Don Hallock
- Years at WGBH: 1956 -1963
- Position(s): Scenic Artist, Cameraman, Producer/Director
- Online: Buffalo Nickel Productions, insight@hawaii.rr.com
From Don Hallock — 2005
I live in Honolulu — and have now for over 22 years. Though it might strike you as improbable — devoted to the television business as we all were — I departed the world of video in about 1975, and have, since then, maintained a private practice in psychotherapy.
I've been married to the wonderful Kathy Hallock for about the same length of time, and have two fabulous kids. Kathy is a hospice social worker, my daughter Star is studying to become a social worker too, and son Sean seems to be a natural performer, taking after his dad by virtue of a powerful love of theater and film.
As some of you may remember (or will during the next paragraph), I began working at WGBH immediately after high school in 1955. Starting out in the scene shop under Peter Prodan, I doubled as the station slide photographer. During that first year (then production manager) Dave Davis had concluded that the station needed two full time cameramen. Frank Vento was the first to be hired in '55, and then in '56 my long-time dream was realized when I got my hands on a TV camera for the first time (and subsequently refused to let go).
In late 1959 Greg Harney, in what I believe must have been a fit of tobacco withdrawal, erred fatally in promoting me to the level of producer/director. My bearded and crew-cut presence was tolerated around the station during the next three years while I directed about everything on the schedule at one time or another: High points for me being Max Lerner's "The Age of Overkill," "The Make-believe Clubhouse," "Jazz with Father (Norman J.) O'Connor," the Boston Arts Festival, "The World of Buckminster Fuller" — remember these?
Taping at The Cloisters, New York, Christmas 1965.
In 1963 I married Kay Mote who had been Bob Larsen's secretary, and we moved to New York City to pursue my interest in painting. After a year there I took up TV work again part-time, free-lance, in order to make ends meet: working first on camera, and then directing, with NET, WGBH (on contract), WNET, CBS, NBC, Teletape Productions, and the Video-Tape Center, to name a few (some of those entities are still around I think). I traveled around the country quite a lot, and to Europe a bit working on some interesting projects. Though things went very well for me, and I was never at a loss for work, I did, by 1969, loose patience with the broadcast production business and the east coast in general. The excesses of insanity and the dearth of humanity had taken its toll (not to mention my divorce from Kay).
Images from the "Videola" (a video sculpture), and its creator. The exhibit was produced at the National Center for Experiments in Television and shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1973. (Videola photos: Penny Dhaemers)
So, after some years of fun drama work with NET/WNET, a Herb Alpert special, a couple of Streisand extravaganzas, countless less memorable projects, and way too many commercials, I moved to California and hung out around Santa Cruz and San Francisco for a couple of years, getting my head clear and absorbing the reinvigorating energy of the mountains and redwood forests. It was in this period that I first visited Hawaii — an entirely momentous event, as it turned out! Eventually I took a job as production manager and artist-in-residence with the National Center for Experiments in Television — an electronic sand-box for artists and other video-dreamers (and here, by the way, is one - with one of his projects).
During the five years I was with NCET, I worked mostly at creating, promoting and exhibiting video as an art form (an extension of painting, more precisely), and in the later years took up studies in psychology and holistic health. Eventually, sanity won out again. I met and married Kathy, who was a fellow student of the mind/body interface and the beauty and sanctity of life. I left the National Center in 1975, whereupon Kathy and I emigrated to the farthest western point in the American empire, beginning a new life in Hawaii.
Our favorite activities?.... Sean loves acting, backstage tech work and his theater friends, Star and David are very much into surfing, and Kathy is an avid traveler (Thailand this year) and snorkeler. These days I'm a student of chaos theory (perhaps I always was!). I keep my creative hand in by generating fractal imagery and dabbling in computer graphics and rudimentary web design. I earn my living as a counselor now, and I deeply love my work.
Hawai'i has been, and continues to be, incredibly good to us. It's a very happy life we live together here in paradise.
Christmas, and Star's 21st birthday celebration: Myself, Kathy, Sean (14), Star and David (Star's partner).
Finally, me and my love.
