A dozen Tyrone and Snyder Township residents gathered this morning at a local restaurant for their Tuesday morning get together, breakfast and discussion of area problems.
An extra guest was in attendance this morning as WTAJ-TV in Altoona was shooting footage and doing interviews for an upcoming spotlight on newly elected Tyrone borough councilmen Bill Fink.
“The series is called Every Day People and I got the idea to do it locally after the idea was started on the national CBS Morning Show. We look for every day people involved in the area.” said TV 10 reporter and series host Marissa Carney. “I called Mr. Fink to get a phone number for another person and he was so energetic that I asked if I could interview him for the series.”
“I think it all started with the petition about the gas increase when I was interviewed by the television station. They wanted to interview Kitty Morrison. So we waited until after the election,” Fink told The Daily Herald this morning.
Carney and her camera crew will follow Fink to his home and interview him about his life as a federal security manager in Washington D.C.
Born in 1946 and raised in Tyrone, Fink graduated from Tyrone Area High School and went to Pittsburgh to further his education.
He then got drafted and served for four years in the United States Air Force in the Philippines, then returned to Tyrone and was a member of the Tyrone Police Department for a year. From there, he worked and drove truck for the old Bayer Brothers warehouse until late in the year 1970.
“I realized at that point that I needed to do something to take care of my family,” said Fink.
He left Tyrone and went to Washington D.C. where he worked as a security police technician. It was during this year and a half stay that he met someone from the transportation department.
He then became a special agent at some of the busiest airports in the country – 11 years at Greater Pitt; then Houston, Texas; he oversaw the Mexico area for a few years; then back to Washington and Baltimore’s airport.
In 1991, he was assigned as a federal security manager at Washington Dulles airport until his retirement in March of that year.
He then returned to his hometown in July and in his words have been harassing borough council ever since.
Fink recently won his first term as a Tyrone Borough Councilmen and will take office in January 2004.
“Local government needs to work together to make northern Blair County a force to be reckoned with. And that’s what everyone here at this restaurant believes,” said Fink.
With bacon, eggs and toast, Fink and the other residents continued their breakfast, while a television camera went from table to table to talk to the every day people it wanted to capture.
The feature will be shown soon on one of WTAJ’s newscasts.
