RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR)—Richmond local talks about working with television legend Dick Clark in the 1980s.
“He was ethical and he was an amazing human being,” said Tami Hulcher. For her, it was like the music died on Wednesday. “That was some hard news to take.”
“I had to stop work I didn’t want to take calls,” said Hulcher.” I needed to honor this man on my own first.”
Even though she mourns the loss of her friend and former colleague, Dick Clark, she took the time to talk about Southern California experience she had decades ago. “I think he tried to treat everyone the same,” she said. “He treated his colleagues as family.”
Before working as his employee, teen-aged Tami worked her moves on the dance floor on American Bandstand—the epic show of America’s most known grown teenager, Clark himself.
“It was exciting for a 15-year-old,” she said. One day in 1973, Tami appeared on Bandstand’s Rate a Record, and she scored big too.
Tami recalls Clark as kind and generous. But also hard working and demanded the best from his co-workers.
She never saw him as a television and cultural icon that let his status go to his head.
Tami said that a part of her died with Dick Clark’s passing on Wednesday.
“You don’t think about the 80s until something happens and when it does it was an emotional two by four that hit me yesterday.”
For Tami, each and every New Years Eve will never be the same. Along with people around the nation, she tuned into that broadcast.
“It was just something we did,” she said.
