Kevin Hale:  

Hello, all... After we graduated Saints, I went to School of Visual Arts in NYC, as an General Illustration student, for a year and a half until I smartened up and transferred to Parson's School of Design where the focus was actually on work and "art." Late 1969 and the early 70's was a pretty bizzare time in the art schools in New York, but then, I guess, it always has been somewhat. While in art school, I worked as a bartender at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in Westchester County, NY and then as a golf course greenskeeper with Charlie Jacobsen at Knickerbocker Country Club in Tenafly in the summer of '72. A great summer job thanks to Jake! I graduated Parson's in 1973 and worked as a free-lance illustrator and artist while learning to be an assistant tennis pro from my Dad. Tennis, as a business, was really starting to take off at that time and I was kind of caught up in it with private and public rec tennis clinics while working at indoor/outdoor tennis clubs. In late 1974, having just lost my job at the tennis club (along with my parents losing theirs) I flew to Europe with my good friend and fellow Parson's graduate, Tom McElroy (who was later to be the best man at my wedding) and we hit the art museums and galleries. At the Tate Museum in London, Paul Vogel walked up to us in the cafeteria. He was living and working in London at the time. Small world. The day I returned from Europe, my parents were on their way to Miami, promised a job in tennis. Shortly, I went down to Miami for two weeks and that turned into NINE years. In that time, I worked as a tennis racquet stringer at a sporting goods store on Collins Ave. in Miami Beach, I was the club tennis pro at the Country Club of Miami (now defunct) for a few years. I spent time as a golf course ranger, bartender at a disco lounge at a hotel/country club in North Miami Beach owned by Ceasar's Palace, worked in air-conditioning, assembled and sold motorcycles and worked as a buffet chef at the Playboy Club in Miami. (Photos of this are available on request) In July of 1979, I took a 10,000 mile motorcycle trip, camping out from Miami to Los Angeles, up the Pacific coast road to Seattle (almost), east to New England and back to Miami in 3 weeks on my 1979 Honda 750F with another guy on his Suzuki 1000 who was a mechanic at the Honda shop where I worked during the day while I worked at the Playboy Club at night. When I came to New Jersey for our 10th reunion in 1979 and I saw how you folks had grown up, I knew it was about time to grow up a little bit myself and get back into art. On that Jersey trip, I hooked up through a friend with a commercial art studio in Larchmont, NY and moved to New York for 4 months to work there and at a printing company in Mamaroneck. When March of '80 arrived, I got back on my motorcycle and headed back to Miami where I utilized this new experience and started working at a direct-mail catalogue company as a bull-pen artist. You know those slick store catalogues that you look at once and then toss in the garbage? That's what I worked on. Some of our clients were Saks' Fith Avenue, Dillard's, Jordan Marsh, etc. About 70 catalouges a year, working 7 days a week for 13 weeks of the summer to get out those Christmas Catalouges. The whole process was under one roof: creative, copywriting, paste-ups and mechanicals, photographer and stylist teams and studios, E-6 photo developing, laser-scanning color separation, 5-color web presses, binding and shipping. Yikes! In six months I was an assistant art director, working with photographers and art directors and working on sales presentations. In 1982, I was asked to be videotaped as a walk-in "client" on the local Miami television's PM Magazine shoot by a friend of mine whose business was being highlighted and whose corporate indentity I had designed. Watching the video crew work I thought was very interesting as I had gone on still photography shoots for the catalogues I had designed and art-directed. After two years of cookware and white sales, Christmas, fashion sales and January sales catalouges, and other crap, I knew it was time for a change. I sent out my resume to all of the television stations in Miami not knowing anything about television design. I promptly received rejections but a couple of months later, I get a call from the Art Director of WPLG-TV Channel 10 in Miami (who had seen that I had graduated from Parson's on my resume) asking if I was still interested. An artist at the station was moving back to California. I interviewed twice showing the sales presentations I had worked on and some of my paintings and drawings. A few days later I was asked if I wanted to work at WPLG. I had made my break into television. On the day I got the television job was the day I also got my first new car loan, trading in my motorcycle. What a day! I was almost a grown-up! While I was working at WPLG, I won three national Broadcast Designers' Association Awards and a DESI Award from Graphics Design USA magazine. I met Denise, a school teacher in Broward County, FL and originally from Binghampton, NY, while working there. We decided to marry just before there were cut-backs at WPLG, and at the end of my first year, I was let go. I took my severance pay and bought our engagement and wedding rings and then looked nationwide in the top 30 television markets for a job as designer for television, asking Denise to pick out the cities that she didn't want to live in. I interviewed at ABC, NBC, CBS and MTV in New York while being asked to work at the NBC affiliate in Baltimore. The creative director at ABC Network News, the legendary Ben Blank, liked my work (he was on the jury that had given me the BDA awards that year) and asked me to work for them in April, 1983. In July of 1983, NBC Network News asked me to work for them as a designer and computer animator on their new morning news show, SUNRISE, that was about to roll out in August. I have been at NBC now for going on 27 years, where I've been a lead designer for the TODAY Show, working in computer graphics and animation since 1988, and I have worked on the NBC News Elections graphics team for every election since 1984. Denise and I have been blessed with a son, Conor, who has just graduated from the Journalism School at St. Bonaventure University in western New York State, and a daughter, Caitlin, who has just started at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin where she is a linguistics major with her focus on Japanese. [Appleton is home of the one and only Vince Lombardi's Steakhouse where I corrected their menu's printed history of Vince Lombardi's career. They had him teaching at "Englewood High School" in Englewood, New Jersey while they had Lonbardi's personal framed artifacts of his coaching at St. Cecilia's in 1947 hung on the wall among his 400 trophies, letters from U.S presidents, and other artifacts. A high-end steakhouse, by the way.] We live in Pawling, New York, where we built our home 16 years ago on a mountain side. Big sky, rainbows, deer and other critters such as fox, coyote, bear and the occasional moose and a non-indigenous nmountain lion. The 70 mile one-way 2 a.m. commute to New York is worth it. This spring I was an adjunct professor at Parson's Scool of Design teaching a course I designed entitled "Illustrating Television News." I thought it was fitting that I should try and give something back. I thank God for my wife and family and for allowing me to find a career, that, when I first started in television, I knew I had found what I really had wanted to do. Television news can be "hours of boredom interrupted by moments of stark terror" but it is rarely dull in an event-driven, hard-news environment. I also thank God that I survived the journey that has led me here. If this was a bit long, you can blame Charlie Jacobsen who has been after me to "Tell your story" here. God Bless and be well! UPDATE: 1/19/2016 Our son, Conor, was working...Expand for more