So, a few years ago, I was in an Uber and like any good producer, I started interviewing the driver about his past careers and he was a previous firefighter in the city and he was telling me all about the different fires that they went on.

He said there was one reporter who would park outside of the firehouse every day and just wait for the trucks to go out and follow them to the fire to get the first to be the first one there to cover whatever was going on.

Her name was Ruth Ezell.

[Music] [Applause] What got me there was just a series of circumstances of doors that opened and I just kind of walked through them.

My very first job in media was in the sales department as a sales assistant at WJR radio in Detroit.

There's a lot to discover on 76 WJR.

The news director heard my voice reading this script for the sales department and he needed somebody uh just to rip wire copy and another term most people don't know but to assist the reporters in the newsroom.

So about 6 months later there I was in the newsroom.

It's not unusual for Ruth Ezell, a named living legend by the greater St. Lewis Association of Black Journalists, to downplay her achievements.

Those opportunities she was given, those doors she walked through only existed because she kicked them open.

To me, I learned the best way to write news is from people that really know how to do it well.

And I would just out of curiosity take scripts home uh that that reporters would write.

and I learned how stories were crafted and it just kind of all made sense to me.

Ezell managed to get herself a field producing position at WJR.

But knowing she wanted to be a reporter, she created a real and kept asking the right questions like a seasoned reporter would.

When I would go out and talk to other reporters on the scene of a news conference or whatever, I would jokingly say, "Hey, you got any openings over there?"

Most of the time I'd say, "No, no, no."

But one day somebody said yes.

48 hours later I got a call.

I come in.

I do an interview.

Voila.

I am a radio reporter.

Oh Ruth, I don't even know where to begin.

I just want to take a moment to uh give my deepest gratitude for everything you've ever done here at 9.

Ruth has always been a really welcoming presence at Nine PBS.

As uh a newer producer, I always looked up to her and I've learned so much from her over the past four years.

While Ezell got her broadcast journalism start in radio, it wasn't long before she was captivated by the magic of television.

I loved it.

I love being able to sit in a room with an editor and see the visuals of a story.

I knew how to work with natural sound as a radio reporter, but having that extra added element, it was wonderful.

Ezell moved around the Midwest from Detroit to Chicago.

WBBM TV Chicago to Cincinnati where she turned her television producing job into a television reporting job.

Stepping out from behind the camera and yet another door opened and somebody who became a really good friend in Cincinnati uh knew Tom Brokaw really well and she had mentioned me to him and so he was always keeping his eye out open for what was available in the NBC nationwide community.

So he let her know that there were five openings at the NBC affiliate in St. Louis and she said, "What do you think?"

And uh here I was hoping that I could go from Cincinnati like back to Detroit or back to Chicago.

And I finally relented for for weeks.

I just was not interested.

So I finally sent my tape to Channel 5 and what do you know?

Their executive producer and I worked together in Detroit.

It is a small media world.

Thank goodness we liked each other and she liked my work and she showed it to the news director and I became the fifth reporter hired.

Let's go to News Channel 5's Ruth Ezell in Chesterfield.

Jeff, people here remain undaunted despite these early returns so far.

As you know, they have been running a grassroots campaign since the beginning and they knew they had their... For 10 years.

Ruth Ezell covered daily news in St. Louis that included fires, floods, elections, whatever came her way from the assignment desk.

Remember this, the St. Louis Stallions, the expansion team that never was.

Be nimble.

Keep your eyes open.

And I'm one of those people.

I'm surprised I'm talking as much as I am because I much prefer just looking and listening because that's how you learn.

And I learned just as much from other people's mistakes as I learned from people who who got everything right all the time.

Ruth, congratulations on your retirement.

Just decades of such a illustrious career and we're going to miss you and uh in my short time at Nine PBS, I've been uh happy to get to know you.

From Ruth, I learned about kicking the door open.

She told me in our first one-on-one conversation that any opportunity she had um that she took advantage of, any lucky break she ever got was a crack in the door that she saw and she kicked it open.

She made her own opportunities.

And that's something I've really kept in mind.

Any um project I've worked on that might seem kind of small or unimportant.

I kind of have that voice in the back of my head that it's up to me to kick the door open and to make it a big opportunity.

You were a living legend already when I met you and I didn't think too much of it until I got to know you and know more about your history and see the storytelling excellence you have and seeing that in action over the years has been overly overly inspiring for me as well as everyone in the community.

In 2003, Ruth Ezell was recruited by KETC Channel 9 to join a new show, Living St. Louis, that was launching early the following year.

It felt like another door had opened, but this one was to a candy store, and I got to eat all the candy I wanted and possibly make myself sick at the process.

Brother Mel's work is in public spaces across the St. Louis area.

This is one of them, the Danforth Chapel at Barnes Jewish Hospital.

I remember those days, those early days, you and me and Jim and Patrick.

And I mean, there were there were months there where we were seeing each other seven days a week because we had so much to grind out, but it was so different from like doing the proverbial snowstorm live shot on the Tamm Avenue overpass.

It was the complete opposite.

We were finding all these interesting stories that commercial TV basically doesn't have time for.

Years before I knew I was going to have this job.

Before there was ever any talk of Living St. Louis, I was holding on to articles from Channel 5 saying, "One day I may get the opportunity to do this."

and we were able to put together stories that would run five minutes or longer.

As a reporter, you're lucky if you have a minute and 15 seconds to tell a story.

We've taken as long as 10 minutes, maybe longer, to tell a story, right?

And all I have to say is the energy.

I think the energy that we bring when we put our shows together now, I mean, it's on a whole new level.

What do you want your legacy to be?

I was waiting for that obit bite request.

If there's going to be something written on my gravestone or whatever it is, I want to leave the world better than I found it.

That's it.

That's it.