The Virginian-Pilot
                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, January 25, 1996             TAG: 9601250469
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION WRITER 
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                     LENGTH: Long  :  117 lines

DR. DUANE WEATHERS STORM BY PEERING AHEAD THE METEOROLOGIST HOPES TO LAND ANOTHER TV JOB.

While Duane Harding shared a lunch of curried chicken over rice with the Cavalier Garden Club on Wednesday, Betty Marable circulated among the members seeking names on a petition soon to be on its way to the head of The New York Times Co. broadcast group.

The Cavalier women, looking country-club chic in their smart winter wardrobes and fresh coiffures, want The New York Times Co. to instruct its general manager at CBS affiliate WTKR in Norfolk to give Harding his job back. Sixteen days ago, the fortysomething broadcaster with a doctorate in meteorology was told that his contract would not be renewed when it expires seven months from now.

Not only that, the Channel 3 bosses booted him off the air on the spot. Pausing only to give 5 p.m. co-anchor Jane Gardner a peck on the cheek, Harding walked out of the WTKR studios in downtown Norfolk, never again to report wind chills and dew points on the 5, 6, 10 and 11 p.m. newscasts.

``I can't believe it happened,'' Marable said as she moved among the women sitting at tables covered with starchy white linen in the dining room of the Princess Anne Country Club at the Oceanfront. She held a legal pad on which 50 or 60 names had been written.

Will the petition move the executives in The New York Times boardrooms to change their minds and rehire Harding? Not likely.

In Norfolk, WTKR's news director, Barbara L. Hamm, said a decision has been made and will stand.

``Change is difficult,'' she said. ``We understand why some viewers are upset. Duane Harding is a fine person and excellent meteorologist with whom we have a philosophical difference about reporting the weather.''

The women of the Cavalier Garden Club are not alone in feeling outrage over the firing of the kindly, gentlemanly former college professor who reported on the weather without flash or dash. The Virginian-Pilot has received nearly 600 calls of protest and a flood of letters to the editor.

``The response has overwhelmed me,'' Harding said soon after speaking to the club for 45 minutes about how to get the most out of a TV weather report. At times during his talk, Harding got so enthused that he forgot he was no longer employed, uttering phrases like: ``I'll go on the air and say . . .'' and ``After leaving the studio . . .''

When there are no talks to give, Harding sits in his office at home in Virginia Beach updating his resume, wondering if the time is right to write a book. While he has been an instructor and tenured professor at the University of Michigan and Eastern Kentucky University, Harding now prefers working on TV.

Who is this man who has so endeared himself to some viewers in this, the 40th-largest TV market, that they are circulating petitions on his behalf and making plans to picket at WTKR's front door?

He's a small-town guy from Quincy, Mass., who remembers being fascinated by nature's wonders long before he learned to spell m-e-t-e-o-r-o-l-o-g-y.

``I'd take one of my mother's needles, and in the early morning, scratch designs on the frost that accumulated inside our windows,'' Harding said.

Harding is a master gardener who was taught much of what he knows by his grandfather. He's rail-thin, uncommonly friendly, married and the father of sons, 5 and 14. If you look hard, you'll see gray invading his moustache.

His glasses don't have rims on them. That makes it easier to see his eyes, which are some dark color. He says his voice is often raspy from allergies.

Pollen. He has a love-hate affair with it. It's good for gardens, bad for throats.

Harding starts on his tomato plants on Jan. 1. These two plants - ``the early girls,'' Harding calls them - get babied indoors under fluorescent lights until they sprout leaves and it's time to put them in the ground.

``I'll be disappointed if I don't have my first tomato by May 15,'' he told the garden clubbers.

While he was earning a mere $19,000 teaching at Eastern Kentucky University about 20 years ago, Harding might have been content to stay in the classroom if a TV station in Lexington, Ky., hadn't needed a weekend weather reporter.

They called Harding.

He was awful at first, and knew it.

``I tripped over cables on the studio floor.''

He smudged his nose with the ink that was in the soft pens he used to mark up the weather maps. Before computerized reporting, the TV weather people had to make like Picassos on the air.

Harding says he doesn't know exactly how or why the general manager of WVEC here found him at WLEX in Lexington and hired him in the 1980s to be on the Channel 13 news team.

He was happy at WVEC, earning a fat salary. When the ABC affiliate would not renew his contract - sound familiar? - he went to work at WTKR for a lot less. ``I've been here before,'' Harding said of again experiencing the trauma of hearing, ``Clean out your desk, and leave.''

``That makes this experience somewhat easier to take,'' he said.

But only somewhat.

Harding is asking himself the question that Marable, garden club President Carolyn Clark and their friends asked over the curried chicken: How could any station let go such a competent meteorologist who fit in so well with viewers in conservative Hampton Roads who don't want flash, dash and silly rooftop reporting?

``If he's a fuddy-duddy, so be it,'' said reader Maxine Mason in Chesapeake. ``He's a great fuddy-duddy. Who needs glitz?''

Janet Scupman in Virginia Beach is among dozens of readers who called to say they would be happy to march in support of Harding. ``And I know many others ready to join me,'' she said.

Does anyone expect Scupman, Mason or the women of the garden club in Virginia Beach to roll back the corporate mindset at The New York Times Co.?

Not the man they call ``Doctor Duane.''

He's resigned to looking for work. There are resumes to be mailed out. Until the phone rings, Harding will continue his talks on gardening, and do his thing with the organic gardening club.

He will tell anyone who wants to hear that plants ``sit and sulk'' if they're put into the ground when it's cold. And that it takes 1 inch of rain a week to keep your lawn looking green.

``That man ought to still be on television, telling people all of that,'' one of the garden club members said Wednesday. Then she signed Betty Marable's petition. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/The Virginian-Pilot

Duane Harding, former WTKR weatherman, chats with Carolyn Clark,

president of the Cavalier Garden Club, on Wednesday.

by CNB