Have you ever been Wally Pipped?

Not sure how to answer that? I wasn’t either — until about 30 years ago, when I worked at WDAY-TV alongside a delightful guy named Brian Walz. He was one of those people who made friends everywhere he went, including as he strolled through the newsroom on any given night to pick up scripts or just to say hi.

It was Brian who introduced me to the name Wally Pipp — or more accurately, what it meant to be Wally Pipped.

He brought up that name nearly every time a news anchor took a day off.

Say, for example, Marv Bossart — who anchored the news before Dana Mogck and Kerstin Kealy — needed a night off, reporter Kevin Wallevand might have filled in.

The conversation would go something like this:

Brian: So, Marv, you have the night off?

Marv: Yep. Kevin

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