Ward to mark 50 years on the air
Wednesday will be the day after one of the most hotly contested presidential elections of Dave Ward’s lifetime, so he likely will have a crowded rundown for KTRK’s 6 p.m. newscast that evening.
At the end of the show, however, Ward will save a few seconds to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his first day of work at Channel 13 on Nov. 9, 1966 — a record, according to Guinness World Records, for the longest run at the same TV station.
With that, the clock will begin ticking for another milestone in a month’s time — Ward’s final telecast on Channel 13 on Dec. 9, when he ends his unparalleled run on what has been Houston’s top-rated newscast for most of his 50 years at the station and his 48 years as an anchor.
Like his father, a Baptist minister who pastored churches and led mission efforts across Texas, Ward said he has always been compelled to tell his story to the widest possible audience. That imperative continues as he begins his final month on the anchor desk.
“I’ve done my best with the job,” he said last week. “When I first started in radio, digging for news stories, I just wanted to know what was going on and find out and then tell everybody I know about it. That has been the driving force all these years.”
Ward, 77, has in recent years been working a reduced anchor schedule, hosting the first 30 minutes of the 6 p.m. newscast. After hosting the Election Night show Tuesday, he will stay in the building to provide updates involving local races on Channel 13’s website.
It will be his 13th presidential election night on Channel 13 and his 14th in Houston, dating to his local debut on KNUZ Radio. Along the way, he’s interviewed five presidents, plus Lyndon Johnson during Johnson’s days as vice president.
Ward’s story by now is familiar to many of his longtime viewers. He was born in Dallas and raised in Huntsville, where his father, Henry Martin Ward, was pastor of First Baptist Church. In the late 1940s, Ward’s father made a seemingly innocuous decision that would have a significant impact.
“When I was 8 or 9, he said, ‘Son, you need to learn to play a musical instrument,’ ” Ward said. “I said, ‘Dad, I think I would like to play the saxophone,’ and he replied, ‘No, the saxophone is the devil’s instrument. You will play the trumpet.’ ”
Ward got to be good enough on the trumpet, an Olds Ambassador model that cost $120 — a princely sum in the 1940s — that he was recruited to join the band at Tyler Junior College as a high school senior in Jacksonville, where his father was the regional missions coordinator for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
It was in Tyler, while attending Tyler Junior College on a band scholarship, that he landed his first job, working two hours a night on radio station KGKB. Also in Tyler, the station’s program director, longtime East Texas radio host Ed Smith, instructed him to shorten his name from David to Dave because David was “too biblical” for radio.
Newly christened as Dave Ward, he moved from Tyler to radio station WACO in Waco and from Waco to KNUZ, followed by his move to KTRK to join what was at the time a seven-person news staff.
Along with hosting the 7 a.m. newscast, he was named host of “Dialing for Dollars,” placing phone calls to random households in search of viewers who could guess the day’s jackpot and password.
The show, he recalled, was not an immediate success.
“We went a good six or eight weeks without a winner. Nobody was watching this thing. I mean, nobody,” he said. Then we finally got a winner, and the whole stupid thing just erupted.”
In 1968, he joined Dan Ammerman as co-anchor at 6 and 10 p.m., and there he stayed, although he was removed from duties at 10 p.m. in 2014.
He can count on one hand the number of primary co-anchors (Ammerman, Jan Carson, Shara Fryer and Gina Gaston), weathercasters (Troy Dungan, Ed Brandon and Tim Heller) and sports directors (Guy Savage, Dan Lovett, Bob Allen and Greg Bailey) during his tenure, which reflects Channel 13’s success during that time.
“If you don’t have the numbers, if people aren’t watching, you’re gone,” Ward said. “But the people of Southeast Texas have been gracious to me, and we have worked hard to develop the trust that people have with us.”
In Ward’s lifetime, though, there has been just one Marvin Zindler, the peerless consumer reporter who died in 2007.
“I had to take my wife’s car to an insurance adjustor, and the guy’s name was Marvin,” Ward said. “When he handed me the estimate, I said, ‘Thank you, Marvin,’ and I caught myself and said, ‘You know, that’s the first time I’ve said that in more than 10 years.’
“Old Marvin, he was totally unique. One night, he got all worked up over something and pounded the set and said, ‘It’s time that somebody grabbed the bull by the tail and did something about this.’ So I said, ‘Thank you, Marvin, and, friends, grabbing a bull by the tail is not to be confused with grabbing a tiger by the horns. They’re totally different.’ ”
One more Zindler story: “One of the last times he was on the air was after he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He wanted to make a statement on the air, and his whole family was with him in the hospital room.
“I told him we were rolling, and he said, ‘Well, I’m sure by now you’ve heard that I’ve been diagnosed with this patriotic cancer.’ His whole family cracked up laughing, and I told him, ‘Marvin, it’s pancreatic, not patriotic.’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah. Let’s roll it again.’
“That was so Marvin. It’s been 10 years, and I still miss him.”
Ward, meanwhile, is still rolling along in his own right. He has emphasized that he is not retiring despite his upcoming departure from Channel 13 and joked during a recent event benefiting Crime Stoppers, which has named its new Houston headquarters in his honor, that he may show up again on TV somewhere.
“I may do commercial work. I may do documentaries,” he said. “I was telling people at the Crime Stoppers event that I may be selling them reverse mortgages (in commercials). I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it got a laugh.”
Channel 13 is working on an hourlong salute to Ward that will air on his final day, and Ward is on the lookout for one last kicker — his nightly closing segment — to round off his Channel 13 career.
“I love a good stupidcrook story,” he said. “If I can find a really good stupid-crook story, I may save that for my last night.”
Otherwise, he added, “I want to be here every day and do my job and leave with a good taste in my mouth.”