An Icon of My Youth

I have to share this piece of my childhood. My sister called me this evening to inform me that the TV news reported the death of "Skipper Chuck", who was the host of a local children's television show that we grew up watching. His real name was (Charles) Chuck Zink and he was a popular local TV and radio personality in South Florida for the past 50 years. He died yesterday at age 80. (News Article)



The news hit me hard for a minute and brought back a lot of memories. And I mean way back memories for me....the early 1970's! when I was the first one up every morning and watching
cartoons on TV. The cartoons started at 6:30am when the TV station signed on the air.
It was Channel 4 every morning. Batman reruns at 6:30 and "The Skipper Chuck Show" from 7 to 8am. Captain Kangaroo came on at 8 but I never watched that. We had to leave for school after 8, plus when I was 6,7,or 8 years old I thought Captain Kangaroo was for "babies".


But Skipper Chuck was our hero. We could actually be on his show, or he could bring the show to our school. Or we could hear our name called on TV for our birthday. We loved this man! This was the days of only having a few channels to choose from. But we were grateful and thoroughly enjoyed THE children's show of South Florida every morning. The show ran for 23 years, earned TWO regional emmy awards and was intergrated at a time when it was unheard of and not acceptable for Blacks and Whites to share the same spaces in public. That was at the insistance of Skipper Chuck himself in the late 1950's.


Like most kids growing up in South Florida, I wanted to be on the Skipper Chuck show. But the waiting list was 2 years long at the show's peak of popularity in the early 1970's. However I do remember the show coming to my school and other live public events. Mostly, I just enjoyed sitting in front of a Sears TV set tuned to the old WTVJ Channel 4 every morning before school.

The Skipper Chuck show ended when CBS began a morning news show in the late 1970's and by then I was probably too old to watch this kiddie show anymore even though I watced plenty of cartoons well into my teens. Then we moved to New York where I would attend High School. By the time we moved back to S. FLA in the mid 1980's Chuck Zink was doing commercials and entertainment programs for a much older crowd, the senior citizens of South Florida. For them he hosted big band and jazz programs on the radio and I enjoyed listening to some of them.

Chuck Zink also hosted the local edition of the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Telephon, a quiz show and some national programs including beauty pageants.

I left Florida 12 years ago and moved on and now I frequently reminisce over my youth. I have had he death of my mother along with so many changes in my childhood hometown area and now the death of the entertainment icon of my youth is less than one year. These were big changes and big losses but happily for me, they are BIG memories.

Cherished memories!

Charles D. Zink aka "Skipper Chuck" (1925-2006)


Photos taken from WTVJ "NBC-6" in Miami. This is the former WTVJ Channel 4 that aired "The Skipper Chuck Show" and was a CBS affiliate that was purchased by NBC in the 1980's, became a NBC affiliate and moved to Channel 6 in 1995. Not to be confused with the current CBS affiliate on Channel 4 in Miami, WFOR-TV.