Book Review

Bobbie the Weathergirl: AFVN Saigon’s Weathergirl Shares Letters from Vietnam
By Pia Bows
R & P Bows Publishing
203 pages
Available in softbound

By Marc Yablonka

“The newsroom was down the hall from the weather set, and when the whispers reached us [that Bobbie the Weathergirl was there] we’d find an excuse to breeze through the TV studio ‘on business.’ I don’t think I ever talked to Bobbie. I was still too shy and she was way too beautiful. At the end of her routine, she’d dance to a pop song and wrap it up with her signature close, ‘Have a good evening weather-wise, and, of course, otherwise,’” American Forces Vietnam Network War News Editor Rick Fredericksen wrote in his book Broadcasters: Untold Chaos.

By the time Rick and I devoted a chapter to her in our book Hot Mics and TV Lights: The American Forces Vietnam Network, I thought I knew everything there was to know about Bobbie Keith. I was wrong! Author Pia Bows’ new book Bobbie the Weathergirl: AFVN Saigon’s Weathergirl Shares Letter from Vietnam (R & P Bows Publishing. New Smyrna Beach, FL, 203pp. $22.99, paperback) offers a fascinating look into the life of one of the radio-TV network’s most storied personalities. Not only does Bows’ biography of Bobbie (née Barbara) provide vivid detail of the “unintended” broadcaster’s life, it is laced with page after page of fascinating photos throughout detailing Bobbie’s time in Vietnam. Bows also delves deeply into Bobbie’s life before and after one of America’s most tragic wars.

Early in the book, Bows reveals how, because her father was stationed in Japan as an Army Intel officer in the early 60s, Bobbie spent four years there, studying at Sophia University. At the same time, her parents enrolled her in charm school, whereupon she would take on modeling assignments and photo shoots for Japanese ads.

“I enjoyed my time in Japan, and I made some wonderful friends there. My experience at charm school was a hoot. They actually told me the ladylike way to hold a cigarette,” she told Bows.

Back in the States in 1966, one of Bobbie’s friends convinced her to apply for a clerical position with the United States Agency for International Development in Vietnam (USAID). “To her, it was another adventure,” her mother told a local newspaper in Virginia.

She underwent rigorous training required by the agency for the job, the author tells us. Including the politics of the region. “Of course, we were thoroughly indoctrinated in the Domino Theory, and we all believed in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. I think everyone believed that what we were doing was right,” Bows tells us Bobbie said.

In Bobbie the Weathergirl, the author relates how a daily occurrence for Bobbie and her USAID co-workers was being driven to and from work by a bus with bars on the windows to guard against attacks by local Viet Cong.

“Armed guards would ride with us at times,” Bobbie recalled.

In June 1968, a strange occurrence would come Bobbie’s way. While in the dining hall of the International House with friends, US Army Lt. Col. Ray Nash, commander of the American Forces Vietnam Network, approached her and said, “You look like the next weathergirl.”

While Bobbie had done TV commercials in Japan, she had no training in broadcast news whatsoever and, at first, thought Col. Nash was hitting on her. She realized that he was serious when he invited her to audition, along with 20 other females, for the position.

“There was no script,” Bobbie told Bows. “Just a big map of the United States on set. I had to adlib. I just focused on looking into the camera and adlibbed a weather report.”

She got the (volunteer) position.

“The whole concept fascinated me,” Bobbie said. “It felt right. When you’re young and something feels right, you go along with it.”

Soon Bobbie Keith was leading a parallel existence to that of her fellow AFVN broadcaster, Hollywood actress Chris Noel, being choppered into and out of firebases, receiving fan mail at AFVN from GIs in-country, asking her to mention their name, say hello to their girlfriends back home, shout out to their units, etc.

But by Tet 1969, “she began to question everything. Especially those who had placed the troops in such a predicament. She had become skeptical,” Bows wrote.

By May of that year, she was no longer permitted to say good night with her sign off or do her little dance because the format had changed. The implication was that both were too suggestive.

At the close of her final AFVN broadcast on May 24th, 1969, Bobbie signed off with, “I won’t say good-bye because it’s a small world, and I expect to see you in the real world. I’ll be praying you have a pleasant tour weather-wise, and throughout your lives, otherwise.”

Pia Bows’ Bobbie the Weather Girl: AFVN Saigon’s Weathergirl Shares Letters from Vietnam, is a must read for anyone interested in the history of broadcasting, military or otherwise, anyone who served in Vietnam, professors who teach the war, and students who study it.