The Fox Valley has been Jerry Burke's home for all but four years of his life, including almost 34 years with WBAY-TV and Action 2 News.
Born in Neenah, Jerry grew up in the Valley's "Twin Cities," Neenah and Menasha. He graduated in Menasha High School's Class of '59. From there he attended school at the nearby University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, when he also worked at a Neenah radio station.
After more than 20 years in the Valley, the next four years would see Jerry on the West Coast, in the U.S. Air Force protecting California. Jerry worked on the Minuteman missile launch crew at Vandenberg Air Force Base from 1963 to 1967.
Following his military service, Jerry returned home to the Fox Valley. For six years he worked at an FM radio station in Oshkosh before FM radio was popular.
Then on February 1, 1973, he took the step to television, hired by WBAY-TV as the 6 o'clock news anchor when Action 2 News only had two newscasts -- at 6 and 10 p.m. He worked the dual roles of news anchor and reporter.
WBAY became the first local TV station to have a Fox Valley news bureau, on October 31, 1977. Jerry was the logical choice to run the bureau.
In 1991, Jerry returned to the anchor desk during the first Gulf War, anchoring Action 2 News weekend newscasts.
Once the war subsided, he left news reporting for a job as marketing director for a Fox Valley (of course) industrial construction company. But you can't take the newsroom out of the journalist, and Jerry was back in the Fox Valley bureau six months later.
You might expect Jerry to have a difficult time answering when you ask him what news stories stick out in his mind after more than 40 years in radio and television, but instead he answers quickly: The grim stories of serial killer David Spanbauer and, on the other end of the spectrum, the Concorde's exciting first arrival at the EAA convention.
"Spanbauer was the toughest to handle," Jerry says. David Spanbauer was convicted in 1994 of kidnapping and murdering young girls. Covering those cases and Spanbauer's arrest, Jerry says, "had a profound impact on me. My son was the same age as the victims."
But Jerry's voice perks right up when he remembers the supersonic Concorde landing in Oshkosh in 1985. It was the jet's only stop in the U.S. other than its regular destinations of New York and Washington, DC. "That was a fun experience," Jerry says, "and I got to ride it, too!"
But don't ask Jerry about the journalism awards he's earned. "I'm very uncomfortable talking about awards."
Today the lifelong Valley native lives in Oshkosh with his wife of 25 years and their son, who's in college, attending his father's alma mater, U.W.-Oshkosh -- following in his father's footsteps, majoring in journalism.
