Ad Disclosure
Sharing a Ukee Washington Story on His 40-Year Eyewitness News Anniversary
Published:
Saw this on the timeline:
What a run. 40 years! Incredible. The only thing is that the tweet should say “Eyewitness News” instead of “CBS News Philadelphia,” because the re-brand is appalling, no doubt the brain child of some useless corporate suit(s) in New York City. Crossing Broad staff has been instructed to only refer to this entity as “Eyewitness News.”
Anyway, let me tell you a great Ukee Washington story:
It was something like 2014 or 2015 and I was a back up photographer and per diem scrub at channel 3. They’d typically only call me in to shoot video if they were desperate. I guess they were super-thin this one weekend, so one of the bosses got in touch and said “hey, can you meet Ukee at Delaware State University on Saturday morning?” They were doing this series in which the anchors went out and tried a hobby or a profession that they always wanted to do, and Ukee’s thing was that he always wanted to be the drum major of a marching band.
DSU is a historically black college, and if you know anything about HBCU campus culture, the marching band is a huge deal. There’s so much energy and fanfare and there’s a lot of time and effort put into coordinating the routines and perfecting the music. Some of the best bands in the world come from schools like Florida A&M and North Carolina A&T. And on top of that, Ukee’s dad was a longtime educator at DSU and was well known on campus and in the Dover area.
So we go down, and we do a walkthrough of sorts in the music room. Everything goes great. We head out onto the football field at halftime and Ukee is out in front, leading the band, and knocks it out of the park. Piece of cake, great video. I just have to drive it back to the station in Philadelphia and the editors will put together the package for the following week.
As we’re leaving the stadium, Ukee proceeds to be stopped and greeted by every other person at the game. No joke. You would think Michael Jackson showed up. We were off the field and in this area next to the concession stand, and he paused and made time for every individual who came up to talk to him, which was a lot. It turned into a line at one point, maybe 10-15 people deep. I think we moved maybe five feet in ten minutes, because it was important to him to make sure he responded to everyone, and said hello and engaged them. And I was just sort of standing there like a dumbass, waiting patiently while everybody went up to Ukee to say hi.
It got to the point where he turned to me and said something like “why don’t you go ahead to the truck and I’ll call you on the way back.” Something like that. So I took the equipment back and drove home, and Ukee stayed at the stadium for who knows how long, talking to people and saying hello and all of that. Maybe he was there for another 15 minutes. Maybe it was 30 minutes or 45 minutes or 60 minutes. But he made sure to make time for everyone down there and that resonated with me because a lot of news anchors and celebrity types would have simply blown off those folks.
Anyway, Ukee is a great dude. That’s my story to add to a presumably long list.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com