I
suspect that there are very few people who know about Bobbi the Weather Girl
and her reports on the Armed Forces Network in Vietnam.
Armed
Forces Vietnam (AFVN) had a television station that broadcast, if I remember
correctly, from noon until midnight. The programming from the night before was
broadcast again beginning at noon the next day. I don’t remember many of the
programs that we saw but do remember that The Big Valley was a hit with
the Vietnamese who worked at Cu Chi. Glen Campbell’s Good Time Hour (I
think that was the name) was another of the shows as was Dean Martin’s. Each
late night there was a broadcast of a talk show such as that of Johnny Carson.
And for some unknown reason, they also broadcast a show called Julia (if
I remember correctly), about a widow whose husband, a helicopter pilot, had
been killed in Vietnam. I confess that I do not understand the wisdom of
showing that to us… I was especially outraged because of the show’s plot.
 |
| Bobbi the Weather Girl |
You
can watch one of the segments that I suspect might have been filmed by a GI
with an old 8 mm movie camera that had sound here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ8NtlxKiQk
And,
you can see a documentary, or an interview with her, made in 1992 at the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. that contains more of her doing
the weather here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzmv-dMc2vE
In fact, just type Bobbi the Weather Girl into your search engine and you’ll find many stories about her. Like so many others, it was the highlight of most days. And no, I never met her, but she certainly made a good impression on me and many of my fellow soldiers.
No comments:
Post a Comment