Coming of Age at the Jersey Shore

For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be in this business known as TV.

It all started out for me in seventh grade at St. Jerome School, when I was on a class trip to NBC studios and sat through three back-to-back-to-back tapings of "To Tell the Truth". The classic cast was on hand – host Gary Moore, with panel members Bill Cullen, Orson Bean, Peggy Cass, and Kitty Carlisle. . .and let’s not forget everyone’s favorite TV announcer, Johnny Olson.

I was sitting in between the soundstage and the control room behind the studio audience, watching the director in the control room barking out orders to the stage crew through his “comm link”, then turning back to the stage and seeing the floor manager convey the director’s orders to the camera operators and audio technicians on the soundstage. I was turning around back and forth in my seat so much that one of the teachers told me to sit still or I’d be taken outside.

Three years later when I was a sophomore at Shore Regional High School, I got my first big break in the business doing voice work. An opening came up as the public address announcer for the home varsity football games. Prior to that time, teachers were the only ones who were PA announcers at all the varsity sporting events. The PA announcer who was leaving the job, a biology teacher named Michael Krautheim, worked summers as a security guard at Monmouth Park Race Track.

This one particular year (1974), the race track meet ran all the way until mid-November – almost through the entire varsity football season. So I asked “Kraut” on a Saturday afternoon after I had gotten off of work how he was going to work his job as a security guard at the track and call the football games on the weekends.

“I can’t. I got to work at the track since it pays”, he told me. “Why? Do you want the job? I’ll go talk to Bob Feeney for you, if you want.”

Bob Feeney was the athletic director at Shore Regional at the time. I walked over to his office on Monday during my lunch period to see if he would let me announce the football games.

Mr. Feeney said to me, “Mr. Krautheim did call me up over the weekend and spoke to me about you. You seem like a nice, well-mannered young man. We’ll let you call the first game this coming Saturday and see what happens after that.”

So I wound up getting the job thanks to Mr. Krautheim’s recommendation and held it for three years. Since I graduated in 1977, I found out that the PA announcer’s job for the varsity football games has always been done by students. That was over 30 years ago. It’s nice to know that I started a trend. . .

(You can also follow Kevin Cieri’s blog on his Facebook page, “Jersey Shore Retro” as well as on Twitter [@jsretro]).