Cathy Seipp recalls meeting Tom Snyder:

This reminds me of my first up-close-and-personal experience with news anchors - an elementary school field trip to the KNBC newsroom in L.A. My field trip buddy, a girl named Susie Briggs, was for some reason terribly excited by the prospect of getting Tom Snyder to sign her autograph book. Why, I do not know. This was years before Tomorrow With Tom Snyder, and the ensuing Dan Aykroyd imitations on Saturday Night Live. Certainly no one else brought an autograph book that day.

It was a pretty tedious field trip, involving much stepping over cables and watching people sit at desks reading the news. But at the end, my field trip buddy Susie went up to Snyder and asked for his autograph.

I will never forget Snyder leaning down to say, “Can I just shake your hand instead? Because if I sign yours, all the other kids will want me to sign theirs too.”

I stared up at him, thinking, “Is he out of his mind? Can’t he see that she’s the ONLY one with an autograph book? Who does he think he is - Bobby Sherman or something?”

This reminds me of a personal story. Or two.

Once, I was visiting Quincy, IL -- a smallish town in the middle of nowhere. I was in the Diary Queen with my girlfriend, and had waited a long time in line to get near the counter. A professionally-dressed woman walked in, cut in front of me (no "excuse me", or "sorry" even, not a word of kindness) and then left. I thought about saying something, but wondered if maybe she was just having a bad day.

Saw her on the TV that evening: She was one of the local news anchors. Had I known she was quasi-famous (and rude), I would have said something.

Now, finally, the good stuff: When I was a kid in Milwaukee, Paul Joseph, the local weather forecaster, came to my kindergarten class, back in the early 1970s. I'd never met someone who was on TV regularly before, so I brought an autograph book, which Paul Joseph graciously signed. Like in Seipp's class, I was the only one who'd asked for an autograph.

I later discovered I had no interest in collecting autographs. So for years the little red autograph book just sat on my shelf, with only that signature in it.

Anyway, the point of this boring little personal vignette is to thank Paul Joseph, where-ever he is, for being a genuinely nice guy and not being full of himself like so many other media personalities.

Paul Joseph, you rock.