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"That's 'Gutsy', 'GUTSY'!!" yelled the rightly apoplectic news director into my headset; too late to prevent the blooper going over the air!     

Dyslexia had done its dastardly deed!

The date was Monday, March 9, 1981 and it was my turn, as a broadcast studio cameraperson, to operate the character generator for that evening's 6PM newscast.

Though I had asked to not be given the assignment due to a lack of manual dexterity and the aforementioned dyslexia, nevertheless, I stepped into the "font" room (which doubled as a sound booth) and sat my lonely self before the keyboard as the news scripts came flying in. They were starting to pile as I did my frantic best.

This just in...

The newsroom was a flurry!

Stanford had just issued a press release, announcing the first successful heart-lung transplant performed that day by the team of cardiothoracic surgeons, Doctors Bruce A. Reitz and Norman Edward Shumway at the Palo Alto based, medical facility. Right in our own backyard so to speak! (Not far away, KNTV Channel 11 was stationed in San Jose, making us the closer television market to the campus than San Francisco.) The recipient herself was a 45 year old, an advertising executive for The Mesa Tribune out of Arizona.

Isolated in that booth however, all I was handed was Mary Gohlke's name and the brief, enigmatic copy accompanying it. Nothing more. That's why they call it a tease! Utterly unaware of the momentous event or Gohlke, the only fact I immediately knew for certain was that the directors, all three of them, were going to change the lineup, and lead the next news segment with her.

Clumsily banging away on the keys, I had better get Mary's last name right!

Up flashed the "font" onto the preview screens. 

Into the "bump" (the tease preceding the commercial break) launched the anchors!

"Cue mix!" barked the broadcast director to the "TD" (the technical director who pushes the actual buttons on the switcher making it so.)

Ashen went the face of the news director; then red!

No one had caught the error, until that moment!

With the news director in a state, the broadcast director in charge laughed, lightly cursing under their breath, even as they quickly called an immediate cut to the break.

Later musing to me in private, "Who would have thought the mere transposition of two, side-by-side letters would result in a second word just as legitimately spelt as the first, but more to the point, perversely apropos?

Oh, the news management, by the way, concurs with you..." added  the broadcast director.

I was excused from further font duties.

"Super!" I sighed.

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Pictured in my graphic above is the same 1979 Mitsubishi MGA television set, Model: CR-1302 that I use to own during my broadcast days.

Also pictured on screen behind the font, as well as below, is a photograph of the landmark surgery.

 

Lastly, the brave, Mary Gohlke whose last name, at least, I got right!.