THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 9, 1995 TAG: 9510070030
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Profile
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 167 lines
JERRY FREEMAN IS juggling a handful of black remote controls.
``Wait'll you see this. I can do 16 screens,'' he says, never lifting his eyes from the steroidal television screen that dominates his living room. It's bigger than some movie screens at the mall.
``Look, there we go,'' Freeman beams, as 16 separate shows pop onto his television.
Freeman, 63, retired as the director of the Norfolk office of the Federal Communications Commission on Labor Day. His job at the agency was to police the airwaves around Hampton Roads and keep them clear. During his career, he battled with anyone not playing by the rules: Henry ``the Bull'' Del Toro, the Tidewater Tides and cable TV freeloaders.
You'd think after all those years of working with electronics, Freeman would want to escape them.
Think again.
He's still working the remote controls.
``Have you ever seen raw news feeds?'' he asks eagerly. ``No? You've gotta see these. I get 150 channels. I'll find one. They're so funny; sometimes I set the VCR and record them.''
He says this while gesturing at a bank of VCRs lining one wall of the room.
``No feeds here,'' he says, switching remote controls. ``Let's go to SatCom C4.''
SatComm C4 is a satellite stationed thousands of miles above planet Earth, bouncing signals into Freeman's Bay Island living room.
Outside in the yard, a satellite dish rotates wildly as he continues to press buttons, juggle remotes, switch satellites and aim the dish.
From SatComm C4 to Galaxy, from Galaxy to Aurora. From Aurora to GStar 2 KU Band.
Suddenly a man appears on the screen. He is fiddling with his nose and reading from a piece of paper. You can hear him breathing.
Freeman laughs. ``Just watch, you never know what these guys are going to do.''
The man, it turns out, is a California television reporter stationed outside the O.J. Simpson courthouse. He's waiting for a break in the courtroom action to report to viewers. What Freeman is watching is raw news feeds.
``Try these,'' he says, handing over a set of wireless headphones. ``They're infra-red headphones. The best.''
The living room is silent, but inside Freeman's infra-red headphones the California newscaster comes in loud and clear.
Freeman, who loves gadgets - but not as much as he loves his wife, Shirley, their three children and six grandkids - decides it's time to turn off the TV.
He wants to show us his phone.
``Isn't she a beauty?'' he asks, handing over a sleek, black cordless telephone. ``She has 900 megahertz, a range five times further than a regular portable phone and can't be intercepted. It's all digital.
``Just listen to that dial tone,'' he insists.
After admiring the dial tone, it's time to peek into the ham radio room, with its desk full of radios, logs and assorted gadgets.
This seems to be the only gadgetry that doesn't hold Freeman's interest much anymore.
``You could say my vocation spoiled my avocation on this one,'' he says, looking sadly at the short-wave equipment, which he rarely uses.
But Freeman cheers up when we visit his home office lined with plaques and awards, testifying to his work with the Ocean Park Rescue Squad (which he and Shirley joined in 1982 back when they used to park the ambulance in their driveway at night). He's president of the rescue squad now, a volunteer position that could easily fill up those retirement hours.
No surprise, the office is chock full of equipment. A fax machine, a copier, a computer.
``You have an alphanumeric pager, don't you?'' Freeman asks matter-of-factly.
No, we admit.
``You know how they work, don't you?'' he asks suspiciously.
For a moment we consider nodding. But this man can detect phonies - he did it for a living.
No, we admit, we do not know how an alphanumeric pager works.
Freeman sighs, logs onto his personal computer, finds his communications program and types a message. A few minutes later, his beeper begins to vibrate and the computer message runs along the palm-size pager like a miniature version of the electronic billboard in Times Square.
So that's how an alphanumeric pager works.
It is safe to say Jerry Freeman is not afraid of technology.
If it's new, if it's cutting edge - especially if no one else has it yet - Freeman wants it.
``He's a world-class gadgeteer,'' says lawyer Carter ``Tuck'' Anderson, a close friend of Freeman's. ``I remember the first time I ever saw a cell phone, Jerry had it and couldn't wait to show everyone.''
Anderson recalls a party he and Freeman attended several years ago where the host had a state-of-the-art night vision scope. Freeman couldn't put it down.
``He kept getting the scope out and looking at squirrels in the trees,'' Anderson says. ``You could tell he really wanted one himself.''
Freeman admits as much.
``I like to be the first on the block with everything,'' he says with a grin.
Although we don't get a look at the Freeman family generator, he assures there is one. In case of a devastating hurricane or a colossal nor'easter, the Freemans may be the only family on the block with power.
Moored at the bulkhead behind his home is Freeman's pride and joy: a 40-foot trawler named, what else, ``Decibel.''
If you think the Freeman house is technology friendly, friends say you should really take a tour of the boat. In addition to short-wave radio gear, Freeman has installed a G.P.S. (global positioning satellite) navigational system coupled with a map. Team that up with the boat's radar system and Freeman could find his way around the globe in fog thicker than pea soup.
``Jerry is a gadget man, that's for sure,'' agrees Skip Scribner, a neighbor, friend and vice president of the rescue squad. He's also one of the few people Freeman allows to pilot the Decibel.
Freeman's interest in electronics dates back to his childhood in Brooklyn where he attended Lafayette High School, (one of his classmates was Larry King) and then studied electrical engineering at Cornell.
Freeman joined the FCC in 1960 in the New Orleans office. He spent a couple of years in the Baltimore office before moving to Norfolk in 1968.
Freeman helped turned the small Norfolk office of the FCC into a national training center. He also oversaw the office through its various venues, each one located coincidentally closer to his Virginia Beach home.
``Yup, when I came here we were in downtown Norfolk, then we moved to Military Circle and then to Virginia Beach,'' he says grinning wickedly.
Times changed, and so did standards during his tenure.
``In the beginning, if someone said `damn' on the radio they got a letter from me,'' he says, shaking his head. ``Community standards have changed so much, though, you wouldn't blink an eye about a damn today.''
But Freeman relentlessly pursued those who abused the airwaves. And that included the controversial radio personality Henry ``The Bull'' Del Toro. Freeman came down on Del Toro and WNOR after an April Fools' Day prank in which the radio personality warned listeners that a methane gas build up at Mount Trashmore was about to cause the artificial mountain to blow.
Then there was the time he fined the Tidewater Tides for using unlicensed radar guns to clock pitches from behind home plate.
As much as he admired the technology, he couldn't countenance the baseball team sending unlicensed radio waves into the air.
That transgression cost the Tides $8,000.
Freeman also made news when he tracked down a CBN employee who was using CBN equipment to jam cable broadcasts of the Playboy Channel.
He may be retired, but scofflaws still bother him. As we prepare to leave, Freeman dashes into his study for the latest issue of one of his favorite magazines - ``Popular Science.'' He is fuming about ads in the magazine for cable TV descramblers.
``Illegal,'' he says, jabbing a finger at pictures of the equipment that allows satellite dish owners to unscramble cable shows without paying for them.
Even though he still has the FCC on his automatic phone dialer, Freeman's out of the enforcement arena now and a viewer like the rest of us.
And when he settles down in front of his television set, tuned to any one of the 150 channels at his fingertips, Freeman says he is awed by the technology and shocked by its abuses.
``I'm just amazed that during my short career, or rather long career, I've seen so many things on TV that I never thought I'd see,'' Freeman says, shaking his head. ``There are so many possibilities in broadcasting today, but then you see stuff like Howard Stern and others like him and it makes you wonder.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Bill Tiernan
The Beach's Jerry Freeman, who retired from the Norfolk office of
the FCC on Labor Day says, "I like to be the first on the block with
everything.
Color staff file photo
In the 1992, WNOR's Henry "The Bull" Del Toro angered Freeman with
an April Fools' Day report of Mount Trashmore's imminent explosion.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB