This month, WTTW held one of its quarterly pledge drives. Looking for volunteer opportunities during the summer, I looked for information on participating in this drive, and then got myself signed up.
And so this past Monday, August 19, I drove to the WTTW studios at 5400 N. St. Louis Avenue, craddled in a spot surrounded by Northeastern Illinois University on Chicago's North Side. It amazes me to think that one of Chicago's most important institutions is nestled in this mostly residential area of the city, just about a mile and a half east of where my Abuela lives. I could barely cough in the amount of time it takes to get there from her house.
After arriving and waiting in the lobby for a few minutes, we went to the cafeteria for dinner. The station gets a Chicago restaurant to provide a good meal for the pledge volunteers. La Gondola provided four trays of different types of pasta dishes. After having dinner and socializing with some of the other people, a wonderfully bright woman named Suzanne led us to the Pledge studio. We all got seated (there were about three dozen of us volunteers), and then Suzanne led us through training in how to work the system to record donor information and select their gifts.
The first program shown that evening was Father Jerzy Popiełuszko: Messenger of the Truth, about a Polish priest, who led a nonviolent resistance movement in Communist Poland in the late 20th Century. For the occasion, people from the Polish Museum of American and the Polish National Alliance came out. So there were plenty of Polish speakers on hand for Polish callers. I saw glimpses of the images on TV screens in the studio, and I could tell that it was a moving, inspirational story. It was meaningful for me to be in the presence of so many people for whom this story holds a lot of meaning.
Shortly before 8 PM, we went on live TV for the first pledge break. When the pledge break started, the people in the studio started talking, with all the volunteers remaining silent as it took a few minutes for the phones to start ringing right and left. I was sitting at a table near Gene Honda talking with the producer of the program. (Mr. Honda, by the way, is the public announcer for the Chicago Blackhawks, and I sat with him briefly at dinner.) It may have been at least 5 minutes before my phone rung. I pressed the headset button on the phone, and started with my spiel to get the callers' information and gift order processed, for DVDs of the program and books related to Father Jerzy. I probably took at least two calls during each pledge break.
When I finished with the last caller, the Pledge Break was well over, and I had barely 5 minutes before we all had to be in the studio and ready for the next break. And then the calls started up again.
After a couple of pledge breaks or so, a staffperson decided to move me to a different spot, saying they wanted a young person in an area that was facing the cameras. I had started out sitting in a spot with my back to the cameras.
At about 10 PM, the Father Jerzy program ended, and the next program started up: a concert with Hugh Laurie on the Queen Mary. At this point, while I was up stretching my legs, a man came up to me and asked that I hand out prayer cards with Father Jerzy's image on it, with sets in English and Polish. I found out later that one of the cards had a small space with a drop of Father Jerzy's blood in it, which will become of great importance as he is on the track to being canonized.
There were fewer callers during the Hugh Laurie concert, as it was later in the evening. I sat through an entire pledge break without getting a call, and decided to leave the system on my computer on available mode to see if I would catch anyone, which ended up happening. A few seconds into my call, one of the staff people announced there was ice cream available from the Edgebrook Chocolate Shoppe. I stayed with the caller in selecting the gift, and once I finished, I dashed off to the cafeteria to have the scoop of ice cream, managing to finish it within 3 minutes before it was time for the last pledge break. And once that break was done, our night was finished.
It was such an exhilarating experience to be part of this effort. I thoroughly enjoy PBS programming, having watched it for years, and coming across these pledge drives whenever they come up. It was so interesting to be in the studio this time around, being part of the action, being the voice that the callers to the number on the screen encountered. It kept me on my toes, keeping focused on hearing the caller give me his/her information in the midst of all the noise in the studio. I handled calls from all over Chicago and its suburbs, including Park Ridge, Inverness, Oak Lawn, and Wilmette. One man who called said he had lived in Poland during this time period and deeply expressed his appreciation for WTTW showing this program.
It was also a thrill to be on live television. But the best part of it all was that I was able to donate my time to a great Chicago institution in its efforts to bring quality public television programming to the people of Chicagoland.
In the spirit of the Black-Eyed Peas song, it was indeed a good, good night. At the end of the night, all the volunteers got to pick out a thank you-gift. I picked out a button that spoke well to my special experience: "I was a star on Channel 11."
I thank Suzanne for getting this picture of me. I apologize, but it was staged, since there was too much activity going on for such a picture to be taken while the pledge breaks were going. But it does capture the spirit of my experience on this night.
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