From the WTVT Former Employees Facebook page.......RIP Frank!
Frank Berry joined WTVT in 1991 on the AM shift as Maintenance Engineer. For 20 years he was the Newsroom Computer Systems Administrator. Frank retired in 2010 and returned to his home state of Michigan. Frank had a long battle with lung cancer and passed away on Sept. 11, 2023. BIG 13 sends condolences to the Berry family.
Frank’s cousin Jill shares a nice remembrance about Frank’s love of television:
Frank understood radio and the workings of television and other electronic devices from the time he was a child. In fact, he became truly enamored with television after a 1955 visit to then channel 13, WWTV, in Cadillac. We appeared on a local kid’s show where we were each asked what we wanted to be and do. When it was Frank’s turn, and with big eyes, he pointed to the huge television camera and said, “I want to run one of those!” He was beyond thrilled when the cameraman let him check it all out after the show. He had found his calling.
Frank was a natural. It was uncanny. He was a brilliant radio and television engineer and worked his way up through the ranks of small radio stations in Florida, and Michigan. He was a disc jockey and engineer at a well known station at the old Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven, Florida. When he retired it was from the FOX television, WTVT-13 on Tampa Bay, where he had been the administrator of the station’s large computer network for 20 years. For all of his accomplishments, he’d best like to be remembered as that really smart Berry kid from Marion, Michigan.
Frank Berry joined WTVT in 1991 on the AM shift as Maintenance Engineer. For 20 years he was the Newsroom Computer Systems Administrator. Frank retired in 2010 and returned to his home state of Michigan. Frank had a long battle with lung cancer and passed away on Sept. 11, 2023. BIG 13 sends condolences to the Berry family.
Frank’s cousin Jill shares a nice remembrance about Frank’s love of television:
Frank understood radio and the workings of television and other electronic devices from the time he was a child. In fact, he became truly enamored with television after a 1955 visit to then channel 13, WWTV, in Cadillac. We appeared on a local kid’s show where we were each asked what we wanted to be and do. When it was Frank’s turn, and with big eyes, he pointed to the huge television camera and said, “I want to run one of those!” He was beyond thrilled when the cameraman let him check it all out after the show. He had found his calling.
Frank was a natural. It was uncanny. He was a brilliant radio and television engineer and worked his way up through the ranks of small radio stations in Florida, and Michigan. He was a disc jockey and engineer at a well known station at the old Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven, Florida. When he retired it was from the FOX television, WTVT-13 on Tampa Bay, where he had been the administrator of the station’s large computer network for 20 years. For all of his accomplishments, he’d best like to be remembered as that really smart Berry kid from Marion, Michigan.