Hello to all my sick and shut in friends...

Columbus TV was a live production of Fred Ward Promotions. We did the show on Saturday afternoons from 4:00 until 5:00 and it was carried on WRBL in Columbus and was a big ratings winner for the station. I have documented several times in stories about the time crunch involved in getting from Atlanta TV to Columbus. Many times I have run into the Sports Arena and dropped my bag in the aisle and ran into the ring for the opening match.

Fred Ward was a good promoter and a fine gentleman. He had been promoting for many years and The Sports Arena at 1025 Front Avenue in Columbus was his headquarters. The front of the building was where his offices were located.  He along with son-in-laws, Leon Ogle and Ralph Freed comprised the brain trust of their promotion. Jim Carlisle was their television host as well as their advertising guru. If you have ever seen a program from a live event in Columbus or Macon, Jim Carlisle probably wrote the articles and assembled the program . Fred's daughters ran the ticket office and helped answer the phones. It was really a family run operation.

The fact that it was a family run operation spilled over into the production of their TV show. Every week the show would open with Jim and Mr. Ward sitting at the desk. Jim would welcome everyone to the show and run down the matches or a special interview that was coming up. He would then introduce "your promoter", Fred Ward. Mr. Ward would then deliver his classic line " Hello to all my sick and shut in friends".

He opened his show every week for as long as I have been involved the same way.  It was nothing for Mr. Ward to plug some social event, bake sale, or the Fraternal Order of Police Ball. Every year when The Shrine Circus was coming to town Mr. Ward would open the show wearing his shriners fez.  Looking back,  it was really funny. 

While watching the show from the dressing room Ole decided we needed to  make the show a little more professional and less homespun. He broke the news to Mr. Ward that he would no longer be allowed to appear on Columbus Championship Wrestling. Can you imagine the promoter being told he cannot appear on his own show ?  Well that is exactly what happened ! 

For the next couple of weeks we did the show and Mr. Ward was not figured into the show. We did not see him. He didn't come to  the dressing room, nor did we know if he was even in the building. Ole along with Ralph Freed and the hosting of Jim Carlisle was very  slowly changing the look and feel of the Columbus show.

A few weeks down the road we were near the end of a show. The last match had ended and we were watching the monitor in the dressing room as Jim was recapping and about to wrap up the show. If you stood behind the cameras and looked at the set, just to the left was a door that led to the front offices. You could not see the door as we aired the show but for the purpose of this story you had to know about it.

Get this picture, Jim Carlisle is sitting at the desk on the right side of your screen with an empty chair to the left. Mr. Ward opened that door and stuck his head into the camera shot wearing his fez. He never said a word, he just smiled and waved.

It was like one of those old cartoons where a character pops in from the side of your screen with a silly grin and then disappears...

That is what Mr. Ward did... the best part to me was I was standing next to Ole in the dressing room when he did it.  I thought Ole was going to have a stroke... and become one of those sick and shut in friends.

Mr. Ward is longer with us and very recently Mrs. Ward went to her reward.  They were good to me and I miss them