The Life of ROBERT KUDZMA

Being a meteorologist can be a thankless job — viewers often blame them for an errant forecast — and once a year, you’re upstaged by a groundhog.

But retired KDKA-TV chief meteorologist Bob Kudzma took the ups and downs with a sense of grace and an unshakable sense of humor, colleagues and friends recalled.

“He was a great guy and a consummate professional — it was an honor for me to be a part of that,” said KDKA anchorman Paul Martino, who came to the station in 1984. “What people might not know is that Bob was a riot to work with — he was a very funny, fun-loving guy.

“I remember one weekend, we had just gotten robotic cameras and they had some bugs in them. Bob is standing at the map, doing his forecast, and all of the sudden the robotic camera starts taking off and Bob literally hops across the floor to keep up with the camera while it drifted away. It was so funny. That was Bob.”

Fond memories poured in from far and wide for Mr. Kudzma, of Bethel Park, who died early Thursday at the age of 81.

When Mr. Kudzma came to the station in 1968, times were different in the television industry, Mr. Martino recalled.

“Bob arrived in the golden days of television, when we didn’t have cable or Netflix. It was just three or four television stations,” he said. “At that time, it was a battle between Channel 4 and Channel 2, and we dominated, so everybody knew you everywhere you went.”

Mr. Kudzma grew up in Nashua, N.H., and graduated in 1961 with a degree in mathematics and physics from the University of New Hampshire.

He joined the Air Force and received training in meteorology at Texas A&M University.

From 1962 to 1964, he was a first lieutenant stationed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he and a small group of other scientists were tasked with forecasting weather for Air Force One.

By 1965, he was reassigned to forecast weather for bombing raids and covert operations during the war in Vietnam. In the last year of his enlistment,1966, he was promoted to captain and stationed at the Pentagon.

After a two-year stint as meteorologist for United Airlines in Chicago, Mr. Kudzma, prodded by his wife, in 1968 started looking for TV meteorologist jobs even though he had no broadcasting experience. KDKA hired him.

“I kept looking at these people doing weather on television and I said, ‘I can do that,’” he recalled in an interview in May 2002, when he retired after 34 years on the air.

"They took a big chance on me, and I took a big chance on them," he said. "It actually worked out very nicely."

His first day on the air was Dec. 8, 1968, when, of course, it was snowing.

"Talk about being scared. I'll never forget that as long as I live. I was really bad, terrible. I could barely stand; my knees were weak. At least I got through it. It took me months before I relaxed," he told the Post-Gazette in 2002.

The occasional TV misstep provided fodder for Mr. Kudzma’s legendary wit, said KDKA sports director Bob Pompeani, who related a story about the late anchorwoman Patti Burns and her fondness for smoking off camera during the noon newscast.

“Bob was at the weather map, giving his forecast and the technical director accidentally hit the wrong button and there was Patti on the air, smoking her cigarette in the anchor chair,” he said, laughing at the memory. “And Bob says, ‘Right here, you see we have some clouds coming in.’ It was hilarious. He could always go with the flow  — he was very, very quick-witted.”

Mr. Kudzma had to be quick on his toes as well, especially if the late anchorman Ray Tannehill didn’t approve of his weather prognostication.

“If Ray didn’t like the forecast, he would ball up paper at the news desk and start throwing it at him,” KDKA anchorman Stacy Smith recalled, laughing.

“Bob was a great man. I used to love kidding him about ‘fix the weather good, Kudzma,’” said Mr. Pompeani about a promo from the 1980s, basically a spinoff from “The Godfather.” In the spot, a nefarious-looking gangster type orders Mr. Kudzma to “fix the weather good.” Mr. Kudzma responds with a nervous gulp.

“Bob used to always tease me,” said retired reporter Ralph Iannotti, who would check in with Mr. Kudzma about the weather before he went out on a story. “He’d say, ‘You aren’t going out tonight for a live shot, are you?’ He loved giving me a hard time. He was a really funny guy.”

"He was the most wonderful guy. Encouraging, smart, funny, and very caring," said retired anchorwoman Patrice King Brown.

When Mr. Kudzma told his co-workers that he was going to start a second job working as a bus driver in the Bethel Park School District, they were gobsmacked.

“Kudz [his nickname among co-workers] showed up one day and told us that he was going to start driving a school bus,” Mr. Smith recalled. “I said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, and I think I’m really going to love it.’ And he did, he really, absolutely loved driving the school bus.”

“He told me, ‘There’s another life out there for me someday,’” Mr. Iannotti said. “He was quite a guy — he was really an institution.”

Mr. Kudzma explained it this way to the AP in 2002: “I don’t do it for the money, but it’s nice to have it. I have a blue-collar worker mentality. And I’m proud of it.”

Mr. Kudzma continued working as a driver in the district until the pandemic struck last year.

In a long career full of many weather ups and downs, Mr. Kudzma was most proud of his “Storm of the Century” forecast in 1993, when he started predicting the blizzard six days before it struck, on March 13. Pittsburgh ended up with 24 inches of snow in 24 hours.

“I will never forget that,” Mr. Smith said. “We were in our 2 p.m. rundown meeting for stories that would be on the 6 p.m. newscast one day and Bob never attended because there was no need. But that day he did, and he said, ‘I just want to let you know that there’s a chance a storm is coming.’ He kept us apprised for the next week and it was just amazing how he was able to make that kind of prediction so far ahead of time.”

“I stuck my neck out, counting the days until it arrived,” recalled Mr. Kudzma in the 2002 AP story.

And had he been wrong?

“I would have run away and hid,” he said.

“He was truly respected, admired and loved,” Mr. Smith said during the KDKA newscast Thursday evening.

He expanded further on his thoughts in an interview shortly afterward.

“Bob was uniquely unique, in my opinion,” he said. “He was really one-of-a-kind. And above everything else, he knew his craft.”

There are no immediate plans for a memorial. He is survived by his wife, Charlene; they had four children.

The Kudzma family suggests donations to the Vietnam Veterans of America.