Jule McGee 1

Jule joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in his junior year of high school. After graduating in the late 50’s, he began serving his active duty requirement with the Navy in a variety of positions (including ship's photographer), eventually ending up as a 3-D relief map-maker for Naval Intelligence. Upon the end of his service in 1959, a Navy contact referred Jule to an opening at a small television station in Macon, Georgia.

WMAZ-TV was the place and for Jule, its position on the dial, Channel 13, was foretelling of his lucky future in Tampa. Macon was a small market and until 1968 was served only by WMAZ, which allowed the station to select programming from CBS, NBC, and ABC over the first few years. Jules job description: do everything at the station and do it well. It was the kind of atmosphere he had seen and liked in the Navy. He took the job, one of the most exciting to be had in Macon…a tiny town back then.


Jule interviews a race fan at the Southern 500 in Darlington, South Carolina (1960). Jule would later mixed the taped interviews and sounds under silent film shot with a Bell and Howell 70 DR for WMAZ-TV's morning show.	Jule in WMAZ's art department, making slides for use on-air.

Jule swings with an out-of-town visitor at WMAZ's Cerebral Palsy Telethon (1962)	Jule at the controls of an RCA TK-11

Jule was a hard worker but he also knew how to have fun...especially with the ladies. In fact, he developed a reputation as being a local 'player'. WMAZ director Robert Knight introduced Jule to a lovely local girl, Millie, and he was smitten. But Millie knew Jules' rep and resisted going out with him, and besides, she was already dating a local musician. When an argument with her boyfriend created an opportunity for Jule to shine, Millie soon fell under the spell of his southern charm. They were married three months later in 1961 and immediately started a family with a daughter, Kimberly, born in 1962, and a son, Anthony, in 1968.

JULES' SPIFFY 1962 BUSINESS CARD

Jules' $60 a week paycheck kept things tight on the McGee family budget, so he augmented his WMAZ income as a photographic stringer for the United Press International (UPI), covering the old U.S. 41 corridor up and down from mid south Georgia north to Macon…and from Valdosta north to near Atlanta. If there was a bad accident, a murder or any other spot news event, he sped quickly to the scene to take pictures for the wire service.

At WMAZ, Jule shot newsfilm, processed it, wrote sports news, ran a studio camera, filled in as audio man and did any task that was required. This basic training in television news was invaluable. By 1965, Jule was in a comfortable groove at WMAZ when he got a call from a colleague who had migrated south to work at the new ABC station in St. Petersburg, WLCY-TV. "My friend, Joe, said he had decided to get out of television and that I should apply for his position. I was doing just fine in Macon but the Tampa Bay area was a bigger market and on the move upwards. My general manager had told me about the premier station in Florida, which was WTVT. I wanted to go there but I had an in at Channel 10 and decided to apply for it." Jule placed a long-distance call to Marshall Cleaver, the news director at WLCY, who was impressed with his 'do it all' resume. The job was his.