Goodmon shares how Charlie Gaddy's career began at WRAL
My name is Jim Goodman
I worked with Charlie for 24 years at
WRELT
You know um I really like
Not having the funeral
Quickly Right the time that we've had
Between Charlie's death and Our service today
Uh At the death we're very emotional upset and every
day I sort of thought about another thing I wanted
to say about Charlie
I've got it together about Charlie
Right I had time to make sense of all this
living and dying and what's going on and how to
what what all this is
So um I really appreciate the the uh Having That
time
Now one thing that happened to me when I was
reviewing Charlie Gaddy retired 31 years ago
I think if you ask me
I always said 0 15 years
12 or 31 years
And you know what that means and and I found
this to be very intriguing
There are people that were born in Raleigh
30 years ago they never saw Charlie on television
Right Think about that
They've they've never seen Charlie on television
Um All right so what happened the time I had
to think uh I came up with two
Ideas that I want to do things I want to
share with you um
Popped up Um And the first is how lucky we
are right To have known Charlie
What an honor Look look at what he accomplished and
what he meant and What he did for our community
and the standards he set for us
Write all that Charlie Gaddy did for us how lucky
How lucky are we and that and That's the gratitude
that we should have gratitude for that
That's a really uh
Important notion To me is that we we should be
thankful that we had Charlie
Now there's another word throughout everything that I kept thinking
about and that is trust
Right we don't do that anymore you know
Trust credibility
Right reliability
Do what you say you're going to do
Right Trust
Everybody trusted Charlie
That credibility that he had I'm gonna
Tell you a story about Charlie Gaddy's credibility just
Um We have some Deborah too
We have so many stories that we could uh OK
we did a cerebral palsy telethon every year
Uh Charlie was very involved in cerebral palsy
Uh the the center is named for Charlie
He was very important to the telethon
Uh I I I had the uh task of
Working with cerebral palsy to meet our financial goals
Right we wanted to raise a certain amount of money
we had these goals and we needed to raise them
Um and so we it it actually got to this
Charlie and I talk about this every year
He would call and say what time coach very short
conversation
Sunday afternoon Jim what time coach And I would say
4 o'clock
That was the conversation
And so here's what we would do or we had
maybe 20 telephones
So we could look at the telephones and see if
anybody's calling
You know it's what what we're doing on the telephone
is it working Is anybody called I never will forget
the number
When I would bring Charlie on at 4 o'clock
The uh the instructions were
Everybody be quiet
Uh medium tight shot on Charlie
Maybe here up And He's going to talk to us
Charlie would start talking about cerebral palsy
And I could it's true I could look at the
phones
And they'd all start ringing
Right down the line
I'd give him give him some time off and he'd
come back and he'd do it again
People trusted Charlie Gaddy
They believed in him
If Charlie Gaddy believed this was important uh uh they
believed that it was important
All right so how did all this get started Charlie
at WREL That's my only other
Story Um my grandmother I'm so my grandfather my grandmother
died my grandfather remarried uh and um She listened to
WPTF radio all the time
WPTF was on all the time
And one day my grandfather called me over to his
office and said Jim Margaret likes this boy at WPTF
Charlie Gaddy Well Charlie was doing a program called Ask
Your Neigh It's a PTF for 10 years
And PTF is very good very high news standards
I mean Charlie got into this uh in a very
structured uh informal way as part of his background at
PTF which uh a really good news organization but they
had him doing Ask Your Neighbor and it was every
morning and the idea you can hear it
Charlie I'm thinking about having an oyster casserole for Thanksgiving
and I need a recipe
And my phone number is 642-511-1
It went on for an hour
It was not certainly wasn't made for television
Uh So uh Do you think we can do that
program on television he said
I said no
But we'll figure something out
So uh OK so I had my grandfather
Uh interested in bringing Charlie to WPTF
A week later
My uncle Fred Fletcher family business you know um
Uh a wonderful wonderful man always interested in young people
and uh talent
uh he was sort of an entertainer chairman of the
Parks and Recreation board for In Raleigh for 31 years
If I needed to get a requisition or some signed
I need to figure out what park he'd gone to
That he was into these parks he said
Jim there's this boy at WPTF same word
That's putting out a record
You know he sings and he dances and he's putting
out a record and I want you to make a
music video
Of this I'm thinking What I don't have any place
to run a music video on television
Um
So I'm on the team And um We hired Charlie
Gaddy
Uh and uh had a Good Morning Charlie was the
name of the program
It was in a uh we had a studio auditorium
He sat at a table and the phone was there
and it rang and he answered
And the best guests that we had uh laugh about
this is we recorded championship wrestling every Wednesday night
So all the rest of us were in there
Wednesday I got them going in there and be on
Charlie's show and talk on the phone
So that's how we got Charlie now so he was
with us uh
Uh right 991 uh 94 he became anchor of the
6 o'clock news
All right so this is the only time I'm gonna
Uh Exaggerate a little maybe
Not much
Um we had a goal at WRDL uh which was
to build a great television station
Right I mean that was the goal
And and and that started with building the news department
and establishing the 6 o'clock news as the uh new
television news of record in the market
Uh I always say it makes everybody mad that the
only thing that matters to WREL today is 6 o'clock
news
Now we do a lot more now but that was
my notion is we're all here in this building to
do that 6 o'clock news tonight and and what I
want to say is that
That effort to build a great television station
That was built around the center
Of that was Charlie Gaddy
Right that everything that that that oh by the way
a bunch of folks here a whole lot of people
worked hard and did a great job
It wasn't all Charlie
You know I mean Charlie was in the fulcrum the
the it all came from there and for 20 years
he did that
And Here here I go guys we were we we're
good
We're real good
We had ratings nobody's ever seen in the country
We're still real good
Right but we were but
That that really that that really worked
That was and Charlie uh worked with me in doing
that
We had a special
Relationship
I trusted him he trusted me and we took care
of each other
How's that For those 20 years
Um So There's a saying
Elvis has left the building
Um You know we're here to pay our respects and
say goodbye to Charlie
I'm not I'm not only to say goodbye to Charlie
No
We certainly want to pay our respects
Elvis has left the bill so Charlie has left the
building
No Charlie hasn't left the building
Right if you walk into WREL today Charlie's in that
building
He's in that building because he worked with Gerald
Right he's in that building because he worked with David
He's in that building because of what he got started
and built
And has carried on through the staff of WRELTV
Charlie has not left the building
He's with us
All the time So God bless us God bless Charlie
Daddy and God bless America