Back in October of 1966, when I was a senior in high school, Ken Rittle, Charlie Berger, and I were sent to the studios of WLYH-TV channel 15 on a Tuesday morning. At least I think that’s when it was. My best recollection is that it was a day when we didn’t have school, and I think that, if my memory serves me correctly, every fall we were given a day off because the teachers had some sort of colloquy to do whatever it was they did on those days. Compare notes, I guess.

Our local newspaper, the Lebanon Daily News, devoted one page on Fridays to news from all the county schools, the news being written up by a student from each of those schools. In the case of Elco (Eastern Lebanon County High School) that news was usually written up by my classmate Maryann Shellhamer. So I checked the “Around the Schools” for fall 1966 to see if Maryann wrote up our visit to the TV studios, and more importantly, the reason for our visit, but I couldn’t find anything. But there were a couple weeks with no news from Elco, so perhaps our visit occurred then. Or perhaps Maryann didn’t write it up for some reason. I just don’t know.

Anyway, we going to appear on the morning show hosted by Bob Keller. I think it came on at 9:00 AM and Bob would interview guests, read local news, and show cartoons or Three Stooges films in between in order to keep the kids watching. The purpose of our appearance was to promote the two South American schools that Elco was adopting.

Say what?!

Yeah, it was the first I heard of it, too. By rights I had no business being there cause I knew nothing about nothing. It should just have been Charlie, the student body president, and Ken, the vice-president, as presumably they would have known something about the adoption. Right?

Anyway, on the way to the studio, I think we all went in one car, someone shoved a letter in my face. Basically the letter spelled out the adoption program and it named the two schools that Elco was adopting, or at least it named the towns where the schools were located. I think they were each in Ecuador. It was one of those South American countries. Ecuador seems to ring a bell for some reason. Or maybe Peru?

Someone, Charlie or Ken, explained my task, whether I wanted to accept it or not, was to read the letter when Bob Keller asked about the adoption. OK, now I understood my purpose. I had to read the letter! Live on TV. So I read it over to myself; it was only a couple short paragraphs long and didn’t seem to offer any difficulties. I was in my second year of Spanish in school so the two Ecuadoran towns didn’t seem to be stumbling blocks. Got it.

We arrived at the studio a few minutes early and chatted with Bob Keller. If you’ve ever been in a TV studio, you know that in person they are a lot smaller than they look on TV. He had a table that we all sat around and the studio really wasn’t any larger than that. On TV it looked spacious.

Bob asked us about Spanish, as he had taken it in high school himself. Were we being taught the Castilian pronunciation? Yep, we nodded confidently. Castilian? It was the first I had ever heard that there was more than one way to pronounce Spanish.

The show began, and Bob read some local news and weather then put on a cartoon. After the cartoon, there was a commercial and then he started the interview.

It went smoothly at first as he introduced us, and Charlie and Ken began to explain about the adoption of the two schools. Then it was my turn to read the letter to give the slightly more detailed information and the names of the schools.

And I started off fine in the first paragraph, but then the second paragraph reared its ugly head. That was the one with the names of the two schools. They were towns in Ecuador, so they were multiple syllable Spanish names. And yes, I was in my second year of Spanish in high school, and yes, on paper, reading through those names silently in my head, I knew how they ought to be pronounced, how they ought to sound, but actually saying them out loud for the first time while reading that letter to a national audience with millions of people watching (ok, it wasn’t a national audience and there were only perhaps a couple thousand people watching, at best), well, I screwed them both up. I even remember saying after the second one, “That was a toughie!” 

Happily, the rest of the interview returned to Charlie and Ken, and they handled themselves with aplomb.

When I got home, I found out that my grandmother, who lived next door to us, had been watching, and she couldn’t stop talking about “Oh, you should have heard those words that Jimmy had say on TV. Such words. Who could pronounce them?” 

I also heard later on from my cousin Randy. He had been watching the show, but when the cartoon ended and it went to a commercial, he switched channels. No one had told him I was going to be on TV. Well, I don’t think I had known until the day before. I was both annoyed that he hadn’t seen me, and relieved that he hadn’t seen me screw up.

And oh yeah, I don’t remember hearing a single word about those two schools that we supposedly adopted ever again.