Up close with Bill Balleza
Retiring news anchor looks back on his nearly 50-year career
After 39 years of anchoring KPRC (Channel 2)’s evening news, Bill Balleza is ready to do absolutely nothing when he retires in January.
No deadlines. No suits. Nothing.
He might sport a beard and let his hair grow, but aside from that, he has no plans.
“I’m going to spend the next part of my life not having to report to work,” said the 72-yearold San Antonio native, who announced his retirement Wednesday.
“I don’t have any more chapters. I’ve worked in this business the better part of 50 years, my whole life’s work. I’ve loved it. I don’t plan to do anything else,” Balleza said as he settled in at the news desk in the KPRC studio.
Balleza is one of Houston’s longest-running and most respected TV anchors. He’s covered nearly every major news event, including the death of Pope John Paul II from the Vatican in 2005 and the Conclave to elect Pope Francis in 2013. He also covered the Murrah Federal Building explosion in Oklahoma City and the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in New York one month after the 9/11 attacks. He earned an Emmy Award for his reporting on the deadly explosion of a fertilizer company in West in 2013.
“There’s such an endorphin rush when you are on assignments like that,” he said. “You get these great people stories on deadline. There is nothing like that feeling in the world. That’s the biggest high. That’s what it’s all about for me. I’m going to miss that.”
With his clean-cut, classic style, you would never know Balleza was a bad boy destined for a troubled life before he stepped in front of a TV camera.
The oldest of six children, Balleza got expelled from the ninth grade twice for fighting and being involved in gangs. He was kicked out of high school a final time in the spring of his senior year after he got into a brawl with the football coach. At that time, Balleza’s father banished him from the family’s house, so he was forced to live at the downtown YMCA in San Antonio.
“My dad wasn’t expecting great things from me. In fact, I wasn’t expecting great things from myself either,” Balleza said.
With no other options, Balleza enlisted in the U.S. Marines, where boot camp changed his life.
“It was overnight. In fact, I really owe my life to the Marine Corps because I was heading in the wrong direction,” he said. “You think you’re such a tough guy, then they show you just how tough you thought you were. They straightened me out.”
Balleza thrived in the military and was such a good marksman he was sent to “sniper school” in Virginia. He went on to serve in the Vietnam War.
“I’m one of those guys who came back from Vietnam with no PTSD, nothing to get over or reconcile. It’s so weird to say, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed being in the Marines and being in Vietnam. I would do it all over again,” he said.
He thought he’d make a career out of the military, but his first wife, Irene, had other plans and secretively submitted a letter on his behalf to San Antonio College. He was admitted under the G.I. Bill on the condition he take the GED and the ACT tests after his military tour.
Though he had been an academic disaster his entire life, Balleza made the dean’s list every semester in college and eventually earned an associate’s degree in broadcasting because it required “as little math as possible,” he said. A school counselor told him he’d never find work in TV because no people of color were hired in the media at the time, but he got a job as a TV cameraman at a San Antonio station while in college.
“I fell in love with broadcasting. It was just something about it that really caught my interest and captivated me,” he said.
Community activists nationwide began challenging the TV industry’s lack of representation of Mexican Americans, and soon Balleza had offers to join newsrooms across the country. Although he had a scholarship to attend Trinity University in San Antonio for a bachelor’s degree, he took a job as a TV reporter in San Francisco. After two years, Balleza returned to Texas as a reporter and anchor at KHOU (Channel 11).
Not having a bachelor’s degree was unsettling, so he tried taking classes at the University of Houston while working at KHOU. A professor discouraged him, saying that having a professional anchor in the classroom was a “disruption” for the students. Besides, he told Balleza, getting a degree at that point would be useless.
“I spent a lot of my initial years here in Houston talking to junior high and high school students about doing well and staying in school. I told them I don’t have the degree, and by a miracle, it worked out for me. But it doesn’t for most people. It’s like the NBA. It’s a miracle.”
In 1980, Balleza joined KPRC as an anchor, replacing the retiring Ron Stone. He’s been coanchoring the evening news with Dominique Sachse for nearly 20 years.
“I’m trying not to think about Bill leaving because I don’t want to cry,” Sachse said at the station. “It’s the end of an era. We count our blessings that we got in this business when we did. It was this beautiful, glorious, exciting and prosperous environment. I know Bill feels the same way. Our timing was perfect.”
Balleza wanted to leave on his own terms and before he was told he was too old, he said, though his body has been sending him signals for a while.
“After almost 30 years of doing the 10 o’clock news and walking down that sidewalk toward the building, my knees hurt. My back hurts. I just had my third back surgery in August. I didn’t want to get really old on air,” he said.
But he’s candid about how he “cheated a bit” with a face-lift six years ago.
“I was upfront about it on social media. I had a jowly face, a double chin, and I wanted it corrected. I was scared to death the day of the surgery, but I was in the sink washing my face, and I looked up in the mirror to remind myself why I was having this done. I had these jowls hanging down under my neck and on my cheeks. Then in one day that all went away.”
Since announcing his retirement, Balleza has heard from many viewers and followers on social media, telling him how much they’ve trusted his work over the years.
That means everything, he said.
Retirement also means he’ll have more time for his passion — making wooden boxes.
“I like cigar boxes, jewelry boxes, keepsake boxes because they are small and I can give them away right away. So I’ll be making a lot more boxes when I retire.”
His grandfather was a home builder who taught Balleza a love for woodworking. Over the years, he’s made cabinets, entertainment centers, desks and more for family and friends and even for the Habitat for Humanity houses that his station supports. Balleza mills his own lumber and works with a variety of woods, including walnut, cherry, maple and mesquite.
He wants to have his own woodworking studio one day. Now that he and wife, Missy, are empty-nesters with three adult children and two granddaughters, there’s time.
As he prepares to sign off of TV news, Balleza hopes he’s remembered for his work.
“I want people to know I loved this city, cared about this city, cared about the people in it. And that I cared enough to try to make things better. Nothing more.”