From Mark Dawidziak, The Plain Dealer
Some might feel this is the cruelest, coldest weather month in Northeast Ohio. But how can that be true? February, after all, gave Cleveland one of its most warmly beloved television personalities, longtime WJW Channel 8 weatherman Dick Goddard.
The forecast calls for a 100 percent chance of more brightness and warmth this week. The big day is Thursday. The genial meteorologist, cartoonist, author and animal activist is turning 80 (that's only 27 Celsius, as Goddard would tell you).
And there's another landmark date rolling toward us like a spring warm front propelled by prevailing winds of affection. May 1 is the 50th anniversary of Goddard's TV debut as a Cleveland weatherman.
The Akron native and Green High School graduate actually got his earliest weather training in the Air Force, which he joined in 1949. As an airman, he was selected for a task group accompanying the Atomic Energy Commission on the March 1954 H-bomb detonation in the Pacific. But that "glimpse of hell" was nothing compared to the 1961 day he first stared into a Cleveland television camera.
"I've flown in a hurricane," said Goddard. "I was on that first H-bomb test. At 12, a tornado came by the farm in Green. I've flown upside down with the Thunderbirds. That was no big deal. But the first time I went on the air, I was so nervous, my voice went up enough octaves to make Frankie Valli sound like he was singing bass."
Read more here.
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