From The Archives: Tribute to Garry Mac

Former news anchor here at WDEF was a community treasure

CHATTANOOGA (WDEF) – As we mourn the loss of longtime Chattanooga booster and personality Garry Mac this week, we want to share a few stories from his past.

Garry wore many hats in his long career of serving our area.

He mastered radio on several local stations, tried his hand at TV news, dabbled in local politics and handled marketing for local medical organizations.

We pulled from several stories in the WDEF Archives featuring Garry.

We start with a story from 1983 when a very young Garry Mac was at WGOW radio.

Then we’ve got some clips from his TV news days in the early 1990s (including his confession of his first attempt to do weather on TV).

He was on the air during the Blizzard of 93.

And then we’ve included a part of our 50th anniversary special we did in 2004.  Garry returned to offer his memories of watching live studio wrestling here in our building.  He would grow up to be a newsman, anchoring from the very same studio years later.

It shows that even though Garry Mac moved on to new chapters in his life, he always came back.. to both TV and radio.

Besides broadcasting, he was a behind-the-scenes figure in local politics.  He worked for Congresswoman Marily Lloyd in her final terms, and even considered running for the seat himself.  But he didn’t.

In the 2000s, Garry remained very plugged in to the local community through marketing jobs at Memorial Hospital and Hospice of Chattanooga.

Because of health problems, he finally had begun to slow down over the last few years and moved to Florida. But he remained a frequent visitor to the area. Friends are telling how they talked to him here just the week before his death.