THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 9, 1995 TAG: 9505090261
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Forecasting weather goes hand in hand with gardening for WTKR-TV weatherman Duane Harding.
Last year he picked tomatoes on May 15. They are egg-sized now in the half-acre garden in back of his home in Virginia Beach. One year, in a warm spell, he harvested them Christmas Day.
``Usually by that time you're kind of sick of them, anyway,'' he said.
Often Harding salts his weather reports with gardening hints.
Thursday at 11 a.m. he will brief members of the Garden Club of Virginia who are arriving in Norfolk today for a three-day convention at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott Hotel.
Viewers draw comfort from his delivery of nuances on this area's mystical weather. It's as if he is a favorite professor who knows the score and will accept any question.
He became interested in meteorology doing a project in the eighth grade in Quincy, Mass. ``I had to study the atmosphere, and I just made my way down to the ground.''
He studied meteorology and oceanography at the University of Michigan. There he met Debi Lurkins, an assistant in the research laboratory. Two years later they married.
She quilts, does volunteer work with the schools, and is, he said, ``my best critic.''
He had no idea of going into TV.
He was teaching physics and weather at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky., when WLEX-TV asked him to do the weekend weather. He had toured the station with students.
``I didn't think I could do it; I turned them down, several times,'' he said Monday. ``I thought I'd make a fool of myself.
``They kept insisting. I agreed to do it a while and I was right. I made a fool of myself.''
WKYT-TV in Lexington didn't think so. It hired him full time.
WVEC-TV in Norfolk sought him in 1986, and WTKR-TV hired him in 1990.
``I never applied for a job. Stations have this sort of underground society where they just know about people around the country.''
Whimsy surfaces frequently.
Asked how their two sons, ages 5 and 13, regard his job, he said: ``They don't think it's anybody big. They're not impressed with me any more than I am.''
Nor are his professors back in Michigan. ``They're a little disappointed. They trained me to go into research, and I do TV.''
That habit of research persists in his reading scientific journals, books, reference works.
He gardens on weekends, raising strawberries, blueberries, tomatoes, whatnot. He munches raw rhubarb. It is, he said, ``pucker sour and crisp, when fresh.''
He began gardening as a child on vacations with his grandfather in Maine.
``It's therapeutic just to pound in the dirt,'' he said.
And his work on television?
``I love the job.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Duane Harding
by CNB