The Day TV News Caught the Hearts of Thousands

Stan Chambers and I have been colleagues for 50 years. That is, Stan is a television news reporter and I am a newspaperman. He and I worked on many of the same stories, he reporting from the scene, I doing rewrite in the office. My shoes were always cleaner than his.

Now Stan has written a book about his 50 years at KTLA, “News at Ten” (Capra Press). It recalls almost every disaster visited on the Southland in that half century. Floods, fires, riots. Stan was always there, first on the scene. His boyish face is familiar to millions.

His most moving recollection in the book is of the 1947 Kathy Fiscus case. Ironically, I was not working that day. We lived in Venice at that time, and there was a little beer bar near our house that I occasionally patronized. It was my day off, and I was having a beer that Saturday afternoon when I saw Stan’s familiar face on the bar’s little TV screen.

Three-year-old Kathy Fiscus had wandered from her San Marino home into a nearby pasture and fallen down a well. Stan was giving a talk that day at the Biltmore Bowl, but his mother phoned to tell him about the little girl and to say that KTLA wanted him to go to the scene and meet its field crew.

Stan got there and joined up with Bill Welsh, a fellow KTLA reporter who was about ready to go on the air. Volunteers had been digging a huge hole alongside the well shaft, but the earth was too soft and this approach had to be abandoned.

A big earth-drilling machine was brought in and used to dig a hole alongside the well. As the hole deepened, a large steel pipe was driven into it. But soon the machine’s corkscrew hit rock.

Volunteers were lowered into the shaft and chipped away at the rock with picks. For hours through the night the volunteers cramped into the small shaft kept sending bits of rock to the top. It was tedious work but a large crowd had gathered outside a steel fence enclosing the site, and tens of thousands watched the drama by television.

No man was supposed to stay in the hole for more than 20 minutes, but volunteer Bill Yancy stayed more than two hours, sometimes singing to keep his spirits up.

Stan wrote, “One of the most dramatic moments came when word rippled through the crowd that Bill was coming up. There was a stir of excitement as his head and body came up through the hole. Thousands broke into spontaneous cheers as he was slowly lowered to the ground.”

Through the night, as one volunteer followed another down into the hole, Stan and Bill Welsh stayed with their story, while throughout the city thousands watched.

By this time, the story had caught the attention of the world.

“Although Bill and I didn’t know it then,” Stan wrote, “the word that KTLA was televising the rescue effort swept the city. Thousands turned their sets on and became involved in the drama before their eyes.

“They were part of the hundreds of thousands who became so emotionally involved for more than 27 hours, who watched reverently, silently and prayerfully as the dramatic fight to save Kathy progressed.”

While Stan was at the scene, I was gnawed by frustration. I was then a reporter for the old Los Angeles Daily News, and I knew the paper would need me at a time like this.

I telephoned the city desk to offer my services, only to be told by the city editor that they had the story well in hand and wouldn’t need me. I don’t think I have ever felt more rejected.

Early in the afternoon, I left the bar to go home. We had no television at home then, but a neighbor invited us to watch the drama on his. We watched until late in the night, then went to bed still hoping for the best.

One glimmer of hope had been lighted by Kathy’s mother, who said she had heard Kathy crying after she fell into the well.

“As Sunday morning dawns,” Stan wrote, “they are making some progress. The mud has largely been scraped away and they are able to go deeper into the ground. They cut, hammer, pick, drain and dig their way down to the level where they think the girl might be trapped.

“Sunday morning I had a feeling they might reach her at any time. I believed most people were fairly certain she would be found alive.”

It was Sunday evening before the child’s fate was known. A family physician was lowered into the shaft and came up with the news, which he delivered over a loudspeaker:

“Ladies and gentlemen, Kathy is dead and has been dead for a long time. The family wishes to thank one and all for your heroic efforts to try to save their child.”

On-scene television news was born.

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Jack Smith’s column is published Mondays.

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