tvpirate05 1 Posted April 15, 2009 Share Posted April 15, 2009 Former general manager of WVEC-TV dies in Houston By Cindy Clayton The Virginian-Pilot © April 13, 2009 Employees of WVEC-TV remembered former general manager Mario A. Hewitt, who died of cancer during the weekend in Houston, as caring, generous and boisterous. “The employees here just loved him, they absolutely loved him,” said Janet Roach, who co-anchors the noon and 5:30 p.m. news shows. “There were a number of us who would call him from time to time.” Hewitt was diagnosed with cancer last year, she said. He moved from director of sales and marketing at WVEC to general manager in May 1997 and led the station to dominance in local news ratings at the dinner hour. He left in 2006, citing personal reasons. He had been charged with drunken driving two weeks before his resignation. He was 56 at the time. He went to work for a company in Houston shortly afterward, according to employees from WVEC who kept in touch with him. “He hired good people and he trusted that they would do the best job and then he sort of stood back and supported it,” Roach said. Deb Shollenberger, the station’s program manager, described Hewitt as generous and a “boisterous, laughing and loud kind of man.” “You couldn’t ask to talk with anyone any nicer, be it personally or professionally,” Shollenberger said. “From my perspective he was one of the coolest men I’ve ever met.” Funeral arrangements were not final. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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