Steve Mays pulled this nugget out of his archives. I typed it. The day probably was a Saturday. In those days we did the 6:55 newscast, which was three minutes long, and then came back at 7:05 to replay the 6:55 and to tap on another segment of additional news, following the same format, for stations that wanted a longer newscast at that time — some stations were still doing 15-minute newscasts in those days. We finally ended the longer 7:05 when we learned nobody was carrying that segment.
Mary Phelan was an anomaly. She was from a wealthy family from St. Louis who sent us an audition tape as she was finishing up at Trinity University in Texas. I listened to the first fifteen seconds and went downstairs (the newsroom was in the attic at 216 E. McCarty then) and told Jeff Smith, the Missourinet GM, “we need to hire this girl.” Steve replaced Jeff when Jeff moved into sales and eventually went to Minnesota to run the Minnesota News Network.
She and her mother came to Jefferson City as soon as she finished school. We took one look at her and she looked at us and that was all it took.
She probably was the greatest spirit to ever work in our newsroom. Unlimited energy. Unlimited fun. A July 4th every day. Very smart. Very talented, but also not well-acquainted with the middle-class — which all of us were. After she made some derogatory comments about minorities one day I decided that every time there was a hearing on legislation about poverty, she would cover it. And when Jesse Jackson spoke from the capitol steps one day, I assigned her to cover him. She was brassy enough to get a one-on-one interview with him after the speech — after which he kissed her on the cheek. It was, shall we say, a great learning experience. [Photo: Mary and Mike Kramer in Misssourinet newsroom]
She realized her dream of going to work at KMOX and them oved to KMOV-TV where the television makeup experts decided to make her glamourous and in doing so robbed her of her beauty.
She was 37 when she finally got married… and three weeks later she was killed in a car crash. Twenty years ago, December 20, 1998.
That’s who did the last regularly-scheduled live newscast on the Missourinet.
We used to be able to throw a switch on the board to go live if something happened to the cart or if we had a big breaking story. Only problem was that we would forget to put the switch back afterwards and that meant the next program wouldn’t go out. Nowadays, of course, the Missourinet can update previously-recorded newscasts anytime. from anywhere.