A
few weeks ago, WGN Newsman Steve Bertrand celebrated his 40th anniversary at WGN Radio. He was kind enough to sit down and chat with me about his tremendous career.
IE: 40 years. I don’ t want to say that’ s a long time, but they were filming“ Ferris Bueller’ s Day Off” on your first week on the air. How much has radio news changed in those years?
SB: You know, when I started, if you wanted to know the score of a ball game or the weather forecast, or what the President said an hour ago, you had to tune into radio or TV to catch a newscast. Now, there ' s nothing I can say on the radio, really, almost nothing I can say that you can ' t find out just as quickly somewhere else. That’ s a monumental change. It has changed the way I think we fit in society now. But you know, everything changes, and that ' s just one of the things that ' s changed.
IE: Who is your radio news idol? You must have some favorites. SB: Tom Peterson, who died just a couple of weeks ago. When I got the word that I was going to be an intern, I started listening much more actively, and I would listen to Tom. I idolized the guy. He would be a straight news guy but could be a crack up too when he needed to be, which I think is what I have really done well here. I think he sort of broke the ice on that mold to allow me to expand on it.
By Rick Kaempfer
40 YEARS OF STEVE BERTRAND
came a point when I realized that by trying to keep it a secret, or by trying to remember who I told and who I didn ' t, that I was giving it power over me, and I didn ' t want to give it any more power than it was going to take. So that ' s why I decided to go public. I wasn ' t going to let it make me hide. I can ' t control a lot of stuff about this disease, but I can control the way I react to it, and I can ' t beat it. I can dance with it, is what I said that day, and I mean that. I ' m not going to shy away from it. I ' m going to do what I can do to live with it.
And you know, I ' ve been very lucky. Very lucky that the progression has been very slow so far. The medication has helped with the typing. It ' s still slow in my left hand, the tremor. I feel like my speaking has dropped off a little bit like
IE: Everyone is asking you about your radio highlights over the past 40 years, and I know there were some great times. But the thing about being live on the radio doing news is that sometimes news breaks when you’ re on the air, and you have to scramble to cover the story. What are some of the big stories you had to cover live on the air with no preparation? SB: There ' s 9 / 11, obviously. There ' s the Oklahoma City bombing. I was anchoring just after that happened. Those were big but the best example of that is when I was hosting Saturday mornings, and the shuttle exploded coming in for landing 15 minutes before our show started. We found witnesses, we found people in Texas who found debris, we were getting calls, we were talking to people, we were gathering information, and we were sharing. You know, sometimes, Rick, it ' s actually easier when there ' s something so obvious to talk about.
IE: You recently announced on the air that you have Parkinson’ s Disease. What is the reason you announced it publicly, and what kind of response did you get when that news came out? SB: I was talking to a physical therapist at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab about different things that I could do to help me. I was having trouble typing at the time, and she said,“ You know, this isn ' t a death sentence. We need to get that word out there that people can live with this.” There
Steve Bertrand
I ' m not quite as clear. My tongue sort of gets in my way sometimes. But I ' ve talked to others about that, and they don ' t hear that. As for the reaction I got when I came out, it was better than I had hoped. One of the reasons I had put it off is I didn ' t want this woe is me sort of deluge from people. I wanted people to feel like they should know it ' s not a death sentence, like the PT told me. And that really was the reaction. There were people who said they had it in their family, and they were going to be much more public about it. There were others who said that they felt empowered by me speaking out, and that ' s why I did it. I didn ' t want to be known as, Oh, Steve Bertrand, that guy with Parkinson ' s. And I ' ve got to say, that has not happened. I ' m so glad I did it.
IE: Any thoughts of retirement, or are you going to keep on doing this until they drag you out? SB: It’ s on the horizon. I ' m absolutely thinking about it, but I don’ t have a timetable in mind. To be honest, I ' m very comfortable here, and I wouldn ' t know what to do with myself.
Steve Bertrand can be heard every weekday on WGN Radio, 720 AM. july 2025 illinoisentertainer. com 19