Longtime Milwaukee TV anchor and 'Contact 6' newsman Tom Hooper dies

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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news...ds-through-contact-6-over-decades/1642625002/

He was best known for his reports on WITI-TV

Over the course of a 35-year career in local news, most of it as the "Contact 6" consumer watchdog, Tom Hooper's name became synonymous with the journalism principles of comforting the afflicted and giving voice to the voiceless.

Hooper died Friday night in Georgia. He was 85.

Hooper's gentle Tennessee twang became familiar in thousands of Milwaukee households as he helped viewers who’d been ripped off or mistreated.

“I wanted to be a star, an anchor,” Hooper told The Journal Sentinel’s television critic Duane Dudek in 2010. “I never heard of this ‘Contact 6’ thing. But it took off like wildfire.”

Hooper said that soon after the segment began, the station was receiving as many as 1,500 letters a week with viewers requesting help with various problems. The reporter tried to solve one on each 10 p.m. newscast, but he sent numerous others to the businesses involved asking that they respond to viewers themselves.

It was a simple idea, but Hooper’s reports changed Wisconsin, leading to changes in laws dealing with the monitoring of abused children, school bus safety and testing for real estate licenses.

Perhaps the most well-remembered segment changed only a single life. The foster parents of a blind and disabled child wrote to Hooper seeking a stroller. The girl also suffered from a large facial growth. After Hooper’s report aired, a surgeon volunteered to remove the growth.