AutoBio

I was raised in three places at once: on a farm outside North Platte, Nebraska, on my grandfathers estate along the banks of the Fox River in Illinois, and during the school year, in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

North Platte, Nebraska

Our farm was actually a homestead set next to the burgeoning rural farm community made so mostly due to the fact that Buffalo Bill chose to settle there. Closed to the railroad, right on the thoroughfare that would become US 30 the Great Scout built the Scout's Rest Ranch while the family clustered around him.

The Union Pacific Railroad had tracks from the East all the way to Promontory Point Utah. The head-end grew to encompass most of the west and our farm was condemned to accommodate the three hump yards that routed train traffic either East or West throughout the country. My father sold it to the UPRR under the rules of Eminent Domain . My great-grandparents raised 12 kids on "The Farm," and I learned how to be a man there almost 100 years later working summers from the time I was eight. The Wilson Family worked The Farm for my father from sunup till sundown till the bitter end came the year Elvis Presley died in 1976.

Cheyenne, Wyoming

My parents built the house with money from my mother's G. I. Bill. She was a U.S. Army lieutenant during World War II. As an Army nurse, she brought the guys back to life and country who had the most severe injuries, multiple amputations, paraplegia, and so forth. She was tough as she was smart, the best medical person I have ever known. After that she worked with polio victims--both jobs before she moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming to meet a man. With the ratio of man to woman about four to one in those days and my didn't stand much of a chance against the blue-eyed, dark-haired beauty who patched him up the day he stabbed himself loading ice on refrigerated railroad cars after college.

Mom was interviewed for Reader's Digest once many years later for a story one of her private duty patients. It was the first time anyone had literally "died" seven times. Mom was one of his nurses, a Cheyenne dentist who went on to live another 17 years and became a dear friend of Mom's, Dr. Harold Welsh. His cardiologist, Dr. Ben Leeper, became a good friend of mine and loaned me the .38 caliber S&W Chief Special I used as an undercover cop for the Cheyenne Police Department.

I have a brother and sister, James and Elizabeth who still live in Wyoming and Colorado. Jim is a railroader who put in almost 30 years hauling freight between Cheyenne and Rock Springs. Beth, our younger sister put her time in raising kids, Sonya Elizabeth, Heather Louise and Aaron Kyle.

The earliest cool thing I did was to ride yearlings in the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo as a kid. It was scary but Dad had me up on those wild things every year. I got a silver dollar for my trouble which I always managed to spend before the end of the summer. I would later ride a bull in my first motion picture, The Gospel According to Most People, a Christian production from Ken Anderson Films of Winnona, Indiana. That movie and various appearances in local plays was enough to spur me onward into big market radio first Denver, then Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles and finally landing on my feet here in New York City. I got to work at CNN with Jerry Schmetter in addition to making movies with David Capurso.

On the Road

Prior to New York I did time in Cleveland, just like Don Imus, Bob Hope, Andrew Carnegie, George Steinbrenner and Buffalo Bill and worked in the first of my two big television specials, voiced many commercials and got the guts to think I could act in films.

One of the specials was produced with Jack Craciun of Cleveland and a very talented young artist named Hank Berger. We shot it at the U.S. Army's Fort Campbell, Kentucky outside Nashville to celebrate the end of the Viet Nam War–and America's 200th Birthday. Titled Music, You're My Mother, it was produced live the week the war ended on May 22, 1975 and we achieved some pretty awesome press coverage. It was the second in a series our little company had made and starred Joe Cocker, Barbi Benton, Chaka Kahn, Pure Prairie League, and Earl Scruggs. Our executive producers were Hank LoConti and Jules Belkin whose impetus was largely responsible for creation of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. The first starred the 10-piece rock orchestra, Ralph--and Martin Mull.

Later rejoining Hank Berger in Hollywood he and I researched and wrote When the Music's Over, the Jim Morrison Story for Robert Evans of Paramount Pictures.

In Hollywood Hank and I achieved world fame again when we cut up the original Hollywood Sign. By placing little pieces of it on Art Deco plaques that Hank had designed then selling them. We garnered attention in practically every media outlet in the world. In New York six years later I created a line of clothing called Hollywood Clothing with the Korean designer Viola Park. I was the first person in history to actually trademark the Hollywood Sign and you can see my registration on the U.S. Patent and Trademark web site. I hit the press again and achieved the same reach as I did when I broke the press selling the sign including articles in Time, People, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and so on. The line was sold in stores world wide.

I had worked closely with the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce throughout the entire time, especially with Bill Welsh another old radio guy who was president. They supported us through thick and thin. One promoter had tried and failed to achieve the success we did, but Hollywood stuck by us. Watch for the book, How I Sold Hollywood and Lived to Tell About It. It was a fascinating time in the history of that city and our country. Though, everybody is trying to get in on the act, Hank is the one who bought it. I am the one who sold it. And I have a beautiful relationship with the HCC and their licensing agent, Global Icons, to show for it.

My second big TV special was shot in New York at Flushing Meadows, Queens in the summer of 1982. I helped the director Robert Yuhas put it together with the help of the one and only George Martin. I was paid for the production work but not for he double truck editorial piece I got placed in The New York Post and other press throughout the Western world. I would place many more articles in other the great newspapers and magazines.

Musicourt was a concept music concert and exhibition tennis match we had hoped would bolster the flagging image of tennis. Starring Joe Cocker, John McEnroe, Vitas Gerulaitis, Max Roach, Meatloaf, Todd Rundgren, and Suzie Chaffee it was the "thwop" hear around the world.

I also produced and was supposed to star in the pilot for the music video series Kicker Kountry for the Nashville Network from the Ed Sullivan Theatre on Broadway but some dweeb from Cleveland swindled me out of the title and I was left holding the bag and the advance press that had come out allover New York.

For the past thirty-five years I have worked throughout the country in broadcasting as a broadcast journalist covering some of the most fascinating stories in the world. I am currently writing screen plays and finishing a book on a 1992 East Village murder.