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Today's piece pilot and author Mark Hoog and his mentor got me thinking. Who has come along professionally to change my life? To inspire me to think about what is possible?
Truly, I have been so lucky to work along great people throughout my career, but one face in particular, one name pops up.
Gil Tyree.
Now, we're going back some years for this story.
It was the early '90's. I was working at the KTVK, which was then the ABC station in Phoenix. I was a general assignment reporter. This place where, if you were blonde you were the news anchor; if you were brunette you were the field reporter.
Hair color check: yep…I spent a lot of time out in the field. Got nowhere near the anchor desk.
But really, forget anchoring…my real dream was to do sports.
I grew up watching sports, playing them. Was a real fan.
Covering the Phoenix Suns, the Arizona Cardinals, ASU football would be a lot more fun, I figured, than covering murder trials, asking victim families, "How does it feel?"
Only one problem. The boss didn't believe in me. He literally told me, "Women don't do sports. Men won't watch women doing sports."
The weekday sports guy pulled me aside and said, "Sports is a brotherhood. You'll never fit in."
The story and the dream could've ended there.
Except for Gil Tyree.
He was the weekend sports anchor. He could've easily seen me and my dreams as a threat. A lesser man would've thought, "That ambitious young woman is after my job."
But, a lesser man didn't have Gil's heart, which happens to be bigger than Shaquille O'Neal's sneaker size times 10.
Gil was the first professional person to believe in my dream of doing sports.
He also saw what I saw---that the boss and the weekday dude were just wrong. The situation was the exact opposite: the world of sports was opening up to women. Excellent broadcasters like Robin Roberts and Linda Cohn at ESPN and Hannah Storm, then at CNN, were doing great work. That stations and networks were actually looking for women to do sports.
That's when Gil took up the sport of cheerleading.
Sure, I was the one working weekends and extra hours to learn the craft. But, it was Gil who would pick me up everytime I stumbled or stop believing in myself.
He literally would drag me over to the bank of television monitors when Robin, Linda, or Hannah would come on.
"Look at those women," he would instruct. "They are very good at what they do. And YOU are just as good. YOU know sports just as well as they do. YOU are going to make it."
Gil got to say a big, "Told 'ya so" that day in the summer
of '94 when CNN hired me to be a sports anchor—the two things the Phoenix boss told me I would never do: anchor and do sports."
Of course, that led to an amazing 3 + year run where I lived every sports dream, covered every major sporting event. Then, I moved onto CNN anchor desk, where the news adventure was even greater for 8+ years.
So, when I was interviewing Mark Hoog for today's story and he told me about Jason Dahl, the co-worker who inspired him to do more, I got it.
Tragically, for Mark, his friend died on 9/11. Their time together was too short.
Makes me appreciate Gil all the more. A few years after I moved to Atlanta for CNN, Gil was hired by the local CBS affiliate here as their weekday sportscaster. That means I can keep tabs on him around town. I hear stories how eventhough he's now the big sports dude at the station he's still running around encouraging co-workers and friends to go for their dreams. Gil is still the head cheerleader.
It also means he and I can get together for lunch every now and then. Gil, today's story reminds me we are overdue. By the way—I'm buying.
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