Bob Cervera:  

Everyone has their own lives to tend to, so I can't imagine why anyone would want to read my li'l ol' story, but here it is nonetheless: Many left turns have brought me to where I am today, but I'm the only one, right? After BHS I spent some time at North Central College in Naperville and got heavily into the radio biz through its fantastic radio program. While on the air I got a full-time DJ job at Crazy Rock in Romeoville (before it was the "gentleman's" club it is today). One night a video production company came to the club to shoot a commercial and I became friends with the crew. I was soon hired on with the video company and finally worked normal hours -- that is until I took on extra part-time work at a radio station in Morris. My client list at the video production company grew and I was producing videos that aired nationally. Along the way more and more of my clients asked me to provide a voice for their projects. Then some of them wanted me to become their face, spokesperson, host --whatever -- I was now busy doing a lot of on-camera work, much of it on Chicago-based TV. I also found I had a passion for the engineering aspect of audio and video, so I spent much of my spare time happily learning all I could take in on that part of the business. One day one of my clients asked if I had ever considered becoming an on-air journalist. It's something I never thought I'd consider in my younger days, but all of a sudden it attracted a more mature me. So in 1999 I got a resume, a cover letter, and a VHS tape together (VHS was still very much the de facto video format standard for the day) and sent it to a few TV stations. The third one to bite was ABC affiliate KQTV in St. Joseph, Missouri. I went to the interview, loved the station, the people, and the news philosophy there. The station wanted me, but didn't have an opening for a news journalist. To lock me into a contract, even though I had no weather forecasting experience, I was offered a morning weather job, with the promise that I'd get the very next news reporting position that became available. That day never came for me because I was instead asked to anchor the prime-time daily newscasts when that became available about a year later. So I was the station's prime-time news anchor for about a decade and loved every minute of it, but a part of me grew lonely for the engineering side of the business. Then one day out of nowhere the station's entire union engineering staff was eliminated! Knowing my ability and interest in engineering, the station asked me to make a tough decision. I could keep thin...Expand for more