Portland television pioneer Richard Ross lost his battle with the calendar today. If you grew up in Portland you knew Richard Ross, Doug LaMear, Jack Capell, and Ivan Smith on KGW. Richard was on Portland's first tv newsteam in 1956. Dorothy Bullet brought him down from Seattle's KING where he coanchored with Chuck Herring. I'm sure you have your own memories of Richard.

I always found Richard to be a sticker for detail and language use. He taught me quite a few tricks of the trade. I will always remember him smiling. It's both coincidental and ironic that I've worked with both Charles Herring and Richard Ross and now they're both gone.

I spoke with Doug LaMear a few minutes ago. He spoke on the phone with Richard just last night. Doug says Richard had a stroke two days ago but sounded find to Doug. Doug is now 82.

I also tracked down Jack Capell, who's now 84 and still hanging in there in Seattle and outliving everybody despite his sclerosis. Jack tells how Richard and Doug stuck up for him when Jack was threatened with dismissal because of his illness. Richard said "if you go, I go." Jack kept his job.

Richard Ross was a gentlemanly presence on the air and a cordial community member in person. He radiated a genuine concern and believability throughout his decades of work in Portland television. His name is carved in broadcast granite, alongside the likes of McCall, Smith, Capell, and LaMear, and his credibility only grew in his years of retirement. Despite his stature, my every encounter with him was with a hardworking professional and a very, very nice man. Sincere condolences to family and colleagues.

A great loss.

My first recollection of ANY news anchor was of Richard Ross, while watching TV before the Columbus Day storm. I was five years old.

He was always my favorite anchor. No one today is even in his league.

I grew up watching Richard Ross...as I moved around the state, we could always get KGW....and along with LaMear and Capell he was part of every evening and many dinners at our house for years..Part of the group of true Journalists on TV, far from many of today's tela-prompter readers who move from serious news to tabloid material without noticing the difference. Hope someone has some archives of his old newscasts...

There are some brief clips of Ross on this site, plus some other great nostalgic PDX tv.

http://platypuscomix.cartoonsdammit.com/fpo/videos/

In addition to what John Erickson wrote here, I'd just like to say Richard Ross was a very kind professional who never let his stature as an anchor affect his dealings with the most lowly of us.

KGW TV would do well to graciously fill out their sadly meager web coverage of his death. Their operation today stands on the shoulders of Richard Ross and that Channel 8 news team that began it all 51 years ago.

I worked with Richard Ross at ch. 2. He was a pro and had my respect and that of the other reporters as well. I grew up watching him. He will be missed.

I used to sub for Doug Lamear at the sports desk an Channel 8. As luck would have it, I was doing just that on the night Steve Prefontaine died. So..I found myself on the set with Richard Ross, Ivan Smith and Jack Capell and I was doing the lead story at 5. These were the guys I grew up watching and sitting there with them was one of the most memorable events in my career. They were all extremely gracious, but none more so than Richard Ross. He was totally supportive and it really helped. God, I was scared!!! I include my condolences to Dick's family. He personified TV news in Portland for a long long time.

I Also recall Richard also my first awareness of any local news. As a preteen, I was more into radio but with my folks I knew the likes of Richard Ross and Tom Mc call. Just for my interest, why did Richard go to ch2 later on and what year was it? Lately we've sure lost a lot of fine broadcasters. What they have done in broadcasting I'LL remember forever.

I echo what's been said. Grew up watching Richard Ross on "News Beat". What a distinctive voice he had. You knew in a second it was Richard narrating the many KGW-TV Specials. I can also remember watching in High School a film he narrated on the growing Pacific Northwest Power grid in the 1950's.

Here's The Oregonian Obit. It dosen't mention that Richard Ross was KGW-TV News Director. He started in broadcasting in 1939 while attending State College of Washington in Pullman at KWSC. This is now Washington State University and the station is now KWSU. It'll be interesting to read what is said about Richard Ross in Seattle later today or tomorrow. I don't know when he joined KIRO radio. Maybe they will write about his early years.

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-20/11840559032 46670.xml&storylist=orlocal

All due respect to the early news folks at channels 6, 12 and later 2... but I can't even recall their names. For me and so many others, it was Ross, Smith, Capell, LaMear and McCall.
Richard Ross was one of the many people who made Mrs. Bullet's vision of public service and everyday reality.

What a gentelman.

Smooth, professional and a true class act. Condolences to his family. Perhaps some of today's talking heads will watch these old news clips and regain some of that character.

The Lake Oswego Review:

http://www.lakeoswegoreview.com/news/story.php?story_id=118419471936740900

From the L.O. Review's obit: "remembrances can be sent to the Alzheimer’s Association, 1311 N.W. 21st Ave., Portland, Ore., 97209."

Absolutely a worthy cause, but does anyone else see the unfortunate wording? OK-OK, it's just me.

There should be a capital "R", there's no "e" in OR and no comma before the zipcode. What do I win?

Ahh, the old state abbreviations...before the postal service gave each state two-letter ID's, there were quite a few variations that were commonly used:

Calif. or Cal.
Wash.
Ariz.
Col.
Minn.
Ill.
Mich.
Mont.
Wyo.

The list goes on...usually used by old-timers who just have not caught on...kind of endearing.

In fact, Washington State license plates actually had the abbreviation, "Wash" on them for a few years in the 1960's.

What does this have to do with Richard Ross? Well, he probably used "Ore" many, many times!

There was also "Oreg" and "Wn". I would think an older person would be more likely to be familiar with the postal abbreviations because they're more likely to write letters.

KTVZ Bend:

http://www.ktvz.com/Global/story.asp?S=6767674

Notice the AP style of state names: PORTLAND, Ore. Many people consider the post office's state abbreviations an "abomination."

AP style on cities whose names stand alone: If it's obvious to nearly everyone which city you're talking about. Portland will always be 'Portland, Ore.' Thanks to the original Portland in The Pine Tree State.

As for which cities stand alone, this example:
I once chided a friend whose big-market station was giving a way a very cool upscale prize, but dumbed it down in the promo: 'Win a week in Paris, FRANCE!' Like someone would actually enter a contest for a week in Paris, Texas.

Rich, lol, but seriously, the way a lot of stations operate today, Paris, Texas would have ACTUALLY been the vacation!

Pine Tree State...I think, for some, we need to explain that one too. It's Maine.

Very interesting the AP still uses the old abbreviations. Wonder why. Kind of feels like my dad, who well into the 90's repeated his Seattle phone number as L.A. 4.(....)!

RI-6-4086
The RI stood for RIverside

The "old" abbreviations? They're the standard, correct AP style. If I wrote without them I'd be sent away from the paper in shame.

Old, only in the sense that the USPS has invented their own system. I guess, not old, just different, and what most use today. Anybody remember what year this came into play? My guess in the mid-80's, but I could be way off...

The two-letter abbreviations were developed with the ZIP code system, and they were introduced together in 1963. http://www.lunewsviews.com/zip.htm#ZIP This bit of trivia was surprisingly hard to dig up, and by my memory also, adoption of the new abbreviations indeed lagged behind ZIP code usage by a decade or more, as some confused people (AL vs. AK vs. AR, MT vs. MO vs. MS vs. MA, "Wn." vs. WA and WI).

The use of neither are required for full-rate (non-discounted postage) mail.

Contrary to Ma Bell's expectation (and to their consternation), acceptance of all-digit numbers occurred first in rural areas, next in smaller towns. Larger cities resisted the longest, where central office names identified neighborhoods; notable holdouts were New York City, San Francisco and Seattle.

As free domestic long-distance is commonly offered by cellular providers, more people are keeping their numbers when moving, so area codes are joining prefixes in becoming more or less random and non-specific.

To veer somewhere back toward OT, I do wish the local media would quit referring to Oak Grove and Jennings Lodge as "Milwaukie." Yes, it's still the postal address out there, but that mayhem is occurring beyond the city limits (beyond any city limits, for that matter). At least they have their own ZIP code now (97267 was originally assigned to just boxes at the old Oak Grove PO), so Mayberry has reclaimed postal zone 22 for itself (with the exception of a few blocks to the east).

OR, Ore., Oreg., Oregon.

Meanwhile, regarding the late Richard Ross...

Yeah, Magic Eye... regarding... when Richard and his team were on the air... people everywhere actually stopped their lives, or planned their lives, around being home and watching local television news to see what had happened during the day.

What has changed to change this? We have local stations with high tech staffs all reporting the news (essentially all the same stories, tho) but the numbers are a fraction of what they were 20 or more years ago, yet our population and the number of homes reaches are higher than ever.

Radio (the purpose of this site) gives them the news throughout the day, so maybe that's part of it.

The digression into the arcane world of abbreviations seemed to happen when people failed to share the irony of remembrances being sent to the Alzheimer's Association.

Back to the subject: Richard Ross was a Pro. And a great human being. We radio folks should aspire to such an achievement.

>>Smooth, professional and a true class act. Condolences to his family. Perhaps some of today's talking heads will watch these old news clips and regain some of that character.<<

It's not going to happen anytime soon. Even if one of today's anchormen wants to be a consumate pro, how much character can you retain when your producer is forcing you to spend half of the show reporting on Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears and the network's favorite prime time show? See Mike Donahue's latest morning gig as an example. Sharing the desk with a bimbo traffic chick...and his facial skin appears tighter than it was 30 years ago!

When my brothers and I moved with our Dad to Vancouver, Wa in 1963 we watched cartoons and the news. I felt at home with Channel 8 right away and I think it was because of the dynamic news team of Ross, Smith, LaMear and Capell. At home because it reflected "KING" which was a standard in Seattle-Tacoma where we came from. Charles Herring, Ted Simpson, Richard Ross,and
Kieth Jackson doing sports on KOMO. I remember all these guys from age 3 or 4 up in the Seattle-Tacoma market as well as Herring and Ross co-anchoring on KING. Cut from the same mold and one that has been broken for a long time now !

Alan Cook........................................

Speaking of great anchors from the past. The folks at KOLO TV in Reno, NV. Bid a happy retirement to news anchor Tad Dunbar on Friday. After a career spanning 38 years on the air.

I must admit I only came to appreciate Ross long after he retired and the station's history became available on the Web. His on-air demeanor never suggested to me that he was the brains behind the operation. (In retrospect, the weird vibe I picked up was probably just anxiety.)

The remarkable depth of KGW-TV's news (it was still "-TV" back then) was particularly important to our burg in the sixties, as the Journal was on the ropes (though still feisty) and the Oregonian was stuck in its mid-century lull of Stating the Obvious (with gratuitous typos). 8 would sometimes give ten full minutes to a single story. I can still remember Ivan Smith standing at the podium doing a straight read into the camera for nearly that long, dissecting some city council shenanigans with relish. There were McCall's grave analyses, then William Sanderson's hilarious-but-serious cartoons.

In a way, "News Beat" was our third newspaper. And now I realize that Bullitt + Ross blazed a trail to make it so--which is now regrettably lost in the weeds.

rip ross.