Mount Ayr Record-News
Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa
Thursday, June 23, 1994

When KCCI-TV Channel 8's news airs, we will be watching Jody SHIELDS who will be reporting.

While Jody's first night aired, her twin sister Jenny was graduating from Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas with a degree in occupational therapy.

The special closeness that many twins have, particularly as little youngsters is affirmed by Norma. "When can you tell them apart?" Norma says she could. Norma and her mother each had a bought each twin a toy. Each had selected the same thing!

The twins have very much been atuned to each other's emotions and dancing lessons Jenny really liked tap but Jody wasn't as enthused and changed. Jenny didn't stay separated very long.

Even in junior and senior high school, they had the same friends and double-dated.

Interestingly, Jody's first "fan mail" she was working parttime at -TV, channel 5, at ISU, was from Miss JONES. Another strong influence in Jody's selection was Darrel DODGE, MACHS journalism instructor.

When it was made known that Gov. Terry Branstad was to be in Mount Ayr present a F.I.N.E. (First in the nation) award at the elementary school, DODGE challenged Jody when signed her to interview the Iowa Governor. She says he wasn't sure she get past the "asking for an interview statge."

Jody called Branstad's press secretary and set up an an interview and he could mixture of feelings about philosophy in raising them. On one hand they find joy in the extreme amount of caring and sharing that goes on between the two, something that is often missing in single siblings, even if they are close in age.

On the other hand there is concern that twins won't be allowed to develop as individuals, with personalitities and interests of their own. A mother commented, "They need time to themselves and that's difficult to have when the other is always there."

In the case of the SHIELDS twins, they began to feel they might go separate ways when they go to college. They never did consider going to the same university.

Jenny seleted the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls. She was considereing a major of elementary education or speech pathology. A good friend at UNI interested her in occupational therapy. Jenny had never heard of it but when exposed she was enthused about its possibilities.

There was one catch! Jenny had settled in at UNI and was enjoying her soroity and life on its campus. She didn't want to transfer - which she was a junior she was at KU Medical Center, majoring in allied health.

Jenny says, "It was a good decision. When I later took a short-term job helping with sixth graders at a day camp, conducte by former Mount Ayrian Jim FELL, I decided I couldn't have managed teaching elementary students on a regular basis!"

Jenny has nine months of field work left and has to pass a state board examination before she will be certified in occupational therapy. Then she will be job hunting.

Jody was at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, for one year and then spent her last three years at Iowa State University. She transferred to ISU because of thelure of the television and radio station, WOI, being there. She felt it could offer on-the-job training in the city where the university was located.

She said, nostalgically, "I was probably the last student to ever do reporting there, as it has been sold and the change of owners was made March 1."

When the young women left for college, friends speculated, "You'll wish you hadn't done it. You'll miss one another. You've never been apart. You will be lost without each other."

Jody says, "I think we were bent on proving them wrong. We had a heyday until our birth date, Oct. 23, rolled around and then the road got rocky. We really did get homesick. I had a set of twins living on my dorm floor who were roommates and who were still doing everything together, and i was a little envious. Jenny was one and one-half hours away.

"By Christmas time we were home on one-month break. That seemed tobe enough and I think we were ready to go back. AT & T was happy we were going to different schools - we talked on the phone a lot," Jody says. "The rest of the year went O.K. and then in the summer we went to summer school at Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, and roomed together. This helped."

Jenny says, "I don't think we realized just how much time we spent together until we were apart during college. At first it was fun and then it got lonesome."

She thinks being a twin will always be special. "I worked at a summer camp and supervised a set of twin boys. I was just a little partial toward them because of my being a twin. Twins look out for one another, will order the same thing to eat, say the same thing at the same time and just are a little closer," Jenny says.

"I think because we 'branched out' and went to different universities and chose different lines of work, "Jenny says, "we have met more people, had more different experiences and have more friends. But, we still don't want to get too far apart."

Jenny says that the only time she and Jody were particularly competitive, and this turned out to be a blessing, was when it came to grades in college. Each wanted to do at least as well as the other. "It probably pushed us harder, academically, than we might have been without the competition," she says.

They couldn't have done any better. They both finished with 4.0 grade point averages, the highest possible!

Jody SHIELDS brings to KCCI-TV, Channel 8, a year of television reporting on weekends at WOI-TV, Channel 5, while attending Iowa State University and the experience of an internship the summer of 1993 at WJBK-TV, Channel 2, in Detroit, MI.

SHIELDS starts June 15 at KCCI-TV as a general assignment reported and will be working Wednesday through Sundays, mostly on the 2 to 10:30 p.m. shift. She has been and may be seen on the 5, 6, or 10 p.m. news. Over last weekend she gave a report on two Iowans who were struck by lightning.

In connection with a lengthy job-hunting process, Jody had sent resumes all over the United States. She was delighted when the job offer at KCCI-TV came June 6 for a number of reasons, including the fact that it meant staying in the midwest. She considered her field competitive enough that she might have had to settle for a job far away.

Jody says that when she and twin sister Jenny were little, they were in an Iowa State Fair twins contest. They won second in the "most look-alike" competition and were on the Mary BRUBAKER show on Channel 8. Now she has become a colleage of BRUBAKER'S.

From May to August, 1993, Jody was an intern in Detroit. It could have been a mind-boggling experience for a farm girl from southern Iowa to go to a large, industrial city, but she loved every minute of it! She worked from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. five days a week at WJBK-TV (400 hours) for three hours of college credit. She was on the assignment desk and accompanied reporters in the field.

While in Detroit, Jody did some work covering the DeBoer/Schmidt suit over the custody of baby Jessica. They used her because she was the only Iowa intern on staff and had a frame of reference.

She returned to classes at ISU in the fall and started in late August as a weekend reporter at WOI-TV. Hours were from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. WOI has offices in both Ames (the basic office) and Des Moines. Jody's routine was to go to the Ames office, get one of the news cars and drive to Des Moines, the base from which she did most of her stories. She often did central Iowa stories.

She would meet with the producer on Friday afternoon and they would go over story ideas together and prioritize as to which theyliked the best. A story would be selected for Saturday and one for Sunday. In the beginning she was doing mostly features; then she progressed to hard news stories.

Many would be spot news, accidents or crime, which would take precedence over anything that was set up. Interviews always were subject to change.

The most frustrating thing about this job was that she was a "one-woman band." She was her own photographer. The person she was interviewing (usually someone who was taller than she, she says) would stand in a spot and then they would exchange positions after Jody had the camera set. Then she would film scenes germane to the story.

But it didn't end here. The material would be taken back to the office, she would view what she had, and decide what portions of the interview she wanted to use. She would sit down at the computer and type the scripts, trying to be as much of a story teller as she could.

One of the most interesting experiences Jody had during this sting was doing a "repeat" with Gov. Branstad. She had interviewed him while a high school student and this time the Governor was responding to a gift from the tree growers in Michigan.

In December o 1993, tree growers in Michigan had brought a load of trees to be used by flood victims. Gov. Branstad was presenting the trees to the first families to receive them.

Two exciting stories Jody covered was one about Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold at their Eldon restaurant, "Tom and Roseanne's Big Food Diner" and another when she interviewed her fellow students after rioting had broken outduring the VEISHEA celebration at Iowa State.

The overall winner in the "most exciting category" was an assigment Jody had while in Detroit. She, an intern, was on assigment with a reporter who was covering a court trial. While her mentor was in the court room the sheriff came in and told reporters that there had been another happening that would be far more interesting than the court case.

It was a bank holdup. SHIELDS and their photographer dashed to the crime scene. In order to get the story they had to leave right away and the reporter was left in the court room. Fortunately, by the time they got to the scene, the police had the situation under control and the intern, who wasn't covered by company insurance, was safe and probably wasn't going to sue them for damages from injury sustained at work!

The most challenging story Jody covered was in January 1994, just after Iowa's new stalking law went into effect. Jody interviewed a woman who was being stalked by her husband. She had a restraining order on him, which he had violated several times without being arrested. The day after the story broke, he was arrested.

One of the most moving stories she brought to television viewers was when four teenagers from the Corydon area were killed in an automobile accident. She and her sister had participated in track with Wayne of Corydon students and had gotten to know them, and Jody was only four years away from being a high school student. It was too easy to identify with those in the tragedy.

One thing about Jody's new job, it should never become routine or dull. She will be too busy going a number of places, meeting new people and being exposed to many new experiences.

Graduation May 14 from Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, KS, with a major in allied health, didn't mean certification for Jenny SHIELDS.

She will spend the next nine months doing field work an dthen will take state boards before earingin certification in the field of occupational therapy.

She defines occuaptional therapy as having a goal to help an individual function independently in daily living as much as possible. Therapists use activities, crafts and adaptive equipment for physically handicapped persons, to help reach this goal. For example, adaptive equipment might be teaching a stroke victim to do things one-handed.

The first three months of field work, from June 27 to Sept. 16, will be at Trinity Lutheran Hospital in Kansas City, MO for psycho/social training. She will be working in an adult psych unit in a locked ward. She has not worked with these patients before; she only has observed them.

From Sept. 26 to Dec. 23 she will work at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines with patients in the physical rehabilitation unit. Here she might find strok victims or head injury patients, among others. Jenny feels this might be the phase of occupational therapy that she might like best.

From Sept. 26 to Dec. 23 she will be working for Area VII Area Education Agency in Cedar Falls, servicing small schools in the Cedar Falls area. The students she will focus on will be those with learning disabilities and/or who have developmental delays. Jenny also has some interest in this field, but because in the school setting she is working more independently, she feels additional experience here might help.

Prior to graduation from [the] university, Jenny participated in a week of observation at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City as they dealt with those who came to an out-patient clinic.

She takes a board examination in June. Pending the passage of this she can accept an occupational therapy position. She is banking on KU's reputation for giving excellent occuapational therapy training and her own native ability to help her reach this stage in her life.

She is hoping the job with her name on it will be in the midwest so she may be close to family.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, October of 2012