A surprise in the mail: 1957 map by CBS 2 weatherman P.J. Hoff is a treasure of broadcasting history
CHICAGO (CBS) -- When was the last time you got something good in the mail – something that was a surprise, really cool, a relic?
If you're a mail geek, a TV geek, or a weather geek, you might geek out at what CBS 2 Streaming Anchor Brad Edwards received in the mail. CBS 2 Meteorologist Ed Curran joined Edwards to show us what a special story it tells.
It came in an unassuming manila envelope from WBBM-TV, at 630 N. McClurg Ct. You may remember that address as belonging to our old building, which we left behind some 15 years ago and which has since been demolished – with the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab standing on its footprint.
But the envelope in question dates back to a time when that onetime horse stable and ice arena was our new broadcast center. The label for WBBM-TV bore the McClurg Court address, but the envelope also had a printed return address for CBS Television of 410 N. Michigan Ave. – the Wrigley Building – from the days before CBS consolidated operations at McClurg Court.
The postmark was Aug. 1, 1957.
Inside was a weather map – created by the great P.J. Hoff.
"He would design a map like this, and people would love this stuff - and they'd write to him they'd and say, 'Can I have one of your weather maps?'" Curran said.
The map came back to us from Mike Berkes, who now lives in Monmouth, Oregon. He told us he moved there about 20 years ago from Indiana.
Berkes' dad was a contractor, and Berkes' mom, Dorothy, was a war bride who came over from England. The weather map was addressed to her.
"She kind of felt like she won the lottery, because she got one of the maps," Berkes said. "It was a big deal."
The Berkes family lived in Gary, Indiana at the time.
"It was just a simpler time. It was a Beaver Cleaver time," said Mike Berkes. "My mom got it when I was little, like 5 years old - and I do remember her having all of her friends over to see it, and they all admired it."
How did Berkes come across the old map?
"It was just there forever, and it just kind of disappeared - and when we cleaned out her estate probably 20 years ago, we found it again - and then I brought it home and then I lost it," he said, "and I came across it the other day when we were looking for some pictures, and I was so excited. So my thought was to give it to WBBM, and I hope that something good can happen to it."
When it comes to famous members of CBS 2's weather department over the years, there are probably some names you think of right away – Steve Baskerville, Harry Volkman, John Coughlin. Before any of them – back when Coughlin's role at CBS 2 was that of an announcer and a children's and game show host – there was P.J. Hoff.
Hoff was born Piercy J. Hoffstrom in Mounds, Oklahoma, in 1896. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Washington, and took a job at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company after graduating, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences recalls.
Hoff launched his journalism career as a humor columnist and cartoonist at the St. Paul Dispatch in Minnesota, NATAS recalls. He joined CBS 2 in 1954 and became the station's first weatherman, working alongside anchorman Fahey Flynn.
"People found it entertaining as well as giving them the weather," Curran said. "He would do all these different characters – there was a character called Vice-President-of-Looking-out-the-Window."
But even then, the weather was more than just, "Look to the west," for Hoff.
Hoff, Curran said, was "an engineer by trade, but so smart as to say, 'How do I take it and bring it down to the people?'"
Hoff took the weather facsimile from the National Weather Service – then called the U.S. Weather Bureau – and turned it into a whimsical map with all different characters he created on his sketchpad, and which he brought to life with his animation skills. In addition to the Vice-President-in-Charge-of-Looking-out-the-Window, NATAS noted, Hoff's characters included Mr. Yell & Cuss – and Lil' Ah Choo, who helped provide the pollen count.
"P.J. Hoff was one of the first people to make weather entertaining. He would put a cloud maybe on the left-hand side of the map, and then he'd pull a string on the side of the map, and the cloud would walk across the map. He was just so original, and I feel like everyone thought they knew him – and as kids, when the weather came on, you didn't even peep," said Berkes. "TV was relatively new, and when the 10 o'clock news came on, everyone was quiet."
Hoff, who retired in 1968 and passed away in 1981, was the first in a line of legendary weathermen on WBBM-TV - several of whose names we mentioned earlier.
John Coughlin was next. Remember how we said he started out as an announcer and a children's and game show host at CBS 2? Published reports note that after Hoff's retirement, Coughlin was asked to step in when another station weatherman, Roy Allred, got sick. Allred later left, and Coughlin became the station's chief weatherman.
But Coughlin didn't come to the role as an expert in weather – so he began working with a tutor to learn all about it.
"They got him tutoring from Ted Fujita – Mr. Tornado – at the University of Chicago, that the Fujita Scale that we rank tornadoes on was named after. He came up with that," Curran said. "Imagine him being your teacher to learn weather."
Coughlin took over as lead weatherman at CBS 2 in 1969. In 1978, he was joined by Harry Volkman – who had been a weatherman for several years prior at two other Chicago TV stations. Before coming to Chicago, Volkman had broadcast the first ever televised tornado warning at WKY-TV in Oklahoma City in 1954.
John Coughlin and Harry Volkman made up CBS 2's weather team during the famous era of Channel 2 News in the big newsroom – with Bill Kurtis, Walter Jacobson, Don Craig, Harry Porterfield, Lester Holt, and other local legends on the anchor desk, and former Chicago Bear Johnny Morris as sports director.
Steve Baskerville - who had worked earlier in the 1980s with Kurtis on the CBS Morning News, which we now call "CBS Mornings" - joined Coughlin and Volkman at CBS 2 in 1987. Baskerville spent 30 years with CBS 2 – doing the weather forecasts every weeknight, reporting in-depth stories on the weather, and for several years showcasing the Best of Chicago in an acclaimed feature series – before retiring in 2017.
Numerous others have also stood in front of the weather map for CBS 2 over the years. In the 1990s, there was Paul Douglas, doing his nightly forecast from the Weather Deck on the rooftop of our old building. To name just a few others from the 1970s until recent years, there was Irene Rodriguez, Mike Tsolinas, Dave Price, Monty Webb, Steve Deshler, Markina Brown, the renowned meteorologist and aviator Jim Tilmon, Megan Glaros, and Don Schwenneker – who at various points served as weatherman, morning news anchor, and morning traffic anchor. Back in the early 80s, the unforgettable health and science editor Roger Field sometimes filled in as a weatherman on CBS 2 too.
Ed Curran and Mary Kay Kleist both joined CBS 2's weather team in 2002, Robb Ellis in 2017, and Laura Bannon and Chief Meteorologist Albert Ramon in 2021.
But it was P.J. Hoff who started it all. And the story of weather as a story started with Hoff too.
"P.J. Hoff - let's bring it down to the level that everybody can understand. And let's send this in the mail," Curran said. "It's social media."
Indeed it was social media, version 1. And it meant something.
After all, somebody sent us that map, after keeping it for 66 years.
