A friend of mine recently quit his job anchoring the evening news.

He joined the Army.

That’s right. He went from anchoring the news at a dominant #1 NBC affiliate in Missouri to boot camp in Texas.

It’s not a ratings stunt. He’s 42-years-old and he’d had enough.

Jerry Jacob taught me the ropes when I got my first job in TV. I was four years older than him in earth years but he was older than me in TV years. Jerry got into TV in his 20s and worked his way up to the weekend anchor job at KYTV in Springfield, Missouri. For reference purposes, as TV markets go Springfield is larger than Charleston and Columbia, SC, but smaller than Raleigh and Charlotte.

I showed up in Springfield as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, 30-something. Talk about a colossal late bloomer. I went back to college in my 30s and graduated with my journalism degree when I was 35. Two months later Jerry was tying my shoes and wiping my nose.

I was hired to write and produce Jerry’s weekend newscasts. For the first couple months Jerry did my job and his… as I slowly learned the TV biz. Everyone at KYTV showed enormous patience with me. I’m an incredibly slow learner.

Jerry and my News Director at KYTV, Marci Burdick, were the first to encourage me to keep writing news stories from my own odd perspective on life. They saw something in me I had yet to see.

I am forever indebted to them both.

And boy did we have a blast on weekends. My writing and his wry, crooked smirk as he delivered the news… it was fun to watch. It was particularly fun on the nights a legally blind girl, Julie, ran the teleprompter. I’m not making that up. She could sing like heaven but her cross to bear was eyesight so bad she was denied a drivers license. She never let that stop her. She got a job at the station and fit right in. But the nights she ran prompter were odd even for us. We’d be in video and I’d see Jerry in the off-air monitor with his hands in the air and I knew Julie was working that night. It would be a 30-minute wild ride after that.

Only Marci Burdick could have thrown together a gang that crazy, fun and talented. She just knew we’d make it work. And we did. We took the #2 rated newscast to #1 in six months. Jerry was gold. (Put your own Seinfeld joke here.)

I left Missouri for Charlotte 18 months later and was here when 9/11 hit.

I know all of us felt changed by that day… forever. But most of us took a spiritual inventory and then kept going the same direction we’d been traveling. Jerry couldn’t. He said he had to give something back to his country. He tried to enlist the day after 9/11. But was told he was too old.

Naturally I suggested he was crazy.

Jerry kept anchoring, but grew increasingly uneasy with his job and comfortable life.

Recently the Army, getting desperate for soldiers, raised its upper age limit for joining to 42. Jerry walked off the news set and into the recruitment office.

Jerry is wrapping up training in Texas. He’s going to be a combat field medic. And it won’t be long before he ends up in Iraq or Afghanistan.

So the next time you look at all us Divas on television news, remember my friend Jerry. Television has finally produced at least one guy who isn’t just a nice hair-do and bleached teeth.

Jerry is the good side in all of us. And he’d cuss me out for even saying that. He doesn’t feel special at all. Just grateful.

Grateful that he gets a chance to help his country when it has need.

If you’re so inclined, say a prayer for jerry and all our soldiers, men and women, who step out of line and into harms way… so the rest of us don’t have to.

You can visit www.ky3.com and find several stories my old station has done on Jerry. They’re worth a look.

See you on TV Saturday night. You can’t miss me. I have great hair and sparkling teeth.

Be well,

Mike Redding