Longtime Northern Nevada television personalities Tad Dunbar and John Tyson were having lunch together a few weeks ago and reminiscing about their more than two decades together at KOLO-TV, Channel 8.
Dunbar retired in 2007 from KOLO after 38 years as a reporter and news anchor. Tyson remained with the station until he was fired last year.
"You know, from a ratings perspective, Tad and I were untouchable. Then, suddenly overnight, we became dinosaurs," Tyson says.
He shrugs.
But Tyson has gotten a second act in life and he says he relishes every day doing what he loves, spinning stories about the places and people that built the Silver State.
"After I was fired, I really didn't know what I was going to do," he says.
Then, good friend Dan Watkins, who had been regional sales manager for KOLO, suggested lining up some sponsors and pitching Tyson's storytelling to KKOH radio.
"I said let's do it, and much to my surprise and delight, people seem to be very pleased with it."
While some may see Tyson as a historian, he is quick to dispel such thoughts.
"That's simply not true," he says. "I am a storyteller with a nose for history. Don't confuse me with Guy Rocha or Phillip Earl. They are true historians. My stories come from deep inside me. Ninety percent come from me asking myself, 'Gee, wonder what that is? Or, how did that get there? Or who is that old geezer?'"
Over the years, some have portrayed the 67-year-old Tyson as flamboyant or, in some cases, difficult.
"I make no bones about it," he says. "I have a type-one personality. I pursue my dreams, pursue what I want to do, and sometimes you leave some destruction in your path. But in 1996, when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I had to come face-to-face with my mortality. Now there is a calendar to mark off how long you are going to live. I had surgery, and now, some 16 years later, I'm still going."
Tyson still lives in Virginia City where he first worked as a part-time cattle and horse brand inspector and as a range management officer for Storey County. The Comstock has become ground zero for the many colorful stories the tall, white-haired, mustached personality has gathered over three decades since moving here in 1981.
A transplanted easterner, Tyson has worked many different jobs. Among them:
* A cowboy in Wyoming and in Nevada
* An engineer on a steam locomotive in Virginia City and Ely
* Several years in law enforcement, including as a police chief
* A public affairs officer with the BLM in Susanville
* A singer-balladeer under the name "Elvis McCloud"
* Host of "John Tyson's Journal" on KOLO-TV.
Tyson was born in Bethlehem, Pa., and raised on a farm that had been in the family for generations. His father and grandfather worked for Bethlehem Steel. He learned to ride horses on an adjoining farm and developed a love for western cowboy lore.
"I wanted to ride the range like my early TV cowboy favorites Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Tex Ritter and Johnny Mack Brown," he says. "After I graduated high school in 1962, I packed up and moved to Wyoming where I spent some time on a cow ranch."
He later joined the Air Force and spent a year in Vietnam as a dog handler with airport security. Returning home in 1967, he joined the Novato, Calif., police department and earned a degree at Santa Rosa Junior College. He enjoyed law enforcement, but it was on a vacation in 1979 to Arkansas tourist mecca, Eureka Springs, that his life took a significant turn.
"The police chief was retiring, so I applied for the job and got it," Tyson says. "There were about 1,600 people living there, but during the tourist season, we added another 1.5 million people. I was named Arkansas police chief of the year twice, but politics and other stuff caused me to burn out. I suffer from 'screw you, I quit' syndrome."
While in Eureka Springs, Tyson also did a weekly radio show called "Mirror of America" that played jazz and Broadway songs of the '30s and '40s. He also became known as the town's singing police chief because he would perform with his guitar at various restaurants and bars there under the name "Elvis McCloud," a name he fashioned from Elvis Presley and the TV series, "McCloud," which was about a New Mexico policeman chasing bad guys in New York City.
"I've never been inhibited," he says. "I have never been afraid to be embarrassed. I don't take myself seriously, but I do take my work seriously."
He says it is a trait he didn't see often enough with some of the newcomers on television.
"I called them star babies because many behaved as if they were descendants of the Immaculate Conception. But, you know, I would tell them, 'Whoa, wait a minute. I was the one born in Bethlehem, just 20 miles from Nazareth.'" He fires off a hearty laugh.
Tyson's love for railroad steam engines was embedded in the huge, noisy steam locomotives that traveled the seven railroads bringing ore into the Bethlehem Steel mills. When he moved to Virginia City, he worked part time on the V&T railroad, then in 1999, he went to the Nevada Northern Railway in Ely where he still goes several times each year.
"I normally run Engine No. 40, it's one of the original glamour girls with the passenger cars built in the 1880s," Tyson says. "I love going out there. Sometimes, I will stay for several days just working in the shop."
How does Tyson balance his many activities? "You've got to be comfortable in your own boots," he says, "and you have to do those things you really enjoy, to marvel in the fact you are doing something that allows you to breathe new air every day."
