Newsman âMark Davisâ Was Wheelingâs Walter Cronkite
(Publisher's Note: Joe Tarantini wasn't from here. He knew few people on his first day of work. By the end of his career, though, everyone in the Wheeling area was well aware of the newsman albeit by a different name. And history judges Tarantini as one of the valley's best news reporters of all time, and this is why.) He was a mixture between the legendary Walter Cronkite and the fictional Ron Burgundy, but for more than half of his life, not many in the Upper Ohio Valley knew Joe Tarantini. Radio listeners and television watchers throughout the tri-state region, however, were quite aware of âMark Davis,â a stage-named news director who was weaponized with a matter-of-fact voice, âI care about youâ eyes, and a gentlemanâs genuine sincerity. Davis didnât just deliver the news as one of the prominent anchors on WTRF TV-7, but he collected it, fact-checked it, and he stayed on it until he discovered the end of the story. Tarantini, or âDavis,â was an American newsman, and that mattered during the days when Ohio River communities between Steubenville and Benwood were engulfed by the soot of steelmaking and manufacturing of everything from a childâs Big Wheel to a grandmotherâs favorite candy dish. Davis told the regionâs residents about coal mine explosions, infrastructure expansions, campaign promises and election decisions, and so much more. âWhen the information is given to the people, on radio, television or in print, it must be accurate. I could never stress that enough. Always check the fact as though your job depends on it. Because the truth is, it does.â' Joseph Tarantini, aka âMark Davis,â narrated a story composed by people experiencing industrial prosperity in a blue-color culture surrounded by religious posturing and a sense of survival. He told the people the good news as readily as he offered the bad, but most importantly, he told the truth. âI realized my father was the real deal in the news business and I was intimidated by it, actually,â explained Gina Baker, one of Tarantiniâs three children. âI had a sister five years younger and when I was in high school she was very much into the journalism part of the industry. She wanted to be on the schoolâs newspaper staff, and all of that stuff. âI didnât want to any of those things because I felt, I knew then, I could never match what my dad had did and what he was doing then,â she recalled. âI didnât want to be compared like the other reporters who tried. My Dad was the news, and he was proud of it.â Tarantini was a very pleasant man when he was in the public, and he always took the time to speak with local residents. Just the Facts, Maâam Tarantini was born in Pittsburgh on January 19, 1931, to parents very proud of their Italian heritage. In fact, when he began his career with WHJB in Greensburg, the station manager order him to change his name was because Tarantini was âtoo ethnic.â âAfter first I said that I couldnât because it would upset my mother,â he wrote in 2006. âHe asked me of my mother was going to feed my wife and child. So, we compromised. He chose the last name and I insisted that I spell it my way to reflect by Italian heritage. So, Joe Terri was born.â Then he included, âMy mother was livid. I told her I spelled it with an âiâ at the end. She didnât speak to me for two months.â Tarantini is the father of three children to his first wife, including Gina Baker. âMy Dad would tell that story pretty often and just laugh about it,â Baker said. âBut he would tell people his real name because of how proud he was. He would get this look on his face and you could just tell how proud he was. âAfter that, he took a job with WOMP in 1961, and then he moved to WWVA quickly in 1962, and thatâs when he changed his on-air name again,â she said. âBut it wasnât until 1965 when he went to WTRF when people really got to know âMark Davis.â âIt wasnât until high school when my friends and classmates started making a big deal about who my dad was. No one cared when we were younger because we didnât really care about the news back then,â Baker explained. âThey would ask me if he was nice, and if he was always that serious. I remember someone asking me if he ever smiled, and my dad smiled a lot. He loved when he got to do for a living. âHe was Wheelingâs Walter Cronkite. He never said that, but I know he knew it,â she insisted. âI know people told him that, too, and that made him proud. He took it very seriously and he was the best.â Davis was the respected pillar of WTRF's news department for a few decades. An Honest American He married Edna in 1954 and they reared three children, Gina, Angela, and the late Joseph Tarantini Jr. Edna divorced Tarantini in 1965, though, and then she departed Wheeling on a motorcycle with a boyfriend two years later. âWe ran to the corner store where there was a pay phone so we could call our Dad at work, and when we told him he said, âWeâre going to make it work, donât worry,ââ Baker remembered. âAnd thatâs what we did. We made it work. And then, after he married his girlfriend (Peggy Potts Spurlin), there were seven of us kids (Phil, Susie, Joan, and Jackie), and he made sure it worked then, too. âWhen it came to affection, he didnât do a whole lot of that, especially in public,â she said. âBut we knew he loved us. He did tell us sometimes that he loved us, but he showed it all the time. He was the quiet type, though.â The journalist also stayed mum about the money made â or didnât make depending on oneâs professional perspective. Tarantini - near the end and on the left side of the table - covered politics closely, making several trips to the White House during his career. âMy father never really made the money people thought he did, and he was never paid what he felt he deserved either,â Baker revealed. âBut he didnât care either and thatâs why you didnât hear him talk about it. He loved this valley, and he loved the people here. I donât think he ever regretted moving to this area from where he was from in Pittsburgh because Wheeling used to be just a smaller version of Pittsburgh to him. The people were the same hardworking people. âWhen I think of my Dad, I remember the respect Iâve always had for him and for what he did,â she continued. âHe worked his rear end off trying to provide for all of us, and it all worked out really well. Honestly, he was talented at what he did every single day that I forgot that he had never graduated from high school let alone from college. He was very smart, very honest, and he learned his craft on his feet, thatâs for sure.â Tarantini, or âMark Davis,â was proud to have âdiscoveredâ on-air personalities like Frank OâBrien, Brenda Danehart, and Faith Daniels, an anchor who took her talents to the national level, and he was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and was interred in Section 4 or the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies following his passing on April 18, 2011. He was a reporter and an anchor for WTRF beginning in the mid-1960s. His daughter wished for his epitaph to read, âAn Honest American.â âWhen I have spoken to people from Wheeling who are older than 40, theyâve always asked about my father because theyâre old enough to remember him, but if they âve been younger than 40, forget about it,â Baker reported. âWhen people do realize Iâm his daughter, at first they donât believe it for whatever reasons, and then they have a lot of different questions. And a lot of people think I have my dadâs eyes. I hear that a lot. âThey talk to me about how different the news was back then, and that they could believe the news and the people delivering it. Itâs not like it is today and they recognize that,â she said. âMy father wasnât politically motivated in any way when he reported the news because he was such a believer in truth. He got the facts, and he always go it right,â Baker added. âThatâs what he cared about the most, and what loved the most. The people of Wheeling were lucky to have the real thing.â The award-winning journalist has three children, including Gina Baker. Read the full article
