X-Ray Vision

Kimberley McGee

Thursday, March 18, 1999 | 12:13 p.m.

A stuffed groundhog toy, pennies glued over its plastic eyes, is tacked to the entrance of Cathy Ray's cubicle, covered in pink cloth.

It is a reminder of an on-air blunder Ray committed in February. During a 6 p.m. newscast on KTNV Channel 13, the station ran a national story about the passing of one town's groundhog, ironically, on Groundhog Day. The voice-over on the footage said, "His last words were, 'It will be an early spring.' "

Ray, suppressing a giggle, had to follow this, uh, sad news with a more tragic story by saying, "On a much more serious note ..."

That's when she lost it. The smooth broadcast veneer broke as she struggled to hide her guffaws.

"Sometimes it happens, but people understand, I think," she says, still recovering from having relived the episode. "We are all human."

The perfectly-coiffed, professional TV anchor from Utica, N.Y., has struggled through more than a few flubs in her day. The nurse-turned-newscaster, who has been with Channel 13 for five years, says she has chased life's opportunities, always following her personal motto: "Persistence, professionalism and patience will always pull you through."

Perry Boxx, news director at KTNV, says Ray's personable quality makes her a commodity at the station. "(Viewers) look at her and see a real person."

Medical issues, he says, are among the top stories in which the public is interested, and Ray's personal style makes medicine less intimidating.

"She has no air of pretention, she is someone who has worked in the real world," Boxx says. "She hasn't been in TV her whole life."

Ray concurs: "Any break I've ever gotten I got on my own. ... You can't sit back and let things come to you."

Although Ray's family was in medicine -- her father was a pharmacist, her mother was a dental hygienist and her brother and cousins were medical school-bound and have since become doctors -- her heart was in drama.

"That's truly my love, musical theater," she says. She worked in summer stock in central New York State from 7th grade until age 17, when she entered Marymount College in Tarrytown, N.Y., and encountered reality.

"I was seeing, at a very early age, what these young (aspiring actresses) were doing to get a job in the city," Ray says. "(They were) starving, sacrificing."

She looked for the shot in the arm that would guarantee her a solid career to fall back on if theater life became too difficult to continue. Among her eclectic electives, she had tallied up chemistry and biology courses, and eventually chose nursing.

"I thought it would be great to help people," Ray says.

She left Marymount for the nursing program at Niagara University in upstate New York -- where her brother and cousins had successfully pushed through medical school -- and where a nun sealed the deal when she told the aspiring actress about the school's top-rated theater department.

"I lived at the theater while studying nursing -- playing prostitutes, (in such plays as) 'Sweet Charity.' " During rehearsal breaks, she pored over the thick medical texts in the dressing room.

After graduation, at age 21, she earned a masters degree in oncology, the study of cancer, from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and she studied and worked at Roswell Park, a cancer institute.

"At Roswell Park, we were saving people left and right, there were new (treatments)," Ray says, explaining that the research institute tested new combinations of chemotherapy and the latest surgical techniques.

In 1978, she married her college sweetheart, Jeff Ray, and moved to South Bend, Ind.

The next two years proved difficult as she worked to strengthen a newly-built cancer ward at a local hospital.

"I had four to six patients of my own that I cared for entirely -- their (medicines), hygenic care -- they were my responsibility and you develop a bond with these people," Ray says.

The cutting edge cancer treatments she had practiced at Roswell were slow to come to South Bend. "I went to a lot of funerals and held a lot of hands," Ray says. "It was primarily a terminal floor."

Ironically, members of her family back home in Utica would also be affected by the disease. The emotional drain had become almost too much for the then-24-year-old.

"What made it difficult to detach (from patients) was that my grandmother died, my aunt died of pancreatic cancer and my mother came down with breast cancer all in three months time when I was on that ward," Ray says. "I thought, 'I've got to get a diversion.' "

The call of news

Local newscasts caught her attention.

"You are helping people, it's a public service and that's how I've always viewed what I do," she says, referring to both news and nursing.

She didn't slip into broadcasting as easily as she had her nursing whites.

"I bombed," she remembers of her first on-air experience at the University of Notre Dame's radio station, WNDU, next door to the schools's television studio.

As the news was ripped off of the wire service and handed to her, she began to doubt her decision. "My hands were shaking so badly that the noise from the paper went out over the air."

Three hours later, after working through her fear, she was offered a job, with the option of working on television.

"I thought, 'What do I have to lose?' " Ray says.

Television, she discovered, was the creative outlet she needed to express herself and satisfy her desire to help people.

Within three months, a position opened for health reporter/co-anchor on NBC affiliate WNDU's 6 p.m. newscast. The station's news director and co-anchor, Mike Collins, taught her the ropes.

"I was in the right place at the right time with a man (who) was willing to take a chance on me," Ray says.

Her husband, Jeff, returned to law school, and Ray supported them. (It was her turn, she says.) When her contract with the station was up, and Jeff had finished law school, she looked for another anchor job elsewhere in Indiana.

She applied for a position at a larger Indianapolis station and lost out to a more experienced news woman. But Ray made the loss a win through tenacity.

"I called the station that she had left, and the news director answered," she explains. "That never happens." WJAR in Providence, R.I., hired Ray as its health reporter and co-anchor in November, 1983.

She spent the next nine years in Providence, a larger market, and settled down to start a family.

The couple had two boys -- Matthew, now 12 1/2, and Terence, 10, who, by being born three months premature and weighing less than 2 pounds, moved Ray deeper into medical journalism.

"We almost lost him," she says. "The people who saved his life did such a wonderful job."

As a cathartic project, and a thank-you to the nurses and doctors who saved her son, Ray wrote and hosted a five-part series on saving infants and a half-hour show that aired on WJAR titled "The Miracle Workers." She spent weeks at the neonatal intensive care unit at Women and Infants Hospital in Providence.

"It was my most personal moment on television," Ray says.

She sent the series tape to Sigma Theta Tau International, the honor society of nursing, and was awarded its highest honor for nursing journalism.

'A different beast'

Reaching out to help others is what keeps Ray going -- that, and the ability to adapt in a challenging market.

"It's a very subjective business, very tough and constantly changing," Ray says. "What I knew as news when I first started ... is not the news of today. It has become a different beast as we enter the new millennium."

She ties that to the intrioduction of cable TV in most homes around 1990. "(News has) become 'infotainment' in many ways," she says. "We are a headline service, period.

"We scratch the surface," she adds. "You must supplement, must read those newspapers."

As a woman, "There were no role models on TV when I was growing up," she says, describing the Utica anchorman she grew up watching on the local news, who was often too drunk to stay seated behind the news desk. "There (were) no role models around for me to say, 'That's what I want to do when I grow up.' "

Now she has some advice of her own about the TV business. "You are as good as your contract," she says. "There are a lot of good people (who) have been let go" due to management changes or dips in ratings.

NBC's "Today" show co-host Matt Lauer "was with me in Providence, and he went through two or three canceled shows," she recalls. "But he hung in there."

So has she. "It's part of the business, you have to get a thicker skin and be willing to roll with it."

Ray proved her mettle in 1993, when a change in management had her leaving the Providence station. "I felt I was being pushed out." She turned to free-lance work, mostly writing and producing videos for hospitals, and hosting "Health Matters," a half-hour show on Boston station WBZ.

But, "I missed news, the immediacy of it," Ray says.

Meanwhile, her husband had just been named a partner in his law firm when offers began coming in for Ray for work around the country.

"When Vegas first called me, we laughed," she says. "I'd never been west of Milwaukee. I had the typical Northeast tunnel vision view of what Las Vegas was all about."

But the fast-growing market was attractive.

"They flew us out and made us believers," Ray says. A long-term contract (so "Jeff could start all over again") made the deal attractive to the family of four.

Time with her kids is of paramount importance. She goes home between anchoring the 5 and 11 p.m. newscasts to have dinner with her family and help her sons with homework.)

She began working at KTNV on March 21, 1994.

At KTNV, Ray again put on her health reporting hat. She produces three to four health-related stories each week, as well as the "Inside Health" segment. She uses weekly medical journals to stay in touch with recent research.

"You can get jaded," she says. "But you can say, 'This is how this research was justified.' There's so many advances always happening."

She hopes her added research helps viewers.

"We can make a tangible difference in somebody's life and that's what broadcasting is all about," she says, applying blush before a recent 5 p.m. newscast in the dusty KTNV makeup room. "It's not all glamour."

Ray has also included charity work in her list of activities.

"She is a very warm and personable person," says Dee Ladd, president and chief executive officer of Sunrise Children's Foundation, one of the charities to which Ray donates time. "Cathy understands, and is compassionate with the kids and works with them."

Ray's media savvy and medical background also make her a great interpreter for the public, turning medical jargon into layman's terms.

"You never lose it once you have the medical knowledge," Ladd says, adding that when her staff, comprised mostly of medical professionals, must go on television, Ray makes the nail-biting event a breeze.

"Everybody is at ease when you are on TV with Cathy."

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