Children's TV host Ranger Hal reminded Jacksonville: 'It's great to be an American'

Jacksonville's Ranger Hal got around: Everyone wanted him, and he was willing to go anywhere.

So you could find him feeding dolphins at Marineland, water-skiing at Cypress Gardens, racing at Daytona, riding in parade after parade. You could look up and see him in the skies flying with the Blue Angels, wing-walking over North Florida, even making a parachute jump (with almost disastrous results). You could find him all over town visiting sick kids, schools, libraries, shopping malls, churches, business openings, the zoo.

Or you could just wake up before 7:05 in the morning from 1958 to 1969, spin your TV channel knob to Ch. 4 and see Ranger Hal in his familiar park ranger outfit climbing down from his prop fire tower — ready for more jokes, games, contests, crafts, life lessons and Crusader Rabbit cartoons.

Henry Baranek, known on air as Henry Baran, was made for this life: He ran his high school variety show and was a natural storyteller, an expert dancer and the life of any party, as well as an announcer and disc jockey on the American Forces Network in Germany right after World War II.

After time in the broadcasting industry in Richmond, Va., he came to Jacksonville in 1957 to work for WJXT-TV 4, where he was an announcer.

The next year, when CBS's Captain Kangaroo took a vacation break, the local station and its owners at The Washington Post wanted to keep a kids' show going.

Like Ed McCullers' Skipper Ed, host of a children's show on rival station Ch. 12, Baranek hadn't set out to put on a costume, show cartoons and relate to kids across greater Jacksonville.

But he was given that task, and the ranger uniform, in a role based on another Ranger Hal already on the air up in Washington at WTOP.

It turned into a role he would embrace for more than a decade during the heyday of live children's TV shows, making "The Ranger Hal Show" a Jacksonville institution.

In a 1978 Times-Union article looking back on his life as Ranger Hal, Baranek told of his approach to children's TV.

"When we started, everyone had an idea of what a children's show should be like," he said. "Mine was that you had to be yourself and secondly that children are not idiots. I just couldn't bring myself to do kiddie talk."

You can see his humor and sincerity in his closing to each show: "Be good," he would tell his young audience, "have a happy birthday, get well soon, listen to Mom and Dad — they're your best friends — and remember, it's great to be an American."

One of Ranger Hal's sons, Tom Baranek, said that was just his dad's personality shining through.

"It personified his character," his son said. "He did exercises with the kids. God and country. He made the character the ideal of what he wanted to be; the golden rule, do unto others. It was halfway between 'Ozzie and Harriet' and 'Leave it to Beaver.' 'Andy Griffith.' Just old-school family values."

Out of Allentown, Pa.

Henry Barnanek was born in 1927 in Allentown, Pa., one of six children of immigrants from Czechoslovakia, now Slovakia. Their father was a janitor at a factory; their mother was a housekeeper.

“It was clearly a modest beginning, but I do remember he was kind of an entertainer or celebrity in high school," said another son, Dave Baranek. "He played sports and he was just a social guy from the start. I have no idea where he got that from.”

He was an avid dancer and so was his wife, Sandy, whom he married in 1956. In Jacksonville while raising a family, they liked to entertain, said Dave, who created a website, rangerhaljax.com, devoted to his father's time on the show.

“We all remembered, if people were over — they had a lot of friends — they’d go out and often end up back at our house, and my dad would be talking. He had so many stories. A great storyteller. He was a great talker, the center of attention in many situations.”

And on TV, he was a hit: In a Ch. 4 marketing booklet, the station noted that by 1959, early in the show's run, Ranger Hal was getting about 1,500 pieces of mail a week.

"The Ranger Hal" show was 45 minutes long, filmed live, and on Saturdays it had a studio audience made of up of children.

Vic DiGenti came to work at WJXT in 1963, right out of college, and worked there almost two years, including doing some camerawork on Ranger Hal's show. He recalls that he was serious in most matters but was easily able to take on his Ranger Hal persona.

“On the show he was full of energy, always acting up," DiGenti said. "He was a lot of fun. The kids loved him. And going up and down that fake tower they had — he was in his element, really. For a while there he was quite the star of the station.”

'Hero to our generation'

Dave and Tom Baranek, are both retired naval flight officers (Dave was a technical adviser and flew in scenes for the original "Top Gun" movie). They have numerous stories about their father.

One time, he was riding on a horse that bolted, and Ranger Hal — who was no horseman — simply had to hang on for his life. Then there was the time he made a parachute jump and landed badly, smacking his head on the airport runway. He'd wanted to wear his Ranger Hal hat for the jump, but he was made to put on a safety helmet.

A good thing, Ranger Hal later told his children.

Dave Baranek said the TV station got some angry pushback when its young audience was racially integrated — a move his father supported.

"He wasn't a social crusader," he said, "but he was more like: Kids are kids. My dad was a good man."

Henry Baranek was, of course, more than Ranger Hal. After the show ended at 7:50 a.m., he put away the ranger hat and was an announcer for the station, as well as host of some talk and informational shows.

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As such, he was recognized widely, which sometimes brought family trips to a halt as eager fans gathered to chat with him.

"You go up to the grocery store, he was always recognized," Tom said. "So he was always 'on' and presented that persona to the public.”

His father took the role seriously, he said, noting that when you see family Super 8 movies, he was always neatly dressed, like Ward Cleaver. "He was a hero to our generation,” Tom said.

Life in old Florida

Ranger Hal was frequently featured in what he called his "adventures," so he was a natural when the state tourism office hired him to travel across Florida in 1964 to film promotional spots for various tourist stops.

He went down the East Coast, across to the Gulf and everywhere in between. “To every parrot jungle, monkey jungle," Tom Baranek said. "They did 16mm film of Ranger Hal’s adventures at all these different venues. That was our summer vacation."

It will make you nostalgic, thinking about those places. "Everything you can remember about old Florida, Ranger Hal did," his son said.

The "Ranger Hal" show lasted until 1969, ending the same year as Washington's original "Ranger Hal." That's when Henry Baranek left the station, for reasons his son say they never quite understood.

After that, he did a little entertaining as Ronald McDonald at area McDonald's restaurants and as a singing butcher on Winn-Dixie ads. But for much of the time time after leaving the show he worked in industrial sales.

His outgoing personality helped in that field, Dave Baranek figures. "But his entertainment personality had to be submerged."

In the mid-1970s, Henry Baranek began feeling poorly. Doctors eventually discovered the cause, a cancerous tumor on his heart. "Two years before he died, they gave him six months at the most," Dave said.

Surgery on the tumor wasn't possible, but a new radiation technique was able to give him a good couple of years of life.

Henry Baranek died in 1979, at just 51. His wife, Sandy, lived until 2023.

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Dave Baranek said that while his father was much more than just Ranger Hal, there was a lot of overlap between the TV character and the man.

"Maybe 75 percent or something," he said. "I mean, he could be serious; as a father I remember him helping me with my homework, talking to all of us kids if our grades were not good, taking us on family vacation. He was not a goofy man — he was a smart guy, and Ranger Hal was like that. Ranger Hal wasn’t goofy. He was fun, but he wasn’t silly.”

He thinks that, after it was over, his father missed being Ranger Hal.

And you see that by what his father said in that 1978 Times-Union interview, as he looked back on that time in the spotlight, where he belonged.

"Everything was a pleasure," Henry Baranek told the interviewer. "From the moment I got into television and radio it was just terrific. I feel best in a studio. I walk into a studio and I breathe well."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville's 'Ranger Hal' TV show toured old Florida tourist spots