Legendary Ohio TV weather man Dick Goddard passes away

Summit County native Dick Goddard who spent decades on TV telling Ohioans whether to grab an umbrella or wear a coat before venturing outside has died.

His daughter Kim Goddard has turned to social media in recent weeks asking for prayers, saying her father was gravely ill.

Kim said in one post in early June that her father had contracted the coronavirus.

Goddard died Tuesday morning at an undisclosed medical facility in Florida. He was 89.

When Goddard said his last farewell to viewers on Nov. 22, 2016, at WJW TV-8 in Cleveland he set a Guinness World Record for having the longest career as a weather forecaster at 51 years and 6 days.

This ended a broadcasting career that began a quarter turn of the TV dial at Channel 3, then KYW, on May 1, 1961, where he nervously referred to "froaking crogs" in an initial broadcast.

After a short 13-week contract, he moved on and eventually settled in at WJW where his subsequent contracts were much longer at some 3,000 weeks.

Born in Akron on Feb. 24, 1931, he called Green and eventually Medina home.

His career began when he joined the Air Force in 1949 and was sent off to meteorology school.

When he left the service, he went to Kent State and worked at the weather bureau at Akron-Canton airport where he would do updates for area radio stations.

This all led to a TV career where Goddard not only told viewers whether it was going to snow or be sunny but connected on a personal level.

Tens of thousands of fans would join him annually at the Wollybear Festival in Vermilion where they celebrated the furry weather-predicting caterpillar.

These same fans rallied around his efforts to raise awareness and money to help care for abused and abandoned pets.

He lobbied for what was called Goddard's Law in Ohio that made knowingly inflicting serious harm to a pet a felony.

Goddard also made frequent appearances in comedy sketches on the Big Chuck and Lil' John Show and was a statistician for the Cleveland Browns at home games from 1966 to 2011.

Al Roker, who worked opposite of Goddard at WKYC from 1978 to 1983 before moving onto the Today Show in New York, was once asked who was the top weatherman back in the day.

His answer: "It was Dick Goddard."

Craig Webb can be reached at cwebb@thebeaconjournal.com.