleasant,'' Kwan says. ``In our business you sort of can't choose to stay if you want to advance in your career. [In Roanoke] people have time to be friendly, and generally it's a more straigntforward approach to life.''
Her three years here from 1987 to 1990 were her learning years, she says, and many times she thought she wasn't cut out for broadcast journalism.
``I'm grateful for those who put up with me, the management and photographers,'' Kwan says. ``I can honestly say I credit [Jim] Shaver. He hired me and stuck with me through tough times.''
``I miss the star and the Mill Mountain Zoo,'' says Eugenia Halsey, WDBJ reporter from 1979 to 1985. Halsey now covers health and nutrition for Cable News Network in Washington, D.C.
One of her memories of Southwest Virginia is when she covered a Willie Nelson concert in Franklin County. The singer didn't show up, and the disgruntled fans burned surrounding barns.
Halsey says she enjoyed the diversity of the area for covering a variety of things, from city council to coal miners. ``It was the happiest time of my career.''
Also at CNN is Sharon Collins, who was with WSET (Channel 13) for nine years until 1991. She is producer and correspondent for Network Earth/Earth Matters, based in Atlanta.
Collins opened the Danville bureau for WSET and covered the PTL - the ``Praise The Lord'' television ministry run by Jim and Tammy Bakker that was based in South Carolina near Charlotte, N.C - for the Lynchburg station. She covered politics in Richmond and was split between management and on-air work. On a whim, she says, she applied for the job at CNN.
Collins, who was born on the University of Virginia campus, says she took from Roanoke ``a sense of warmth in the way you treat people. I think that I'm able to go into just about any environment ... be it a home that is in a poverty-stricken area or very wealthy area, because I came into contact with such a wide range of people who were incredibly friendly.''
Although Cindy Farmer works with WFMY-TV in Greensboro, N.C., you can still see her on local television commercials for Christiansburg-based Shelor-Chevrolet. And because her mother lives in Blacksburg she comes back to the area fairly often.
A reporter and weathercaster on WSLS from 1984 to 1990, Farmer says: ``What I really miss are the people. They were so kind and giving, and you weren't just someone on TV, you were part of their family. They'd say `hey Cindy, I'm going fishing, what's the weather gonna be like.'
``I refer to my time in Roanoke as my starving-artist days because WSLS did not pay a lot, but the experience I got there was worth more than could ever be placed in dollar amounts,'' says Farmer, who grew up near Radford.
Coincidentally, Farmer now anchors weekends with Brad Jones, former WSLS noon anchor during the 1980s. Jones has been at WFMY for seven years.
by CNB