– By Peggy Adams Gallup and Laura Carroll
Back in the day of black & white television and American Bandstand, way before You Tube and Facebook, the Hub Department Store (1324-30 Market St.) sponsored a local TV show entitled “Hey, There!” Produced by Patti Adams, a senior at St. Joseph’s Academy, the show, which aired on WTRF-TV, was aimed at fellow teenagers and featured a mix of fashion, sports, and news commentary. In the fall of 1958, a photographer from Life Magazine traveled to Wheeling, WV to take photographs and interview Adams for a feature story. The photographer took many candid shots of Patti at the TV station, her school and other locations in Wheeling as well as the Adams home in Yorkville, Ohio.
Unfortunately, the story and accompanying photographs never made it to print. The tragic fire at the Our Lady of Angels in Chicago, Illinois, which occurred on December 1, 1958, preempted many stories slated for print. Life Magazine later gave the photographs, negatives, and story draft to Patti for her to keep. In 2016, Patti’s sister, Peggy Adams Gallup, contacted the Ohio County Public Library and generously offered to donate the material to the Archives and Special Collections. The Archives is honored to preserve this collection that tells a unique story in Wheeling’s history.
Excerpts from the draft: “While rapping out a full-time schedule as a high-school senior at St. Joseph’s Academy, she auditions the program’s talent (all of it local, amateur and teen-age), writes most of the scripts and the commercials. With only the director and camera crew as professional help, “Hey There” (“Produced by Patti,” reads the credit) reaches between 85,000 and 170,000 viewers in the Southern Ohio Valley, earns the young impresario $00 a week from her delighted department store sponsor.”
WTRF-TV first went on the air just five years earlier in the fall of 1953 and in those early years of television, a show produced and aimed at local teenagers was likely a low-cost welcome experiment. More from the article: “Says Patti Adams: ‘What I look for in an act is something that interests me. I’m a teenager, and if it doesn’t interest me, why should any of the other kids get a bang out of it?’
After graduating from St. Joseph’s Academy, Patti went to The Ohio State University and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Speech and a Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education in Speech and English. She also received a Master of Fine Arts from The Catholic University of America. She used this knowledge to teach special education students in Maryland and Florida. Adams passed away in Florida in 2001.
Access the finding aid for this collection here: Patti Adams collection of “Hey There!” television show photographs, 1958.
To learn more about Wheeling’s history, visit the Ohio County Public Library’s history site: http://www.ohiocountylibrary.org/wheeling-history.
I appreciate the opportunity to share my sister’s story. Thank you so very much.
Great story! She was a real pioneer in early TV.