In the 1950s and \u201960s, just about every Orlando child knew Uncle Walt. His real name was Walt Sickles, and he was the host of the popular Orlando children\u2019s show, \u201cAdventures with Uncle Walt.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show first started on radio in 1952 on Orlando Sentinel-owned station WHOO-990 AM. It then moved to television in 1954 when Orlando\u2019s WDBO-Channel 6 went on the air.<\/p>\n
The show became a late afternoon staple for young viewers. \u201cKids would sit in front of their black-and-white TVs while their moms prepared dinner and watch live television enter their homes for the first time,\u201d Sickles\u2019 son Rick was quoted as saying in a 2015 Orlando Sentinel story by Joy Wallace Dickinson. The Uncle Walt show featured cartoons and series such as \u201cCrusader Rabbit\u201d and \u201cFlash Gordon,\u201d but the big attraction was a chance to be on the show yourself and be interviewed live on the air.<\/p>\n
When Channel 6 ended the show in late 1967, it was the longest-running local children\u2019s TV program in the Southeast, according to Rick Sickles.\u00a0 Over the show\u2019s run, Dickinson wrote, about 53,000 kids appeared on \u201cAdventures with Uncle Walt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s Dickinson\u2019s full story on Walt Sickles\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you were a child growing up in Central Florida in the 1950s and 1960s, you were either on the \u2018Uncle Walt\u2019 television show or knew someone who had been\u201d writes Rick Sickles of Orlando about his dad, Walt Sickles.<\/p>\n
For 13 years beginning in 1954, the \u201cAdventures with Uncle Walt\u201d was televised live on WDBO-TV, Channel 6 (now WKMG) at 5 p.m. every weekday. When the show went off the air in 1967, it was the longest-running local children\u2019s TV program in the Southeast, Rick Sickles writes.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids would sit in front of their black-and-white TVs while their moms prepared dinner and watch live television enter their homes for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show featured cartoons and series such as \u201cCrusader Rabbit\u201d and \u201cFlash Gordon,\u201d but the big attraction was a chance to be on the show yourself and be interviewed live on the air. Over the course of the show, about 53,000 kids appeared on \u201cAdventures with Uncle Walt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Birthdays on the air<\/p>\n
\u201cYou would watch for your name on the daily birthday list, and admire your friends who were lucky enough to be on the show,\u201d Rick Sickles writes.<\/p>\n
Walt Sickles\u2019 wife, Georgene, a longtime Orange County teacher, was key to the show\u2019s success. Every day, she typed the birthday lists for the on-camera teleprompter, sent out invitations to be on the show and provided lists to sponsors so kids could receive a birthday card every year.<\/p>\n
On the show, \u201cKids would snack on sponsors\u2019 fare such T.G. Lee milk and Tarnow hot dogs, as they became a part of the new television age,\u201d Sickles writes.<\/p>\n
At WDBO-TV, Walt Sickles was more than a TV personality; he was the station\u2019s first program manager, responsible for deciding what content was broadcast. As a result of that job and the \u201cUncle Walt\u201d show, he became friends with national TV stars such as Hugh Brannum, \u201cMr. Green Jeans\u201d on \u201cCaptain Kangaroo,\u201d and Paul Brinegar, who played the grizzled chuck-wagon cook Wishbone on \u201cRawhide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every year at the Cerebral Palsy Telethon telecast from Orlando\u2019s Municipal Auditorium, Walt Sickles could be found helping to raise tens of thousands of dollars from children and their families who would wait in line to donate their money and receive an autographed photo of \u201cUncle Walt,\u201d his son writes. Sickles was also a community leader as president of the Boys (and later Girls) Club of Orlando, and Goodwill Industries.<\/p>\n
From choirboy to TV icon<\/p>\n
Born Feb. 13, 1908, in Altoona, Perm., Walt Sickles began his performing career at age 12 as a boy-choir sensation who sang a solo on the capital steps in Harrisburg during the governor\u2019s inauguration. As a young man, Sickles became an award-winning radio announcer in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
\u201cService in World War II separated him from his new wife, Georgene, and after VE day he returned to start a second family,\u201d Rick Sickles writes. A<\/p>\n
first marriage had ended years before and had produced a son, Walter Jr. Rick Sickles was 3 and his brother Robin was 10 months old when the family moved to Florida in 1950. Walt Sickles\u2019 radio-announcing skills resulted in job offers, and he started the \u201cUncle Walt\u201d show first on radio, at WHOO in 1953.<\/p>\n
Soon, \u201cthe owners of Orlando\u2019s first TV station, WDBO (Way Down By Orlando), approached him to help the station open for business as programming director and air its first children\u2019s program,\u201d Rick Sickles writes. After 13 years, when the Cherry Broadcasting Co. sold the station in 1967, Walt Sickles became an instructor for Orange County Public Schools, eventually retiring to Cypress Hill Ranch near Lockhart, where he died at 88 on Feb. 11, 1997.<\/p>\n
At his death, Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood issued a statement saying that Walt Sickles \u201cserved as both community conscience and visionary and Orlando is a better community for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know he was a very special father to my brother Robin and to me,\u201d Rick Sickles adds.<\/p>\n