Tales from the Road: Memoirs from a Lifetime of Ohio Travel, Television, and More By Neil Zurcher 296 pages Gray & Company $14.95.

When then-WJW Channel 8 News Director Virgil Dominic sent veteran reporter Neil Zurcher out on assignment for several Ohio travel stories in 1980, he had no idea he was sending him down the road to being a regional icon.

“I don’t think Virgil had any idea that we would get as strong a response as we did,” Zurcher said earlier this month at his Bay Village home. “He was a top-notch news director who was just looking for some good stories. None of us anticipated that they would take off like they did in terms of popularity.”

Those first few stories led to Zurcher and a variety of Channel 8 cameramen, producers and directors putting out the fabled “One Tank Trips” stories, first from Ohio and later from surrounding states and Canada. Those trips have led to Zurcher writing several books, with the latest, “Tales from the Road,” being published and released this summer by Cleveland publisher Gray & Company. The paperback volume is available in area bookstores.

For Zurcher, the latest book chronicles much of his years in radio, television and traveling through the years.

Zurcher will tell you it’s long way from his origins in rural Henrietta, Ohio, in Lorain County.

“I can remember setting up a cardboard box TV set and entertaining people and thinking it was fun,” he said. “But I didn’t really envision at that time making a living doing something like that.”

Zurcher, who used a variety of vehicles in his stories through the years, with a 1959 red and white Nash Metropolitan being the most well- known, also recalls and details in the book his near-disastrous early driving experiences. Zurcher’s driving escapades on motorcycles and vehicles made for some close shaves for Zurcher and emotional trials for his neighbors, friends and relatives.”

“After some of the near-accidents and close calls I had on the road, my parents definitely were reluctant to let me back on the road for some time,” he said. “From almost clipping people and animals to causing some real scenes, it’s a wonder they ever let me have keys to anything again.”

Neil Zurcher

Zurcher also doesn’t stint in telling tales about his early days in journalism, when he started out as a newspaper reporter at the weekly Oberlin News-Tribune, then as a radio reporter at WEOL in Lorain and Elyria. Zurcher said his small-town origins in Henrietta, as well as his early experiences in newspaper and radio, helped in his later TV work, first as a freelancer, then as a full-time TV journalist.

“You learn a lot about people, talking to them and getting a good story right in those type of jobs,” he said. “You learn how to talk to people and get them talking about something interesting you can tell others as part of the story.”

Some of those experiences include a man stripping down in a radio station while Zurcher in vain tried to get him to stop after seeing him on the other side of the glass in the studio.

“We had some colorful times in those days running between studios in Lorain and Elyria,” he said.

His later days in TV proved to be just as colorful and successful both before and during his one-tank trip days.

“We had a lot of good stories to tell in the area,” he said, noting the book goes into tales of covering police chases, prison riots plus major political, religious and business figures of the day.

After he became more well-known for his one-tank trips, Zurcher found that they sometimes could help or hinder him when he was working on another type of story.

“Sometimes people would recognize you quicker and talk more,” he said. “But other times they’d be asking for our one-tank trip books or wanting to talk about those in the middle of another story.”

Once he got into the one-tank trips, Zurcher found he had a ready supply of tales to tell around the region.

“It got so that we decided to change the one tank definition from a tank of gas to get to and from the destination, to a tank of gas to get to the destination,” he said. “That really opened things up for us in terms of more stories.”

With that kind of regional reach, Zurcher and his cohorts could find a variety of stories like taking a variety of rides on both vehicles and animals, as well as checking a wide variety of places.

One former Channel 8 colleague, Denise Dufala, a native of North Olmsted and currently an anchor for WOIO Channel 19, said Zurcher was a never-ending source of good will and journalistic knowledge.

“Neil’s such a great guy and a sweetheart to work with,” Dufala said. “He was always great to work with and knows all the nooks and crannies of different places when you’re doing a story. He can give directions right down to telling what way to turn as you past a certain dumpster in a certain area. Just about everybody knew him and he knew them too.”

Dufala said she has fond memories of doing one one-tank trip story with Zurcher where she was water-skiing.

“One of the great things about Neil is that he did stuff that was interesting and that people did themselves, like when we did the waterski story or he did camping stories because that’s the type of stuff we did when I was young,” she said. “Now I do things like that with my husband and son. He shows you stuff that you can do with your family and are pretty economical, but a lot of fun. That’s good anytime, but particularly helpful in the current economy.”

Since Channel 8 was a CBS affiliate for many years before switching to FOX, Zurcher, said he frequently encountered CBS TV personalities. One person he didn’t encounter, even though they did similar stories, was Charles Kuralt, known for his on-the-road stories for CBS.

“We never got the chance to meet,” Zurcher said. “But I always liked and respected his work.”

With the proliferation of first Cable TV and now the Internet, Zurcher said the wide range of travel and other programming helps validate work like he and Kuralt did.

“Seeing all these programs certainly shows there’s interest in those areas,” he said. “I’ve certainly enjoyed being able to do it.”

On the Web:

• "Tales From the Road"/ Gray & Company Publishers
• Neil Zurcher's One Tank Trips blog

Previous West Life articles:

• Just can’t wait to get on the road again? (Sept. 6, 2006)