Celebrating 70 Years: A tribute to Dick Addis, WNDU’s first chief meteorologist

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - Dick Addis is a name that resonates with Michiana, and he’s a legend of WNDU.

Dick was our station’s first chief meteorologist and an early pioneer of not just broadcast meteorology but TV itself.

Laurie Miller has been a longtime viewer of WNDU since moving to Michiana in 1976. She has fond memories of watching Dick cover the weather.

“He was a little goofy. And he did remind me of that. And I thought it was fun to take something I really enjoyed, I’ve always been interested in the weather, and take something like that and make it fun, make it something people want to listen to, and yet he seemed very knowledgeable,” Miller said. “It wasn’t like reading a newspaper, where it was all black and white and in someways you never knew what you were going to get. And so, it was fun to listen and say, ‘Oh, what’s he going to say today, what’s he going to do today?’”

Staying on the topic of iconic WNDU forecasters, I sat down with Gary Sieber to talk about his time working with Dick.

“He was sort of bigger than life because he was this quintessential 70s weather guy,” Sieber said. “He was half comedian, half weather meteorologist, greasy hair, mutton chop sideburns, loud jackets, and I mean people still sort of chuckle about that because they grew up with this character.”

Many people still have memories of the infamous blizzard of 1978. Dick was on top of it nearly around the clock making sure Michiana stayed safe and informed through the historical storm.

“And Dick Addis was on almost 24/7,” Sieber said. “So, we’re watching this, he was staying here, well not at this building but at the little building on campus. Dick was staying at the station, sleeping overnight, and constantly on the air doing all of this weather reporting.”

“And I remember for a week you really could not get out of the house, and they had to have big end loaders come down the street to move the snow,” Miller recalled. “Our front door was completely drifted over. We couldn’t find our car in the driveway. We had to go out through a back door and kind of shovel our way around.”

Dick officially retired back in 2001 and since then he has left a box of letters behind. The cardboard box contains dozens of letters dating as far back to the late 60s through the early 80s. The letters are a mixed bag with some praising him, degrading him, or just viewers speaking their mind.

If you ask any of our longtime residents of Michiana about their favorite local meteorologist, many — if not all — will name Dick Addis. He was larger than life on and off the screen, but more importantly a staple in Michiana community for multiple decades.

After Dick officially retired in 2001, he moved down to Florida. He passed away in 2006 at the age of 74.

While he is no longer with us, his legacy will always be woven into the fabric of not just WNDU but Michiana.