"….MY WIFE WILL NOT LET ME FORGET ABOUT THAT TO THIS DAY…" 

In Vero Beach for an L.A. Dodger's pre-season game

With only eight or nine camera operators on staff and a busy mobile unit, Jim worked mornings and often nights and weekends if other crew members were away on remote.  Forty-hour weeks were rare and through most of his career at WTVT Jim would put in much more.  "We worked an awful lot of hours," he recalls.  "I don't think I worked a forty-hour week from '68 to about '80.  My weeks were always fifty, sixty, seventy hours…sometimes I made more in overtime than my regular pay.  The two week vacation I took in September, 2007, was only the second time I'd been away more than a week." 

There was a price to pay for Jim’s dedication to Channel 13.  He had married in 1966 and became a father to Kimela (Kim).  But all that work gave him very little time to spend with his family.  "I was really insecure in the beginning and didn't know if I could make it," explains Jim.  "I had no college education.  I came out of high school right into the Army and then right out to Channel 3 and then 13.    I had to prove myself and working long hours was one way I did it."

Eventually, the marriage ended.

Several years later Jim met his second wife, Mary, when she served as a Belk Lindsay model for commercials produced at WTVT's Studio B.  Jim became a proud parent to Mary's children from her previous marriage, twin daughters Dawn and April, and another daughter Crystal.  Jim and Mary are happily together to this day.  "I think most of the disagreements my wife and I have had over the past thirty years have been about my schedule," admits Jim.  "I think she probably was right, but in the TV business it takes that kind of dedication.  It's not a nine-to-five job…never has been and never will be.  And here's a good example: We took the kids up to North Carolina in the 80's and the minute I arrived Boger called and said Burt Wolf needed to do twenty-five spot commercials.  I flew back on my own dime and did twenty four hours of commercial taping with Burt and then flew back to North Carolina. My wife will not let me forget that to this day!"