TV host 'Skipper Ed' always reminded Jacksonville children: 'Mind your manners'

Back in 1961, Ed McCullers didn't set out to become "Skipper Ed," the avuncular host of a children's TV show chockfull of cartoons, magic tricks, clowns, games and conversations. It aired with a studio audience of children from Jacksonville and beyond, done live so that anything could go wrong at any time, although it usually all went happily right.

When it began for him, he was the new guy at Ch. 12. And when "Skipper Jack" left, McCullers was asked to put on the skipper's hat, temporarily. That lasted until 1973, with a brief revival in the 1980s.

He was happy to stick around. His show, “Popeye & Pals” — and the children who appeared with him — meant a lot to him, he later told the Jacksonville Journal. “Without getting gushy, I had deep feelings for it,” he said.

In return, he was much admired and recognized everywhere in town.

Many thousands of local children came to be on afterschool TV with Skipper Ed — school groups, church groups, sports teams, scouts and more. So many children: A 1977 newspaper story on "the soft-spoken Jacksonville native” made note of an estimate "that some 110,000 youngsters made their TV debuts with Skipper Ed.”

They kept him on his toes. “Kids are the only honest people in the world … and TV has a way of putting a spotlight on a phony," he said.

Popeye and Bozo

The hour-long "Popeye & Pals" was always live and was mostly ad-libbed, so the potential for disaster was always there. As McCullers once said, “I was wet on, thrown up on and kissed … but the first consideration was never to make the child look bad.”

Once he was doing a commercial about the virtues of a particular orange drink when the boy sitting next to him kept tugging on his arm until Skipper Ed acknowledged him. The host then asked him if he liked the drink.

“No, I can’t stand it,” he said. “My mother won’t buy it.”

They had a good laugh about that.

On another show, Skipper Ed and his sidekick Bozo the Clown (Bill Boydston) were moving a bookcase that suddenly toppled, pinning McCullers under it. “I’m fine,” he said, lying on the ground. Then he lifted up an arm and cried: “Let’s go, Popeye!”

That familiar slogan, done with a raised fist that at least one viewer complained was Communistic, was the show's long-running signal for the next "Popeye & Pals" cartoon to begin.

“I’ve seen them all,” he once said of the Popeye episodes. But he was OK with that.

Popeye, he said, "was really a hero to the kids at a time when we needed some heroes."

He was also pleased to note that he got many letters from children assuring him they were eating their spinach. Just like Popeye.

A TV celebrity in Jacksonville

Being recognized comes with the territory when you're a local TV personality. Perhaps even more so decades ago.

"In that time period, you only had three local stations. And every afternoon, that person was coming into your living room via TV, and they were your friend, no matter what," said McCullers' third wife, Dana Thomas. "So you always felt like you knew them on a personal level."

She laughs at a memory that illustrates that.

"One time, Edward and I were checking out of the grocery store, and the lady looked up and looked at him and said, 'Do you know who you are?' He just looked at her and said, 'Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. But I'm guessing you're thinking Skipper Ed?'"

The affable character of Skipper Ed came easily to him, said his son, Scott McCullers, who lives in Washington, D.C.

“He was a friendly guy, didn’t mind being recognized, didn’t mind people coming up and talking to him. He liked to talk to people too, to hear stories from other folks. He enjoyed being a celebrity."

Popeye & Pals

Ed McCullers was raised in Jacksonville and graduated from Andrew Jackson High School. He was at the University of Florida when World War II interrupted his studies and went on to serve as a hospital corpsman in the Navy, stateside, from 1945 to 1948.

Years later he was working as a ticket agent at the old Imeson Airport when a local radio executive heard his voice making announcements on the airport’s PA. The exec liked the calm, resonant voice and tracked him down.

That led to a job in radio at WPDQ, then WJAX. From there he moved to TV where he was made a staff announcer at WFGA (later called WTLV). His duties soon changed: The station had a children's show, then called "Popeye’s Playhouse," which McCullers took over as temporary host after he'd been there barely a month.

His family said there was a lot of him in the character of Skipper Ed. Consider the message that ended each show, where he would advise his young viewers: “Remember, mind your manners."

Scott McCullers said that wasn't just part of the act. "That was a big deal for him at home too. I heard 'Mind your manners' a lot.”

Richard Gainey, who grew up on the Westside, had personal experience with that during one of two childhood appearances on "Popeye & Pals."

During a break, he made a rabbit ears' gesture behind another kid's head. Skipper Ed saw that and — very firmly and politely — told him to stop or get off the show. "He was very adult about it," Gainey said. "I didn't do a thing afterward."

In 1973, Gainey joined WTLV and worked with McCullers on his show. He was already an admirer of him, but then became a friend as well. He later started a Facebook page for fans of Skipper Ed.

"I liked Ed so much, I wanted to do something to honor him," Gainey said. "He was the nicest fellow. He was a father-like figure."

Not everyone was a fan though after the show invited Black children into the audience in the late 1960s. Some people complained, though McCullers later told a reporter that complainers were far outweighed by fan mail.

It did get a little ugly though, a little tense, after someone put a cherry bomb that exploded in his car, which led to increased security for a while for him at the TV station.

His daughter, Kelly Hain, who lives in Salisbury, N.C., said her father was committed to integrating the show to reflect its viewers.

"As an adult, that’s something I’m super proud of," Hain said. "We were raised to be compassionate, kind. It didn’t matter where anybody was from or what they looked like. Dad was just like that."

Golden days of kids' TV

Pop-culture buff Ed Tucker, 57, who lives in Jacksonville, remembers being 5 or 6 and avidly watching Skipper Ed on early cable TV in his home in Ocala. Tucker, who stages vintage collectible shows called Retrorama, notes that many stations across the country had their version of Skipper Ed, with genial hosts known as captain or ranger or sailor or something like that.

In Jacksonville, WJXT TV-4 had another popular host, Ranger Hal (Henry Baranek), whose show ran from 1958 to 1969. Later Kent Lindsey played Safari Sam from 1985 to 1998 on WAWS TV-30.

Kent Lindsey, 1953-2015: Former 'Safari Sam' host battled cancer with 'grace and gratitude'

It's a shame that those days are largely gone though, Tucker said.

"That's largely shifted. Before that, everybody had their own little local show, then as time went on everything started to get a lot more homogenous," he said. "Rather than a station going to the trouble of making their own thing, they just went to a syndicated show. Now if I watch NBC in Jacksonville, Florida, and you watch NBC in New York, 95 percent of what we see is the same."

Skipper Ed: goofy and cornball

McCullers stayed at WTLV for 27 years, through ownership and management changes, resigning in 1988. After Skipper Ed, he became the station's public affairs director and hosted telethons and grown-up shows where he interviewed celebrities such as Pearl Buck, Jimmy Carter, Johnny Weissmuller, Don Ameche, Danny Thomas, Hubert Humphrey and Liberace.

'One story, one person:' Ken Amaro on his 42 years on TV at First Coast News

He still liked working with kids, he told a reporter. “I guess I’m still a kid myself," he said.

He got that chance again in 1983 with a big Skipper Ed reunion show to mark the reopening of the historic Florida Theatre. In 1987 he was back with the debut of “The New Skipper Ed Show,” a Saturday morning show with a studio audience of kids aged 5 to 12.

It didn’t last long, as he retired after undergoing heart bypass surgery in the fall of 1987, about nine years after a heart attack led to open-heart surgery.

To help with his recovery, he and his wife Dana moved to Neptune Beach where he could take walks on the sand.

In a news story at the time, Dana said he never got tired of being stopped by people who wanted to talk about Skipper Ed. McCullers said he liked to tell people that his new occupation was serving as custodian of the Atlantic Ocean and its beaches.

McCullers was 64 when he died in 1992. Shortly after that, the Times-Union's Nancy McAlister caught up with some of the adults who’d appeared on his show, some of them numerous times.

“He was rock steady and reliable," one fan said. "Yet he was goofy. Here was this guy, you never knew what kind of cornball thing he would do.”

As a Jacksonville Journal article in 1979 made clear, McCullers remained nostalgic for Skipper Ed and for all those children who promised him they were upping their intake of spinach.

"Sometimes," he said, "I have a dream of thousands of people lining up outside demanding we do the show again."

In 1983, a decade after "Popeye & Pals" was canceled, he assured readers and fans that he was satisfied with how things had turned out in his long, varied life broadcasting to people in the city where he grew up.

“Some people say my life has not been hampered by an excess of ambition," he said. "But I’m happy where I am."

Coming soon

Be on the lookout in the coming days for another flashback to Jacksonville's nostalgic TV. Next up, reporter Matt Soergel will tell the story of another iconic television show for youngsters and its host Ranger Hal (Henry Baranek).

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Skipper Ed's Popeye TV show was must-see for Jacksonville children