Maryland public television rhea feikin biography
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The Role of a Lifetime
Rhea Feikin ’56 grew up wanting to be an actress, but it turned out the role she was always meant for was just being herself.
After nearly 50 years at Maryland Public Television, the first lady of MPT will retire Sunday after a career that saw her go from hosting a game show for the Maryland Lottery and appearing in the 1988 bio “Hairspray” to being the face of MPT pledge drives.
“I sort of had a talent for begging,” she said.
The Baltimore native turned her UMD degree in speech pathology and theater experience at Maryland into a gateway to TV. Working as a speech therapist, she volunteered for an educational program at WBAL, hosting “Betty Better Speech” and then writing, producing and starring in the local children’s show “Miss Rhea and Sunshine.” That collaboration with puppeteer Cal Schumann led to their pairing for evening weather reports.
After the hållplats fired them—prompting a mischievous Feikin and Schumann to walk off set midway thr
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For more than five decades, Rhea Feikin has graced the television screens in Marylanders’ homes, first as the star of the educational program “Betty Better Speech” and children’s show “Miss Rhea and Sunshine,” both on WBAL. Then, with the help of a puppet named J.P., she read the weather on the station’s newscasts.
But most know Feikin as the “First Lady” of Maryland Public Television, where she has worked since the 1970s, starting out as a freelancer before becoming a correspondent on the “Consumer Survival Kit” and, eventually, the host of the arts series “Artworks,” interview series “Impressions” and the localized “Antiques Roadshow” program “Chesapeake Collectibles,” among other shows. Perhaps her most prominent role at the station was as the on-air host of the pledge drive specials.
There’s so much more she’s done off-camera, too, helping to co-found Baltimore Center scen and serving on the boards of the Baltimore School for the Arts and Gordon Center for Performing Ar
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Rhea Feikin ended more than four decades of service to MPT and its viewers with a final pledge appearance on March 1, 2020.
By any definition, it’s been a most successful and significant broadcasting career, sprung from simple roots and developed through creativity, flexibility, and hard work. The Baltimore native grew up in an apartment behind her parents’ grocery store in Hampden. She attended the University of Maryland, where she starred in stage productions and toured with companies entertaining military troops. Rhea earned a speech pathology degree and became a speech therapist in Baltimore City schools. It was while teaching that she first entered broadcasting with an educational TV show, Betty Better Speech.
However, Rhea’s breakthrough came as host of WBAL-TV’s children’s program Miss Rhea and Sunshine, which she also wrote and produced. Adults learned to know Rhea as co-host of the nightly weather forecast dubbed “Rhea and JP.” When she left WBAL, she established a