FBN STAFF REUNION OF 2012
Pictured here are the attendees for lunch at Shakers restaurant. Beginning at the top row and working right here are their names and the position they held.
Al Davis:
Al started in the mailroom at Faith Center. From time to time he would volunteer as cameraman for the various TV productions. As his skills developed he joined the FBN staff full time as a cameraman, circa 1972. In 1978 Al married Linda Schoch, daughter of Faith Center Pastor, Ray Schoch. Al picked up the name “Sleepy Owl (Al)” on Black Buffalo’s Pow Wow where he was a cameraman. He was often jokingly accused of looking sleepy and is how he picked up the name.
Ray Wilson:
Ray, also known to many as Black Buffalo, hosted an afternoon kids program titled Black Buffalo’s Pow Wow. Ray is a known evangelist to the American Indian. He started the Pow Wow show in 1973 and it ran live daily on KHOF-TV and also in syndication for many years. During the time of Pastor Schoch’s illness Ray also took on duties as Executive Director.
Joe Shackleford:
Joe started at KHOF-TV in 1975 as a volunteer working evening productions that were taped in the Faith Center auditorium. Joe developed into being a very competent cameraman and through the years took on several TV production tasks including directing, technical directing and later corporate administration. Joe left Faith Center in 1991 and became a partner in Sweetwater, a premier remote video production company based out of Van Nuys.
Bernie Marston:
Bernie is the technical genius that made FBN a reality. He was close to Pastor Schoch and is the one that took the Pastor’s visions for radio and TV and made them into a reality. Bernie started full time at Faith Center circa 1968 and left in 1978. You can read more about Bernie by clicking this link.
Greg Quandt:
Greg was a member of the production crew at FBN and worked productions at both Faith Center and the production studio. Greg was primarily the Floor Director for the programs that were produced at FBN. Floor directing was a challenging job as he had to get talent in their correct locations at the time they needed to be on the air. At times it was like herding cats. He left FBN in 1975 and since then has been involved with systems integration for Sony and is currently with deluxe® in the capacity of Program Manager for Pitchblue™ and Javelin™ which are distribution mechanisms for getting programs and commercials to TV stations across the nation.
Stan Lehman:
Stan started as an engineer for KHOF-TV. He spent many hours on Sunset Ridge, the location of the KHOF-TV transmitter. Stan not only performed transmitter watch, ensuring the transmitter was operating properly and within the parameters required by the FCC, he also loaded and played videotapes from there. Getting into the transmitter site was challenging at times considering the road was dirt and sometimes muddy and covered with snow. Stan’s family was also heavily involved at Faith Center. His father, Marcus, worked the all night shift at KHOF-FM; his mother, Mildred, was secretary to Dr. Peirce an associate pastor at Faith Center and his brother Burt was a maintenance engineer for KHOF-FM-TV.
Owen (Jake) Rees:
Owen joined FBN circa 1973. He is pictured in the center between the front and back row. To those at FBN we knew him as Owen, however, after he left FBN others knew him as Jake. Even though Owen was not with FBN a long time he was a very talented tape operator and editor. His duties ranged from playing videotaped programs on KHOF-TV to taping and editing the various productions produced for FBN. It was with mixed emotions to lose Owen to NBC Burbank where he became a tape operator and where he also worked videotape on the Johnny Carson Show.
Linda Schoch-Davis:
Linda is the daughter of Pastor Ray Schoch, founding Pastor of Faith Center. Linda was Program Director for KHOF-TV and was responsible for creating and issuing the daily FCC program logs for the station. Linda was also involved in the many productions that were produced at FBN. As the FBN station portfolio expanded into San Francisco and Hartford, CT, Linda worked closely with those stations in scheduling programs and ensured tapes were bicycled (i.e. shipped from one station to another) correctly so they would arrive in time for airing. In 1978 Linda married Al Davis, former FBN staff cameraman.
Priscilla Wilson:
Wife of Ray Wilson, Priscilla co-hosted with Ray on the daily kids program Black Buffalo’s Pow Wow and went by the name of Singing Waters. She worked side by side with Ray in producing the program. And, as a caring mother, she also watched after two daughters Ethel and Raylene, known as White Dove and Bright Eyes respectively, who were also on the show.
Joe Snelson:
Joe started at KHOF-TV in 1971 as a staff engineer and ultimately worked up to being the assistant to Bernie Marston, FBN Director of Engineering. His duties were mainly targeted towards the maintenance of cameras, videotape machines and video switching and distribution equipment. He was intimately involved in the design of the video plant at the production studio. Joe left FBN in 1977 where he continued his career in broadcast engineering by putting a Christian TV station on the air in Kansas City (KYFC) where he was hired as the Chief Engineer. Much of the knowledge he gained to accomplish this came from his mentorship under Bernie Marston. Click here for Joe’s biography.
Bruce Braun:
While not pr
esent in person, but pictured on the right, Bruce Braun joined us via
Skype. The phone was passed around the table to give everyone a chance to talk to
Bruce. Bruce began his career at FBN as a transmitter engineer for KHOF-TV. Before
coming to FBN Bruce had experience in producing and directing. His talents were quickly
tapped and his role changed from engineering to that of a producer and director for
many FBN programs. Bruce is currently the Executive Director of New Media Communications
for Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. You can learn more about Bruce by clicking
this link to his web site which tells of his many accomplishments.
MEET THE ATTENDEES AND SOME OF THE FORMER FBN STAFF
Joe Snelson snapped this photo of some of the attendees in front of the Faith Center building located at 1615 S. Glendale Avenue, Glendale, CA.
Note the small walled in area which is to the right of where the group was standing in the picture above. In the early 1970’s several musical numbers were taped in this small garden area. In the 70’s there were flowers and shrubs that made for a beautiful background for the artists to perform. You will see this area in some of the program clips that are posted elsewhere on the FBN web site.
Another shot of the group taken towards the left (south) of the Faith Center main entrance.
RECALLING MEMORIES AT THE FAITH CENTER BUILDING
After lunch the reunion party reconvened outside the Faith Center building located at 1615 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale, CA. This is a view looking south of the Faith Center building showing the sign, which was redone from the 70’s, and the Fountain of Faith at the right.
To the right of the Faith Center sign Joe Snelson remembers when the city of Glendale, he believes, drilled a well in the parkway. They sunk a hole about 100 feet deep and 24 inches in diameter in that area. One day during a production he recalls the boom and rumbling of the ground when explosives were detonated in the hole to perforate the well casing and allow water to seep in. A worker claimed it was a monitoring well. They did measurements often of the water level and after several months of monitoring filled the hole with concrete, cut off the well casing below grade and filled in the top with dirt and sod. It’s a safe bet that the well casing and concrete are still there, too.
TO THE FBN PRODUCTION STUDIO
This is at the rear parking lot of the production studio. Pictured here is FBN Director of Engineering, Bernie Marston, below the big white arrow that pointed to the rear entrance of the store. You can see the former lettering on the arrow bleeding through the paint that reads, “Glendale Hardware Rear Entrance.
This is the rear entrance that the arrow points to. This became the back entrance for the studio and was typically used by the employees and artists that came to do production. At that time the rear parking area was leased to Faith Center by Mario’s Delicatessen who owns it. Mario’s is located next door on the east of the studio. Mario’s was often visited by the FBN employees for lunch.
Note the antennas mounted on the roof top of the studio. The top antenna is a conventional outdoor TV aerial and the bottom is a typical home style satellite receive dish. The center dish type antenna is aimed towards the Faith Center building. This is called a “Microwave Link” due to the frequencies used to transmit and receive. It is the “electronic highway” that allows for TV programming to be exchanged between the Faith Center building and the Production Studio. This enabled live programming to originate at the studio and be delivered to KHOF-TV via terrestrial microwave link and/or uplinked to satellite for nationwide televising.
Pictured here is Ray, Owen, Bernie, Stan, Joe and Linda standing at the front entrance of the production studio facing Broadway.
You may be wondering why this picture was included. Well, there is an interesting story to it. The wall pictured here is to the east of the main entrance. On the other side of this wall was the second largest studio of the three at the production center. Look closely at the discolored area just to the right of the wall joint in the center of the picture. It is told that one night during a live production in studio A, fortunately not studio B, an automobile crashed into the building! Nobody was reported injured but it was quite a shocking surprise to those live on-the-air at the time when they heard it. While the “patch job” is not normally seen from the street the author noted cracks in the stucco when viewing up close, plus the rain that had occurred earlier caused the new stucco to absorb the moisture and thus revealing the patch job.
We hope you have enjoyed the sharing of our reunion in 2012. For us it was a time of reflection and thanksgiving for the work the Lord allowed us to be a part of and a chance to fellowship with our coworkers that moved on to other career opportunities.
On December 28, 2012 a small gathering of FBN alumni joined together for lunch and a time of sharing. Lunch was held for ten former FBN employees at the Shakers restaurant in Glendale. In actuality there were eleven present as one joined via Skype from the East Coast. Time was spent sharing stories from back when and catching up on what everyone has been doing since leaving FBN. There were several alumni there that had not seen the others for almost 40 years!
After lunch and a time of fellowship most were able to visit the main Faith Center church location followed by a trip to the former FBN production studios on Broadway. Since the location of both were in Glendale that is what prompted the meeting to be held at Shakers.
The group was able to secure a private room at Shakers and proceeded to visit while waiting for lunch
Greg Quandt poses for the camera
Owen Rees sharing with Bernie and Joe
This is a view of the south side of the Faith Center building. This building was multipurpose and housed several facets of the Faith Center ministries. The lower floor consisted of classrooms for the Faith Center Christian School. The second floor was the administrative area which housed the pastoral offices and accounting. The top floor housed the radio and TV broadcast operations. There was also a small TV production studio where the windows are clearly visible. This studio was used for some Praise-A-Thons in the early 70’s but ultimately became the studio where Black Buffalo’s Pow Wow was produced daily and aired live on KHOF-TV. In the early 80’s, after the production studio was completed, the south upstairs area was converted to a large executive office area.
On the other side of the fenced area is the main parking lot used during church services,
but on weekdays served as a playground for the Christian school. One afternoon when
the TV crew return
ed from lunch Bruce Braun, Joe Snelson and a couple of other crew
members thought they would provide a little extra physical activity for the students
during lunch recess. Bruce got hold of a reel of used two-inch wide video tape, similar
to what is pictured on the right, and stood on the top landing of the stairway shown
in the picture above. He proceeded to slowly release the tape from the reel to where
it was a brown flying ribbon just above the reach of the kids. Of course, this quickly
got the kids attention and they began jumping in the air for it. One lucky kid finally
succeeded and grabbed on. Other kids joined in, grabbed the tape and started to run
around the perimeter of the playground. The teachers just stood and watched being
somewhat amused, or maybe bewildered, by the activity. Before long the kids had unreeled
a significant amount of tape. The problem came when they began to rip the tape into
pieces. Before long there were tape fragments spread all over the playground. Recess
was over and it was now time to clean up. I don’t recall, however, any of the TV
crew being involved in that activity, at least this author wasn’t.
Also in the picture above are the satellite uplink antennas that were added in the 80’s when Dr. Gene Scott was pastor. The antennas to the left are transportable and mounted on flatbed trailers or attached to trucks. The antenna on the right is a permanently mounted C-Band uplink. All these antennas were used to uplink TV programming to a satellite in stationary orbit 22,300 miles above the equator. The signal is retransmitted from the satellite and sent back down to earth so it can be viewed anywhere in the country.
The reunion moved from Faith Center to the former FBN production studio in Glendale. The production studio was the former home of Virgil’s Glendale Hardware and acquired by Faith center in the early 1970’s. The group did a caravan from Faith Center to the studio and parked in the rear lot.