Amazing Grace is a heartfelt hymn that can drag a tear from the coldest of souls, but if she never encountered those lyrics again, it would be all right with Bobbi Yanko.聽
鈥淚 ended up singing that song 10 times just to raise money during that first telethon,鈥� Yanko said with a deep chuckle, recalling that first year when the idea of conducting a television and radio marathon to meet the local United Way funding target was devised and enacted.聽
鈥淧eople phoned in and said they鈥檇 pledge something if I would sing Amazing Grace again. After awhile, I said I would only sing it if the pledge was $100 or more,鈥� she said with another laugh. 鈥淎fter that 1977 telethon, I refused to sing that song again for about three years.鈥澛�
Yanko was one of the key personalities involved in that very first innovative effort.聽
鈥淚 had just been hired in September as program director for Co-Ax Cable, the local cable television system here at the time. I didn鈥檛 even know what a program director was supposed to do, except I had to find 13 hours of live community programming every week. I knew Mike Shainline, manager at the local radio station at the time, and talked to him about what might be possible, like televising city council meetings, and he came up with the idea of sharing an on-air marathon for the United Way,鈥� she said.聽
鈥淎t that time we had two well-used cameras and a beat up van and some cable in the office we had on Fourth Street,鈥� Yanko said, speaking with the Mercury from her home in Wilcox.聽
鈥淲e started planning and I urged them to have a Plan B lined up in case we couldn鈥檛 do it.鈥澛�
Back then, the target for the UW was $36,000 and a 36-hour on air marathon took on a life of its own. They were going to try to raise that near impossible sum at a clip of $1,000 an hour while praying that a live telecast would actually reach the local television audience.聽
鈥淪o the people who usually went knocking on doors for funds, became camera operators and it was all new to everyone, including me,鈥� she said.聽
The idea was hatched to conduct the telethon in the showroom at Trout Chevrolet-Oldsmobile which was just across the back lane from Co-Ax, on Fifth Street, so they could make the cable lines stretch that far and work their magic.聽
They got on the air all right, after a couple of days of set up and with host John Deadlock ready to carry the emcee duties right through from Friday morning to Saturday evening, the show began.聽
Right away, there was a problem.聽
鈥淎 big black bar came up on the screen and it stayed there all the way through. We were making frantic phone calls to everyone we knew who had television technical skills, but I think that bar was on the screen for the whole day and a half,鈥� Yanko said with a laugh.聽
As it turned out, the channel command box that was sitting in the Co-Ax mini-studio that was used to boost the signal, should have been in the Trout Chev show room. That would have eliminated the black bar. 鈥淲e found that out from a technical guy in Toronto, well after the fact,鈥� she laughed. 鈥淪ask-Tel guys came around as volunteers, about five or six of them and guys like Brian Cochrane, were interested in the logistics, and switching, they helped us so, so much,鈥� she said.聽
Live programming meant live entertainment throughout introduced by Deadlock who also conducted interviews with 12 UW agencies who were recipients of their largesse.聽
鈥淲e worked all day Thursday, starting at 8 a.m., just setting up. I don鈥檛 think I slept more than a hour for four days.鈥澛�
Yanko said Cathy Henders had lined up local talent, a big feature of the telecasts then, as it is now.聽
鈥淥f course our 3 a.m. talent didn鈥檛 show up, so Ron (Bobbi鈥檚 husband) and friends Larry Hornung, Tim Ehman and I grabbed some guitars after setting up the cameras to focus on us. Then we sang some songs,鈥� she said. The Yankos were well known in the city for their musical renditions, so singing in a public format was not unusual. But it was the first of the 10 Amazing Graces for Bobbi. Somebody was still awake and heard them, so the first repeat was on, for a few more dollars.聽
鈥淲e were on for about an hour. I think John (Deadlock) was out on a break then.鈥澛�
There were other revelations.聽
鈥淎t some odd hour, Dr. John Seale came in, sat down at the old piano we had on the set, and played some great honkey tonk music. Nobody knew he even played the piano until then. He was the star of the show that first year,鈥� she said. Seale, an Estevan optometrist, made annual appearances for several more years.聽
鈥淭hen at one point the CNIB came in from Regina and wanted to do a slide show during their interview, in the middle of the day. The showroom, as you might guess, was filled with light. No one knew what to do. I phoned Charlie Gessner over at Sears. He brought over a bunch of large cardboard cartons and we built a kind of dark room in the show room, stuck the slide projector and a camera in there and the CNIB got their show, another original solution and it worked, 鈥� she said with a big laugh.
Improvisation was the key word all around the set.
鈥淛ohn worked his butt off for the 36 hours, it got done and we all felt pretty good about it,鈥� she recalled.聽
They must have, because by the 17th hour the community had pledged over $36,000, a call was made to United Way headquarters to Robert Meyers, executive director of the national United Way, who informed them they had set a national record for reaching an established funding target in the shortest number of hours. He suggested they just keep on going to hour 36 to see where it got them. The telecast ended at 6 p.m. with local UW chairman Ken McCandless writing the figure of $60,863 on some poster board to show to the home audience.
They had certainly exceeded their wildest dreams.聽
First Facts:聽
One of the first major donations in that original marathon came from students at the Estevan Comprehensive School who had waged a 鈥渨ar of quarters鈥� to see who could collect the most quarters, a few days before the event. They showed up with over $1,000.聽
During that first on air marathon, when someone phoned in a pledge, a volunteer runner was dispatched to the address to collect the money, right away, if possible. Over $45,000 in cash was in the bank on Monday morning as a result of this action.聽
A man from Kansas City driving through Estevan and tuned into the local radio station, heard about the marathon, went to the show room, stuck around for awhile to be entertained by Deadlock, Yanko and friends, dropped $100 into the portable pot and carried on his way. His name may be forgotten, but the gesture wasn鈥檛.聽
The previous year鈥檚 goal had been set at $33,500 and it had taken months of work by countless volunteers and businesses to reach the goal.聽
The telethon currently consists of 33 hours of continuous broadcasting with targeted amounts in excess of $300,000 and Estevan has been the first community to reach its targeted goal in 37 of the 39 years.
