When Susan White broke into the broadcast news business, shewas previously known as the girl in the TV commercials pouring American beer,or the one eating Utz potato chips.
By the time she left WMAR-TV a few decades later, as Susan White-Bowden, she was known as a pioneer whose stories showed us the humanity behind the gray headlines of the day.
On the air and off, right up to the day when she died last Friday, April 26, at 79, she was known as a remarkably kind and caring person whose professional career is a measure of how far women have come – and how far much of local TV news has fallen in the years since her retirement.
She was part of a generation of women who opened the doors in local broadcasting. Not long after Susan broke in at WMAR, Rudy Miller signed on at WBAL and Maria Broom and a young woman named Oprah Winfrey arrived at WJZ.
Each, in her way, helped define an era when local TV newshad its brief flirtation with something approaching seriousness.
A decade ago, when I wrote a book about TV news called “Tonight at 6: A Daily Show Masquerading as Local TV News,” Susan was a big help. She looked back on her career with a mixture of warmth and frustration.
She remembered the WMAR boss who hired her saying, “We likeyou. You’re a woman, you’re soft, you’re pretty. Plus, you’re married, and yourhusband supports you, so we won’t have to pay you much.”
She got $15 for every story that ran in the early evening,and another $10 if she got one on the 11 o’clock news.
She did fluff – anything to break in. She covered the wivesof politicians. She did fashion shows and flower marts. Some of the early stuffembarrassed her for years. In 1968, as rioting broke out across Baltimore, shewas assigned a feature on baby chicks for Easter.
“But the city’s burning down,” Susan told the news director. “There are families torn apart. Let me talk to some mothers who have tried to keep their sons inside about what it’s doing to their families.”
“Do the baby chicks,” she was told.
“And there I went,” she said years later, “with a big smileon my sunny little face, sitting on a stool to introduce the piece and vowing Iwould never let them humiliate me like that again.”
Remarkably, she was able to take the tragedies in her lifeand offer inspiration from them. The TV embarrassments were just a small partof it. She lost both her first husband and a son to suicides – and then wrote abook, “Everything to Live For,” and became a nationally-known crusader whohelped many dealing with their own self-destructive impulses.
When she married Jack Bowden in 1979, the two of them became one of Baltimore’s golden couples – on the air, certainly, where they became the nation’s only husband-and-wife co-anchors. But, mainly, off the air. Theirs was a great love story.
Jack died nearly four years ago. Susan will be buried next to him at their Carroll County farm.
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