Film

Retired Veteran KTVU News Reporter Betty Ann Bruno Dies at 91; Appeared as a Munchkin at Age 7 in Judy Garland’s 1939 Classic “The Wizard of Oz”

Betty Ann Bruno, on set in the KTVU studios with anchor Dennis Richmond. 1980s.

By KEVIN WING | Chairperson, Media Museum of Northern California

Betty Ann Bruno, a well-known presence on Bay Area television as a longtime news and investigative reporter and show host for KTVU Channel 2 in Oakland from the 1970s through the 1990s, died July 30 in Sonoma County after suffering a medical emergency. She was 91. Bruno would have celebrated her 92nd birthday Oct. 1.

Bruno with husband, longtime KTVU cameraman Craig Scheiner. 1980s.

Her husband and partner of 46 years, Craig Scheiner, a retired longtime KTVU news photographer, said Bruno suffered a heart attack at a local hospital after rushing her there after she complained of having a severe headache following a hula dance lesson she was teaching.

“She loved hula dancing,” Scheiner said, “The last thing she did was dance with her students. Danced in her bare feet like hula dancers do. Couldn’t have had a better way to go, doing what she loved.”

Bruno worked for the Oakland station from 1970 until her retirement in 1992, first working in the station’s community affairs department, which she became acquainted with during her tenure as president of the League of Women Voters of Oakland. Bruno helped to produce election broadcasts and public service announcements before joining the department’s staff. She would eventually host Channel 2’s public affairs show. After a stint with that, she was persuaded to move to the newsroom, where she became an accomplished, three-time Emmy Award-winning news reporter. Besides Emmys, Bruno received numerous accolades and honors, including a presidential certificate from President George H.W. Bush.

In October 1991, Bruno and Scheiner lost their home in the Oakland hills to the devastating Oakland-Berkeley Hills firestorm, which destroyed more than 3,000 single-family homes, condominiums and apartments. The fire gutted more than 1,500 acres. When it was finally over, thousands of people lost their homes, and 25 people lost their lives.

Reporting in Oakland outside the Alameda County Courthouse near Lake Merritt.

Once the firestorm was over, Bruno and Scheiner allowed a KTVU cameraperson to walk with them as they surveyed what was left of their home. It had been reduced to ashes.

Although Bruno retired from KTVU in 1992, she remained with the station until 1994, working part-time. Many of her KTVU colleagues

“Betty Ann was such a good reporter,” said Bill Moore, a longtime friend and a retired KTVU photographer who worked at the station for three decades, from the 1960s to the ’90s. “She was a great person to work with. I have the highest respect for her, and I will miss her.”

“Betty Ann was an extraordinary woman,” said Rita Williams, another longtime friend and retired longtime KTVU reporter who worked at the station from the late 1970s to the 2000s. “She was kind to me when I joined the KTVU newsroom 43 years ago. And we’ve been friends ever since. Betty Ann had a zest for life and a youthful exuberance that stayed with her ’til the end. From child acting to politics to reporting to hula and lots in between, she was an inspiration. Never bitter, she forgave and brought people together. If there is a bright spot in her passing, it’s that she was doing what she loved and she left a part of her in the book she wrote, in the stories she told and in the hearts of all of us who knew and loved her. Blessings to Craig and her boys.”

“Betty Ann’s amazing talent was that she could get anyone to talk to her, anyone,” said longtime friend Gary Kauf, director of television broadcast operations and film at Ohlone College in Fremont and a former longtime KTVU reporter and producer for more than 20 years beginning in the late 1970s. “She was non-threatening, and gentle with everyone.”

Born in Hawaii and raised in southern California, Bruno graduated from Stanford University, and also did graduate work at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

At age 7, she was chosen to play one of the Munchkins in the 1939 film classic, “The Wizard of Oz”, starring Judy Garland.

After retirement, Bruno and Scheiner moved to Sonoma. In 2009, Bruno founded Hula Mai, which she called her “retirement career” — teaching hula and Hawaiian culture. Hula Mai performed in the Sonoma Plaza every spring and at luaus and other celebrations throughout the Sonoma Valley.

Officials with the Sonoma Cultural and Fine Arts Commission named Bruno the city’s Treasure Artist in 2020 and 2021.

We will miss you, Betty Ann. May you rest in peace.

Our sincerest condolences are with Craig and his family during this difficult time, and with everyone who knew Betty Ann as a trusted friend, colleague, teacher and mentor.

 

 

 

Leslie Griffith, Longtime KTVU Channel 2 Anchor/Reporter, Filmmaker, Animal Welfare Advocate, Dies at 66

By KEVIN WING | Chairperson, Media Museum of Northern California
 

Leslie Griffith, longtime news anchor and reporter at KTVU, died Aug. 10 in Lake Chapala, Mexico. Griffith, who was 66, worked for the station from 1986 to 2006.

Leslie Griffith, the highly-acclaimed and much-honored journalist who graced Bay Area television screens for 20 years as an anchor and reporter at Oakland’s KTVU Channel 2, died Aug. 10 in Lake Chapala, Mexico, where she had been living for the last several years. She was 66.

Her family said Griffith endured a years-long battle with Lyme disease.
The nine-time Emmy Award-winning Griffith worked at KTVU for 20 years — from 1986 to 2006 — beginning as a reporter and as co-anchor, with George Watson, for the station’s 10 p.m. weekend newscast. For several years in the 1990s, she anchored that weekend broadcast by herself, doing the same as well for a weekend early evening edition. In 1998, following the departure of Elaine Corral from KTVU, Griffith was promoted to anchoring the weeknight 10 p.m. newscast with Dennis Richmond, a position she held until she left the station in 2006.
Prior to joining KTVU in 1986 after being hired by news director Fred Zehnder, Griffith’s television news resume included a stop in Colorado Springs, Colorado, followed by a stint at KSBW in Salinas. Before entering television, she cut her journalistic teeth as a reporter for the Associated Press and the Denver Post. Prior to that, she worked as a teacher.
Throughout her 20 years at KTVU, Griffith received many accolades, including nine Emmys for her work. She was on the frontlines of many of the Bay Area’s major stories, including the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the massive firestorm that swept through the Oakland hills in 1991.
In 2006, she left KTVU and television news, but she was never far from being a storyteller. She continued to write, and prolifically, for publications that included the San Francisco Chronicle and the Huffington Post. And, concerned with the problem of tuberculosis in circus elephants for many years, Griffith championed getting elephants out of performing in circuses. In 2015, Griffith’s storytelling took her filmmaking. She was the brainchild behind her film, “When Giants Fall”, which she wrote and directed. For Griffith, the film spotlighted the ivory trade as a cruel business — that every 15 minutes, an elephant is killed for its ivory and that 65 percent of Africa’s elephants have been killed for their ivory in a span of five years. Griffith’s film went on to collect numerous accolades from film festivals across the United States. The film was also supported by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
A family member confirmed to KTVU that Griffith was suffering the effects of Lyme disease since being bitten by a tick while living in Oregon in 2015. She also had a home in Lake Chapala, Mexico, where she had been living since 2016.
Griffith is survived by her two daughters, Trenton and Carly, and by her adopted son, Eric. She is also survived by two grandchildren.

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