WHET Katie Kelly, WNBC Bowtied Lesbian Arts Critic

Was she fired or did she really willingly "retire" to teach English in Vietnam in 1991? That's the last time she was heard from -- 1991. Sue Simmons did pretty well compared to Katie.

• She died, didn't she? Pretty sure she did.

• I used to love watching Live at 5:00 way back in the 80s.

• She died. Something about napalm in the morning. She was allergic to its smell.

  The%20Heart%20of%20Darkness

• Her autographed framed photo was on the wall of a NYC Chelsea coffee shop on 8th and 23rd for years. I think Katie lived in the neighborhood. Is that coffee shop gone now? Is she really dead?

• Wow, I have not thought of her in ages. She was a real hoot. Between her, Sue Simmons and Chauncey Howell, Live at 5 was the gayest thing on television in the late 70s early 80s.

• Not much when you google.

  http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/ncw/kkelly.htm

• Chauncey Howell - WOW - haven't thought of him in at least 20 years!

• Sadly R7, when you Google Chauncey Howell, the first link is a rather unflattering account of some racist rant he went on while riding the LIRR.

  http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-103943.html

• Well, according to the link at r6 she was very much alive in the 1990s.

• That was al I could find when I googled her, too, r6, but I got the feeling it was a few years old.

• Its so strange. I did a Google image search using her name along with the WNBC, critic and New York and except for what R6 found, there is nothing there. Its almost as if she never existed. Even Rose Ann Scamardella has a Wiki page. Why no Katie?

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Ann_Scamardella

• Chauncey Howell was also a very loud Streisand hater on Live at 5. I couldn't believe they let him do it.

• I met Chauncey on the street a couple years ago. I ran into an elderly neighbor who was with him and introduced me. The neighbor is a really good guy, so the fact that they are friends speaks well of Chauncey.

• Chauncey still shows up on News12 Long Island on occasion. But Katie.? You can't even find a photo of her in one of her bow tie outfits. (My iPhone just corrected "Bowtie outfits" to "Bowie outfits." I wonder how Katie would look in a Space Oddity outfit.) Other oldster newscasters I remember from the newscaster days before the requirement to be a model-beautiful mixed race person: Robert Lape, Kevin Saunders, Pia Lindstrom, Gabe Pressman, Doug Johnson, the horrid little Milton Lewis, Melba Tolliver, Felipe Luciano, Jim Bouten, Joel Siegal. I think Gil Noble still has a show on wabc-tv. I remember reading a story in the 1990s about rent control people who were complaining about their landlord. One of them was Milton Lewis and I think he was paying less than $300 a month. The guy had been a highly-paid news reporter and was probably paying $100 a month back when he was working at eyewitness news. I had no sympathy for him.