RIP Big Chuck

Cleveland TV legend ‘Big Chuck’ dead at 90 [More]

I met the man back in his Hoolihan and Big Chuck days. I said I’d tell the story some day, and this is it.

They had a segment on their show called “New Talent Time” and I wrote him a letter my freshman year at Kent State pitching me and some dorm buddies.

I walked back from class one afternoon and they told me Chuck Shodowski had called the dorm phone. I called him back, let him know we’d met at a charity basketball game they played at my school years before, plus they’d done close-ups on some cartoons I’d drawn and sent in, and we chatted a bit and scheduled a time. We borrowed a car from my oldest friend (who my wife and I just took to dinner for his 73rd birthday last week), a 1957 Studebaker Silver Hawk, with holes in the floorboard you could see the road through and for some damn reason painted lime green, and drove up to WJW studios in Cleveland.

As I recall there were four of us idiots I mercifully won’t name, appearing as the Manchester Hall Musical 4th Floor DWPs (don’t ask) wearing T-shirts I designed, me playing a wooden flute from Romania, a guy playing spoons, another on harmonica, and an arm-waving “band” director. We started with “When the Saints Come Marching In,” and segued into “Bang Bang Lulu” before a hook dragged us off stage, and if God is listening, the tape of that show, if they even made one, is either destroyed or lost forever.

Rest in peace, Mr. Shodowski. Thank you for being a positive influence when I was a kid, and for remaining a fond memory I will never forget. I’m sure many, many more from the Cleveland area can say the same, and what better tribute is there than that?