In the TV business, if you spend five years at a station, that’s considered a long time. Mary Dickson has been at KUED-Channel 7 a lot longer than that.
She doesn’t want me to tell you how long, but I’ve been writing about TV in Utah for almost 29 years, and Mary was already at KUED when I began.
“Our programmer says, ‘You started before there were child labor laws,’” Dickson said.
But after, um, a long time at the station, she’s retiring as director of community relations, a job that put her in charge of promotions, publicity, advertising, a monthly program guide and community outreach.
In a way, Dickson has been the face of KUED, the public television station on the campus of the University of Utah. She’s been the host of the show “Contact” (weeknights, 9:55), which promotes community and arts events, for a long time. And she’ll continue interviewing people there.
“The grand thing about this is that they asked me to keep doing ‘Contact,’ and that’s the part I love so much,” Dickson said. “You know me. I adore this community.”
And she’ll continue to wear her own clothes.
“I had a lady once who called and complained that KUED spent too much money on my wardrobe,” Dickson said. “I said, ‘Those are all my own clothes and I have to pay for them. Nobody buys me anything.’
“People must just think there’s a big giant closet down in the basement where Big Bird lives and Fred Rogers hangs out and I keep all my clothes.”
If there’s a nicer person working in television — if there’s a nicer person anywhere — I haven’t met that person. Michael Dunn, the managing director of BYUtv and former station manager at KUED, reached out to encourage me to write about Dickson’s retirement.
“She is not only one of the nicest, most genuine people in television, but her contributions to public television and in the broader [public TV] community nationally have been yeoman,” Dunn wrote. “I think so many people know her face, but don’t really know her, and what a stellar human she is.”
I’ve been lucky. I’ve known Mary for … a long time. I gasped when I learned of her retirement plans, not just because she’s been unfailingly helpful and kind to me, but because we’ve shared so many great lunches where we talked about PBS, friends, family — and we bemoaned or praised every president since George H.W. Bush.
“It’s been a grand career,” Dickson said. “I’ve loved working here. I’ve loved being part of PBS. I’ve loved all of it. But you just know that it’s kind of time.”
(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Playwright Mary Dickson, whose 2007 play “Exposed” chronicled the effects the above-ground nuclear tests had on the downwind population in Utah, speaks at launch event for the Downwinders of Utah Archive at the J. Willard Marriott Libray at the University of Utah Monday, Oct. 3, 2016.
She’s seen friends and family die of cancer; she’s had her own battles with it. She wrote the 2007 play “Exposed,” based on the effects of the above-ground nuclear tests on the downwind population in Utah. (Her health is fine today.)
“You just start thinking — OK, how much of this grand, glorious life do I have left? I’ve got people to see. I’ve got places to go. I’ve got to finish that book,” Dickson said.
She’s writing about her experiences hosting U. students from China and the Middle East and how that has changed over the years — and into the era of Trump.
“I’m going to hate myself if I don’t finish that book,” said the former Deseret News journalist, who never planned on working in TV. She was taken aback when former KUED general manager Fred Esplin called her and told her she should apply for the community outreach job.
“I said, ‘Fred, I don’t know anything about TV.’ He goes, ‘You’re smart, you’ll learn.’ And he hired me. Really,” she said, still sounding astonished.
“I had to learn a lot. Oh my gosh, when I started I was sitting in my living room floor with shoeboxes full of receipts trying to figure out the budget. And I just wanted to cry.”
That was back in the days when KUED had offices in an old house. “We walked into that house every day and stepped on snails,” Dickson said.
And then, while the Eccles Broadcast Center on campus was still under construction in the early 1990s, KUED was housed in old dorms. “We would have these communal lunches and we all laughed at the cockroach infestation,” Dickson said. “You kind of bond with people when you’re in the dorms with them.”
Dickson plans to travel. And write. And simply spend time with friends.
“It’s going to be weird not to come in here every day, but I’m just so excited to kind of do what I want to do,” she said. “And get back to just writing. Taking an hour to drink my coffee in the morning and having time to make breakfast.”
She’s as committed to the cause of PBS and KUED as she ever was. “We still need PBS now,” she said, "because you’re not going to get a lot of what we do anywhere else.”
But she feels she's ready to step away … except for “Contact.”
“Life’s been really good to me, and I think I’m lucky because I just have so many people to love,” she said. “It goes in such a flash. I just think we have to grab every moment. It’s precious.”
