WNDU's 'calming force' Terry McFadden retiring after anchoring 6 p.m. Friday newscast

SOUTH BEND — WNDU-TV evening anchor Terry McFadden is described by colleagues as a “natural leader,” a “calming force in the newsroom” and a passionate journalist who gives the job everything he’s got on a daily basis.

“He doesn’t need to be the loudest in the room because when he talks, people listen,” WNDU reporter and anchor Lauren Moss said of her mentor and former co-anchor.

On Friday, McFadden, 63, will sign off for the last time after the 6 p.m. news. He’s retiring after 40 years in the industry. George Mallet will replace him, starting Monday, on the 5 and 11 p.m. shows.

In four decades, McFadden, a Saint Joseph High School and University of Notre Dame graduate, has performed jobs ranging from production hand to sports reporter to his current position of anchoring the 5 and 11 p.m. broadcasts with Melissa Stephens. He’s met famous people, visited places off limits to most and told heartbreaking stories.

How he got his start

Even though he had a small introduction into local news as a Tribune paperboy in the '70s, (He remembers delivering the edition reporting President Richard Nixon's resignation in August 1974.) journalism wasn't always his ambition.

As an undergrad at the University of Notre Dame in the early ‘80s, McFadden had planned to follow in the footsteps of his father and two older brothers and go to law school.

Before his senior year at Notre Dame, however, a friend asked if he’d be interested in a part-time production hand position at WNDU, the station where his sister, Maureen, worked as an anchor. He gave it a shot and a year later, had been “bitten by the TV bug,” he said. By that point, he wanted an on-air job, so he took a part-time position first working for WNDU’s then radio stations U93 and 15 Country and eventually moving into a part-time sports anchor job.

Word of mouth around the station was that there was a nepotism policy, so McFadden said he didn’t think he’d ever be able to hold a contracted position there because of his sister’s job. So when WSBT-TV approached him in 1987 about a full-time weekend news anchor job, he pursued it.

“Mo and Bro”

Fast forward to 1993, McFadden said, and the news director at WNDU asked Maureen why her brother worked for the competition. Turns out, there was no nepotism policy after all and McFadden was invited back. “I said, ‘Only if I can anchor with my sister,’” he said. That didn’t happen immediately, but about a year later, he was promoted to 5 p.m. co-anchor with Maureen. In 1999, the two became a popular evening anchor team that lasted for more than two decades until Maureen’s retirement in 2019.

After his sister’s departure, McFadden said, “I felt a little more responsibility because she was always the big gun. But, I wasn’t wet behind the ears.” He and Maureen always had a great rapport, he said, “so that translated really well onto the set.”

As a special treat for viewers, Maureen will come back to join her brother in his last newscast at 6 Friday evening.

Best story/worst stories

One of McFadden’s favorite stories during his broadcasting tenure was a piece for a WNDU program called “Off Limits,” where he took viewers to places most people don’t have access to. In the ‘90s, Notre Dame’s Golden Dome underwent a renovation. “I called and said, ‘Any chance I can get up there?’” he said. Soon, he took viewers up on the scaffolding to see inside and get a birds-eye view of campus.

McFadden grins thinking back to another story from the ‘90s when Michael Jordan played for the Chicago Bulls and Shawn Kemp for the Seattle SuperSonics and the teams met for a pre-season game at Notre Dame. His job wasn’t to cover the game, but rather to gather fan reaction to it.

Afterward, he said, "I was sent into the Bulls’ locker room to see if anyone would talk. Jordan is walking straight toward me and I said, ‘could I talk to you?’ and he walks right by me. But then, he turns into an alcove area with lockers and benches, so I ended up having a short interview with him. … I was nervous and he couldn’t have been nicer.”

One of the hardest stories he ever had to tell, McFadden said, was when U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski was killed in a car crash in Elkhart County, along with another local woman and two of Walorski's staff members, in 2022.

McFadden had worked with and befriended Walorski years earlier when she was a weekend photographer/reporter at WSBT. He described her as a hard-working and street smart journalist.

“The first weekend I worked at WSBT,” he said, “there was a bad crash on the Toll Road and Jackie said ‘come on. Let’s go.’” After waiting for what seemed like too long to talk with a police officer at the scene, McFadden said of Walorski, “she went up to a state trooper’s car and banged on the window.” Soon, they had the information they needed. “ I learned on that day you have to sometimes be aggressive,” he said.

Years later, after learning of her death, McFadden went on the air with the news. “I had to hold it together,” he said. “That was surreal. To this day, I think ‘How did I get through that newscast.’”

What’s next?

Looking ahead, McFadden said he and his wife, Laurie, who is the media advisor to broadcast students on WSND/WVFI Radio and NDTV at Notre Dame, will remain in South Bend. Their adult children: Michael, Sean, and Charlie, all moved out of state. Eldest son Michael moved back to South Bend in 2022. He works at Notre Dame and is engaged to Gabriella Loebach, granddaughter of Rocco Ameduri, whose Rocco's Original Pizza, is billed as the first pizza place in South Bend and the first slice Terry McFadden ate as a boy. Now, the McFadden’s first grandchild is on the way. Sean and his wife, Keenan, are expecting a son in March. And, they plan to move back to South Bend shortly after his birth.

“I’d been toying with the idea of retiring for a couple years,” Terry McFadden said. “Once I found out I’m going to be a grandfather, I said, ‘that’s it.’ The fact they’re moving back here is perfect.”

In addition to grandfatherly fun, he said, there are plenty of projects that need done on he and Laurie’s 1928 home in South Bend, in addition to an older cottage and pontoon boat on a lake in Pierceton that need a lot of TLC. There’s also that 1967 Mustang Fastback, which he bought in college and has restored, sitting in his garage.

But first up, he said he hopes to spend some time decompressing and then bonding with his grandchild. He’s going to get off social media for a while and take a step back from public life, so to speak, he said.

His advice for young journalists? “Know a little something about everything, if you can. Be well rounded. Learn about the world as much as you can. Don’t live life with tunnel vision.”

Earlier this week, McFadden said he’ll miss the people he works with, along with the excitement of breaking news. “Every day there’s some news story with a wrinkle you’ve never seen before,” he said.

Mike Pease, assignment manager at WNDU-TV, said McFadden will also be missed. “He’s got a passion for news,” Pease said. “People look up to him. He brings his A-game every day.”

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: WNDU anchor Terry McFadden retiring Friday after 40 years in industry