Tucson news anchor Guy Atchley looks back as he readies to retire

Guy Atchley is done.

When the 6 p.m. March 30 newscast on KGUN-TV is over, the anchor will end 34 years at the station and 50 years in broadcasting.

“I thought, 50 years? That’s a good time to go,” says Atchley, sitting at Le Buzz Cafe where he is eating breakfast and greeting the many people who stop by to say hello.

“You’re retiring?” one woman asks. “You’re the last man I see besides my husband before I go to bed.”

Atchley laughs.

“It’s the most attention I’ve had in 34 years,” the 67-year-old says.

Retiring, however, may not be the right word.

He plans to travel the state taking photographs. Watch — and take pictures of — his 10-year-old grandson playing baseball, and help his daughter Jami Good, who has multiple sclerosis.

“After 50 years, it’s time for something a little different,” he says.

IN THE BEGINNING

Atchley hails from Sapulpa, Oklahoma, a small town about 20 miles outside Tulsa. When he was born in 1950, his two sisters were 15 and 17.

“I really had three mothers,” he says. “They took care of me. Earlene would always point out that they ironed my diapers — back then they used cloth.”

Earlene, the eldest, was a tiny woman who contracted polio when she was 3 and suffered the after effects all her life. Atchley adored her.

“Earlene was my guiding light,” he says. “She was always there. … I discussed everything with her. She was deeply religious and a beautiful person in every way.”

Earlene died when she was 58, and the emotions are still raw for Atchley.

“I saw the pain she would go through,” he says as he tears up. “She had pain her whole life. I saw that. It became a part of me. I don’t know if I can express what it did to me.”

Atchley was just as close to his mother, Irene, who died a few years ago at 93.

“I was a mama’s boy,” he says.

“My mother was so proud of me. I really did everything for my mother, I really did.”

THE BROADCASTING BUG

Atchley was a junior in high school when he won a contest to DJ an hour a week on a popular rock ’n’ roll station in Tulsa.

“The DJ would sit next to me and I’d introduce singers like Engelbert Humperdinck and Frank Sinatra,” he recalls. “The next day I would go to school and the kids would say ‘heard you last night.’ That cinched it. I wanted to be a star.”

He went to the University of Tulsa and planned to make a career in radio.

In 1968, his freshman year, he did his first newscast on the campus station.

It did not go well.

“My first radio newscast I didn’t say a word,” he says. “I was wearing really thick glasses — I had very bad eyesight and it wasn’t much better with the glasses. I was nervous, the print was purple type on yellow paper and nobody had changed the ribbon. The song they were playing before they pointed to me to start was ‘Aquarius’ by the 5th Dimension. As they faded out, so did I. That’s when I felt like giving up.”

He stuck with it and within six months of enrolling in school, Atchley says he realized he could be a star on TV, so he changed his concentration.

BEFORE KGUN

After graduation, Atchley worked at television stations in the Tulsa area and later in such places as Oklahoma City, Miami, Milwaukee.

He was let go only twice.

The first time, from a Tulsa station, still makes him cringe.

“I was doing a story on alcoholism and we had a (generic) image of a kid drinking from a can of beer,” he says. “I shouldn’t have allowed that on the air. The parents called the station and the news director took advantage of that, said ‘I’m going to get rid of this guy.’”

He was in his early 30s and his job was his life.

“I woke up the next morning wondering what was I going to do. I wound up taking a lot of long walks.”

But he learned a lesson: “After that, I never had all my eggs in one basket, realizing it can come and go.”

He was let go from his next job, too. He was in Oklahoma City and his contract wasn’t renewed after the first year.

“The reason it wasn’t renewed was because the station manager wanted to put his son-in-law in, which he did. He replaced me and I couldn’t argue with that because he looked like Superman, 6 feet tall, chiseled. Just a handsome guy.”

As it happened, a few weeks before he had been contacted by KGUN, which had seen a tape of Atchley’s. He told the station manager that unless something happens, he was happy where he was.

“The first time I was fired I felt like a load of bricks fell on me,” says Atchley. “This time, I just walked right out of his office, walked to my phone, called Tucson and said ‘something has happened and I will reconsider your offer.’ He said ‘I’m glad you called because this afternoon I was going to offer the job to somebody else.’ I was out here within a few days and they offered me the job.”

KGUN

Atchley packed up his wife, Linda, and two children and settled into Tucson and as KGUN’s news anchor 34 years ago. He’s traveled the world, reporting from such places as China, Israel and Japan. He has won multiple awards for his journalism work.

And he’s gone through about six news directors and has survived. Though it wasn’t always easy.

“With one, it was three years of going to work and just waiting. They finally walked her out the door. But I learned early on that that’s just part of the job — not knowing what today is going to bring.”

A TYPICAL DAY

On a recent weekday, Atchley pulls into the KGUN station about 2 p.m. and heads straight for his desk, one of many in the open newsroom.

He has three hours before the first newscast. The first duty is to record news shorts to promote the evening’s show. He doesn’t sit at a computer — it is elevated so that he can stand when he works. He reads the copy on the screen out loud, in a voice soft enough that his co-workers won’t be distracted. His desk is neat but full of items such as grammar books and a makeup mirror. An old manual typewriter, the one he used when he first came to the station, takes up one corner of the desk.

As he heads to the recording studio, he continues to read the script. By the time he sits down to put it on tape, he has it word perfect. But he doesn’t like the way a sentence flows, stops, makes a mark on the paper, and says “take two.” This time he glides right through it. He is done in minutes.

As 5 p.m. approaches, Atchley pulls out a small makeup case, sits down and brings the makeup mirror a little closer to him.

The moisturizer goes on first, concealer under the eyes, then powder applied with a fluffy makeup brush.

“If I do this too fast, I paint some of my gray hair and it comes up brown on the air,” he says.

He is about done.

“And now, the final thing, the eyebrows,” he says. “I learned from a consultant that eyebrows frame the face, and since my eyebrows disappear about half way over …” He extends them subtly with a thick eyebrow pencil.

He is not fond of putting on makeup, he says. He won’t miss it.

He stands and goes over the half dozen or so ties on a hanger attached to his cubicle. He has close to 20 suits, he says. Many of those, and most of his ties, will be donated to Goodwill after March 30.

The newscasts go smoothly. His co-anchor, Stella Inger, is taller than the 5-foot -7-inch Atchley. His hydraulic chair is raised so they can be on an eye-to-eye level. When they do standing segments, he steps onto a box.

As the 5 p.m. newscast ends, Atchley begins to prepare for the 6 p.m. show. After that, he heads to dinner, then back to the station to wrap up his day with the 10 p.m. news.

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CO-WORKERS

Atchley is a popular man in the newsroom. People frequently come to his desk to chat. He stops what he is doing and gives them his full attention.

“When viewers see Guy Atchley, they see an anchorman, someone who is so special,” said co-anchor Inger, who has worked with him for five years.

“But the personality we know here in the newsroom is someone who is funny and is still at the top of his game.”

He is the office grammarian, she says. “Last year he went through this phase where he was reading a grammar book, a thick reference book. He was just reading it.”

Atchley is going to be missed, she says.

“When I came here, he welcomed me with open arms. He’s been my go-to. He’s not only my co-anchor, he’s my friend.”

She begins to cry.

“I’ve been in this business for 15 years and I’ve had some really mean co-anchors. When I came here, I wondered what I was going to get. And he was so nice. … He’s been my rock. But I’m happy for him.”

KGUN meteorologist Erin Christiansen has worked with Atchley for a dozen years. She had been at KVOA-TV before moving over and knew his work well.

“He is such an icon in this market,” she says. “He was always so stoic on the air. When I got here I found he was really quirky. He’s silly and so much fun.”

PADEN

About an hour before a recent 5 p.m. newscast, Atchley heads to the set and sets up his tripod and camera. His one and only grandchild, 10-year-old Paden Good, is coming in to have his pictures taken with him, a ritual they’ve done a number of times over the years. This will be the last time for the ritual.

Atchley is crazy about the kid.

“I love him. He’s going to be my No. 1 thing when I sign off. My next six months will mostly be watching him play ball and taking pictures of him playing ball.”

Paden is pretty crazy about his grandfather, too.

“He’s a nice guy,” says Paden. “He’s really kind of fun to hang around with.”

He likes the taste of fame he gets when classmates find out his grandfather is on TV. But not enough to regret his retiring.

“We’re going to spend a lot of time together, so that’s just as fun.”

ON-AIR GAFFES

Atchley doesn’t remember many of them, but he still chuckles at this one: “I was suppose to say that ‘farmers need a good crop,’ and I said ‘farmers need a good crap.’”

FAVORITE INTERVIEWS

Atchley was in Florida when Mother Teresa was there to establish a home for battered women. He didn’t get a one-on-one with her, but was there for her press conference.

“Just to witness her and the people who came from all over the country just to touch her garment” was moving, he says.

His favorite one-on-one interview was with the late Leo Buscaglia, who wrote about the power of love in “Living, Loving and Learning” and other books.

“He sat down with me and his eyes were piercing. It felt like they were burning a hole in me. He was genuine.”

PHOTOGRAPHY

Atchley has always loved photography, but he started snapping photos with a fever about seven years ago.

He had been doing news segments dubbed Guy Atchely’s Arizona, which showcased his photos. At the time, the news director — different director and different owners than now — decided she wanted to get rid of the series.

“They had an executive vice president fly in to set me down,” Atchley recalls. “He said, ‘You know, Guy, people aren’t really interested in pretty pictures of Arizona.’ I didn’t say anything to him. I never fight. And I just thought, ‘well, I like to go out and shoot them, so that’s what I am going to do.’ ”

Now, each of his newscasts ends with a photo he has taken.

Recently, he sat in his home office, dogs at his feet, walls cluttered with photos, and scrolled through his digital files looking for shots for the evening’s shows.

He scrolls through pictures of his grandson, classic cars, landscapes, birds — favorites subjects of his. With a couple of visitors there, he can’t help himself: He stops to tell something about each: who it is, where it was taken, how he dented the top of his pickup when he stood on the roof to take this picture, how he got his car stuck in the sand taking that one.

It’s clear that his retirement activity will keep him busy.

HIS HAIR

“I’m thankful I still have it,” Atchley says with a laugh.

He does still have it — a full head of it. And he has not stuck with one style all these years.

It’s been longish, short, side-parted and combed back. And once, a buzz cut.

“The first day I got my buzz cut it was looking really bad because it was too long,” he says. “It stood up long and spiky. We had 50 phone calls in the matter of 15 minutes. ‘What happened to him,’ they said.”

YOGA

Atchley was introduced to yoga at a conference he attended and started taking classes.

After about a year, he thought “I could teach this.”

He took three weeks off — the longest period he’s ever had off — and traveled to Spain for a yoga intensive.

“I learned a hell of a lot from yoga,” he says. “If you don’t learn something to decompress then you’re going to be in trouble. In any typical day, there are a zillion things in the newsroom that you can get in an argument over.”

When he returned to Tucson, he taught for about a year.

“If I didn’t like going out and taking photographs so much, I probably would still be teaching.”

But yoga did give him a mantra to live by: “Release judgment,” he says. “That sums up my goal in life.”

WHAT HE’LL MISS

“I still think I’m going to meet interesting people, so that’s taken care of,” he says.

Then he mentions his co-workers.

“I really do feel like the people there like me, and I know I like them,” he says. “I’m going to miss them.”

REGRETS

“The biggest regret would be missing out on time with the kids,” Atchley says.

“To be on prime time news, you work nights. I knew that, and that it would take away from them.”

RETIREMENT

“A lot of my time now is spent in a cubicle,” says Atchley. “I’m going to spend as much time outside as I can.”

He’ll hang with Paden, take lots of pictures, maybe make a book of his photos, maybe sell them.

And one more thing:

“I think I’m going to let my hair grow long,” he says. “And maybe grow a beard.”