Date: May 10, 2012
Author: Sherrie Whaley
Contact: Cully Clark, cully@uga.edu

Pioneering radio broadcaster Edward Ingles delivered the keynote address to 384 Grady College students at the annual Spring & Summer Convocation held on Thursday, May 10, 2012, at the Athens Classic Center.

Ingles is a 1958 graduate of Grady College. He is also the 2012 recipient of Grady College’s John Holliman Jr. Lifetime Achievement Alumni Award.

The Bronx native spent 53 years in broadcasting, with 24 of them as sports director for WCBS Radio where he also served as morning drive sports anchor. He’s reported on 35 Masters Golf Tournaments, 11 Olympic Games, Super Bowls, boxing bouts, New York Jets football, and St. John’s University and Iona College basketball. He was among the first to venture into the dressing room for post-game comments for radio reports.

In his convocation address entitled “It’s Been an Adventure, Not a Job,” Ingles shared personal stories and recalled the mentors who helped him grow as a professional. He told the Grady graduates he understood their apprehension about leaving what has been a hectic, but comfortable and happy environment at UGA. He advised them to embrace their anxiety and use it to fuel their new journeys. 

“Try to stand out, try to be distinctive. These are the people who get jobs today,” he advised. “Develop a personality that attracts an audience. It’s the wave of the present and likely the future of broadcasting.”

The 80-year-old still works with and mentors young people as a professional-in-residence at Hofstra University. He said that he’s often asked why he doesn’t retire. “I tell them you don’t do what I do each day,” he said. “I don’t have a job, I have an adventure.”

One adventure he shared was when he interviewed New York Yankee icon Mickey Mantle during the Hall of Famer’s final season. Mantle was no longer a force at the plate and Ingles knew the reason he continued to play was because he needed the money. Not wanting to embarrass or offend Mantle, Ingles asked “Mickey, do you continue to play because of the Yankee tradition, love of fans, etc.?” 

“Mantle looked at me funny,” recalled Ingles, “and said, ‘Hell no. All those chicken restaurants I owned in Missouri went broke, I’m busted.’ It was a wonderful radio sound bite, and I was glad to be able to accomplish my goal without embarrassing a player who had given the game so much and a person who had always treated me with respect.”

Treat people with respect, Ingles told the students, and they will respect you and the job you are trying to do as a reporter.

He also told the audience that one of the greatest attributes they can have, as a reporter and a person, is to be curious. “Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it makes a damn-fine reporter,” he said.

Click here to read Ingles’ speech in its entirety.

Also addressing the crowd were Distinguished Senior Orators Savannah Highsmith and Elizabeth Holmes who earned the highest grade point average in the graduating class, each graduating with perfect 4.0 GPAs.

Savannah Highsmith (l) and Elizabeth Holmes represented their peers as Distinguished Senior Orators. Both are graduating with perfect 4.0 GPAs.

Highsmith, a public relations major, and Holmes, a digital and broadcast journalism major, took a brief trip down memory lane eliciting chuckles and knowing nods from their peers as they recalled some highlights and a few challenges that they had experienced from freshman through senior year.

Highsmith recalled the freshman shock of community dorm bathrooms and navigating the concrete maze of Grady come sophomore year. “Who designed that place?” she asked. “Those staircases are worse than the moving ones at Hogwarts.”

Holmes agreed noting that the outside elevators are on only one side of the building. “I won’t even go in there,” she said. “I’d rather hoof it up those massive outdoor stairs than brave those things.”

Holmes shared how watching coverage of Princess Diana’s death in 1997 cemented her desire to be a TV news reporter. Highsmith’s route to public relations was a bit more uncertain. “When I graduated high school, I didn’t even know what public relations was,” she admitted. But after poring over the UGA Bulletin and meeting with multiple advisors, her path led her to Grady and PR.

The senior orators also touched on their experiences with campaigns class, the dreaded communication law class, searching for internships, and working on Grady NewSource, the student-run television news show.

Highsmith and Holmes ended their speech with a simple challenge to their classmates: to get out there and make Grady College proud.

Click here to read Highsmith and Holmes’ speech in its entirety.

Also recognized during the Convocation ceremony were Grady’s 2012 Distinguished Alumni Award winners. At an Alumni Awards brunch earlier in the day, pioneering radio broadcaster Edward Ingles (ABJ ‘58) of Freeport, N.Y. received the John Holliman Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award. Lisa Ryan Howard (ABJ ‘92) received the Henry W. Grady Award for Mid-Career Achievement. Howard most recently served as publisher of Billboard, one of the music industry’s leading trade magazines, and resides in Brooklyn, N.Y. Atlanta’s Alex Wallace (ABJ ‘04) was presented the Dean John E. Drewry Award for Young Alumni Achievement. He is an on-camera meteorologist for the Weather Channel.

Grady College Convocation brought students, faculty, family and friends together to welcome graduates into the journalism and mass communication professions.

Three-hundred eighty four of the eligible 493 graduate and undergraduate students participated in the Convocation ceremony, with 356 undergraduate students being recognized for completion of their studies. An additional 28 graduate students were recognized with 25 students at the master’s level and three at the Ph.D. level.

University of Georgia Commencement will be held on Friday, May 11. An estimated 4,250 undergraduate students and 1,150 graduate students will be eligible to graduate.

The undergraduate commencement ceremony begins at 7 p.m. in Sanford Stadium with Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal keynoting the ceremony. A fireworks show will conclude the undergraduate Commencement ceremony.

Grady College mass media arts major Peter McDonald of Decatur will provide the undergraduate student address. A member of the Honors Program, McDonald was a UGA Presidential Scholar and a recipient of the Honors International Scholarship.

In addition, he was a recent member of Leadership UGA; a Grady Ambassador, chosen to represent the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at various events; a student judge for the Peabody Awards; a student volunteer at NewSource 15; and the director of Case Administration for the University Judiciary. Last summer, McDonald studied journalism at Phnom Penh in Cambodia. After graduation, he will work with Teach For America for two years.

The graduate ceremony begins at 10 a.m. in Stegeman Coliseum. The featured speaker will be Lindsay R. Boring, director of the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway in southwest Georgia.

Click here to view the complete 2012 Spring Convocation photo collection on Flickr.