STORY BY PIERRE FONTENOT • KPLC STUDIO PHOTOS BY CHRIS BRENNAN
John Bridges is headed towards retirement. All these years … like sunrise from the east, John Bridges was Ole Dependable on KPLC 7 News Sunrise for people in southwest Louisiana. We’ve got him still, until end of June, but we thought it highly appropriate, to appreciate what we had, while we still have.
Early Eye On The Prize
Once Upon A Time … John Bridges was born. It was May, 1959, at West Cal-Cam Hospital in Sulphur, third of three boys born to a PPG engineer father and a school teacher mother. His childhood was cozy in the best ways of small town cozy, kids free to ride bicycles up and down the streets, three of John’s elementary school teachers – and the principal – lived within a block of his childhood home.
Church three times a week, aim to behave, in between.
Most people are grownups before they figure out what they want to be when they grow up – John Bridges is the rare exception.
In Nov. 1963, NuNu (Mrs. Newton, his baby sitter) was watching her soap operas (her “stories”) when suddenly she started crying. Why? “Someone killed the President.” The JFK assassination was John’s first exposure to “big news.” He was four years old.
Where the hook got set was when John accompanied his mother to the old Muller’s store in downtown Lake Charles. Across the street was KPLC, and there within a big glass window was the DJ booth of KPLC-AM radio.
John was six, maybe seven, but right then, right there, that’s what John wanted to do when he grew up.
John was just a little kid, when dear Aunt Peggy outdid Santa Claus, by giving him
a real deal microphone. Here he is, putting in the work … with cousin Mark Robinson.
Best Christmas Gift Ever!
Childhood Christmases, there’s always the little gifts, and then the big gift, but one particular Christmas, John’s Aunt Peggy gave John what seemed to be a small gift, but it was one of the best-est biggest gifts of his life – knowing that John wanted to be on the radio, Aunt Peggy had hustled up a used professional microphone. And a blank reporter’s note pad.
Now John’s toys matched his dreams.
John would sit on the floor of his bedroom closet (clothes and the enclosure gave it the right acoustics) and practice delivering the news in his “announcer” voice.
And what was the news? Glad you asked … little kid John would “gather” local news, weather – “a few sprinkles but it hasn’t rained yet” – the big news of the day might be that Cricket, the across-the-street neighbor’s cat, had died…
The family joke was that his mother would send an older brother to fetch him, “Mom says dinner is ready,” and John would reply, “I’ll be there as soon as I finish doing the news.”
There was an empty lot, next to his house, where neighborhood kids played football and baseball. John was too young, and too small to play with the older kids, so he made himself useful by doing pretend play-by-play with his microphone gift from Aunt Peggy.
I’m not sure what most of you were doing in the 3rd grade, but John Bridges was hitting up his teacher to do a class newspaper. The boy had it bad…
His First Radio Job
Anytime his mother drug John to Mullers Department Store (back-to-school shopping, etc…) “First chance I got, I snuck away to watch the KPLC-AM DJ’s talking into their microphones.”
It all seemed so important, and glamorous. (One of John’s ironic memories is watching a DJ doing a quit-smoking public service announcement, while holding a cigarette in his hand …)
The want-to was there, but where to, and how to?
His first “in” at a radio station was at KIKS-AM in Sulphur. One of the DJ’s used a wheelchair. John made sure to be there, to help him get into the station, run errands, be useful. Now John has an in. One day, in early high school, John asked if he could run a PSA about the Sulphur High yearbook. His radio voice (perfected in his closet rehearsals) impressed them. They offered him a job.
At first John got “paid” in free promotional albums. Then he got real pay. Minimum wage was $2.10 an hour.
“I remember my first paycheck, $52, for two weeks.” (This is where John whispers, “I would’ve paid them, to work there.”)
The first election he covered was in the late 70s. (Not sure if John was even old enough to vote. Here he was, barely needed to shave, and he’s doing man-on-the-street interviews …)
His first story to go national happened in 1979. Strategic Petroleum Reserve blew up in Hackberry. John went, and saw, and reported, and ABC picked the story up. (What John remembers about it is “flinching when the network people butchered the Louisiana pronunciation of the name Melancon.”)
One thing about John Bridges, he’s all busineSs … He’s had 9 co-anchors on 7 News Sunrise
over the decades, said he enjoyed them all … if we had more time, we’d chase them down,
and see if they felt the same about John … (with Britney Glaser)
KPLC Comes Calling
Bridges got initiated into radio at KIKS. From there Bridges became news director at radio stations Q101 and KYKZ in the 1980s. He enjoyed the music, “but news was my thing.” He got good, then he got good-er at it. One day, KPLC got tired of competing with Bridges on who was first to break local news, so here comes TV, to take him away from radio.
KPLC-TV hired Bridges to be the Assignments Editor in February of 1992. Like a nervous groom at the altar, Bridges had some what-am-I-getting-into trepidation, “First week, I thought I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.”
33 years later, the verdict is: Apparently Not.
Bridges would “fill in” occasionally. First time John subbed, he did sports. Even did the weather a few times.
Did he feel nervous? “Not really.” He already had the radio voice and the cadence, he just needed to figure out how to make peace with the cameras. (And get some TV appropriate wardrobe, wink/wink.)
In 1994 Bridges started anchoring weekend news.
He was also doing Louisiana Traveler, where he did local stories, like the guy who carved duck decoys out of wood. Next story might be someone showing Bridges how to make andouille sausage …
In March of 1996, John Bridges became what most of us know him as, the morning anchor on 7 News Sunrise.
Bridges, has interviewed many famous people, but he thoroughly enjoyed the weekly interviews WITH
local military veterans (LIKE Wilton Augustine AND HIS WIFE BETTY) in the Hometown Hero segments.
Years and Years of Hometown Heroes
John Bridges has rubbed some famous elbows, but what Bridges treasures most are the stories he did about regular folks, many of which happened on Hometown Heroes, which began in 2001.
Veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and recent wars are interviewed. Bridges has found himself feet away from a first wave D-Day veteran, “it was like Saving Private Ryan before there was a movie.”
Many an interview, the family is gathered off-camera, and it was very common for Bridges to hear someone say afterwards, “All these years, Daddy never talked about it …”
Big Stories
It’s no surprise, when asked about “big stories,” that Bridges mentions Hurricane Rita, and Hurricane Laura.
For Rita, Bridges was headquartered at St. Pat’s hospital. For Laura, Bridges spent the night in a woman’s holding cell, at the Marshall’s office, in Sulphur’s old City Hall. (“They gave me a key.” He does a John Bridges grin and the next sentence is, “I felt like Otis on the Andy Griffith Show …”)
When almost everyone else has evacuated, to still be here, giving people the facts that they are so desperate for, the responsibility is nigh unto sacred.
Morning after … working your way around fallen trees, and power poles … there’s a friend’s house, there’s your old church, there’s the high school you graduated from … one of Bridges surprises is having a choke-up reaction, to going by his parent’s home, some roof damage, as expected, but what “got” Bridges was “my Daddy’s pecan tree in the back yard … laid over …”
Over the years, Bridges got affirmations, that here, there, somewhere, his reporting mattered to someone a great deal. “This lady, she tells me that she spent the hurricane hiding out under a pew in a church in Singer, listening to me, kept her calm, made her feel less alone, stuff like that…it means a lot.”
What’s a Typical John Bridges Day Like?
John Bridges has been anchoring 7 News Sunrise since March of 1996. He’s had nine different co-anchors, “and they were all great!”
Ever wonder what John Bridges schedule is like?
“I’m in bed at 6:30 to 7 pm. I awake at 2:15A am. Aim to be at KPLC at 3 am.”
Arrives, drinks coffee, reviews the stories, is on-air at 4:30 am, does a half hour by himself until his co-anchor arrives at 5 am.
“I’m reading the news for four and a half hours a day.”
Bridges is done by 9 am, then a newsroom meeting, usually heads home before noon. Once a week, he does a Hometown Hero segment.
When co-worker Ben Terry was being interviewed, the first description of him was “looks like a Baptist preacher.”
There were a lot of sacred sermons being preached during the Ben Terry years.
What About Retirement?
About retirement: “You know, when you know.” But the knowing doesn’t come all at once.
He thought about retirement long before he spoke about it. Even after the words are first said, its mostly just to test how it feels, to hear himself say it out loud.
What are the variables? There’s the generational thing, which is a thing. One day you wake up, and realize that you’re outnumbered by youngsters, just like his daddy was …
There’s the technology thing; Bridges, like other Baby Boomers, grew up with three TV channels, then came cable, Fox, HBO, 24-hour news, and now the internet … more and more options make for more dilution, but not necessarily improvement.
Another thing is the been-there-done-that thing. When was John Bridges last surprised?
On the other hand, “you get more emotional as you get older …” Take hurricanes: “Laura was harder than Rita…” Does he want to wait around for the third big hurricane of his life?
But one of the big wakeups for Bridges was of a cluster of deaths, in a short period of time – two old radio buddies, two TV coworkers, one of which was his work friend Ben Terry. These funerals got his attention.
One day, John Bridges arrived at his decision. And he felt peace.
What’s he going to do in retirement? Wife Koni, and son Jacob are priorities, but beyond that, “I plan to enjoy life and do something other than be on TV every morning!”
He’s a hometown boy, and he isn’t going anywhere. He’ll be on the lookout for places to contribute. (In a curious circle-of-life way, John is back on the radio, at KBYS, on Saturday mornings, with co-host Tom Landry.)
John Bridges, any parting words?
“I feel incredibly blessed to have enjoyed a career that I chose, back in my childhood, and got to make a living at it. I never really felt like I was working.”
Closing Remarks
(Let us not kid ourselves, about the symbolism of John Bridges retirement. There will remain a KPLC and someone will replace John Bridges (younger and with more hair (wink/wink)), but we southwest Louisianians are never going to have another fixture in our lifetime, like John Bridges was, a hometown boy, telling us our hometown facts, a sure thing, for decades of morning after morning after morning …
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