User:NealVickers
Neal Vickers (aka Buddy Vickers) is a career journalist & broadcaster, audio book narrator, and photographer.
For more than 40 years, Neal’s voice has been used worldwide on television, radio, and in special documentary and training productions. He was twice named by the Associated Press as Reporter of the Year, also Investigative Reporter of the Year, and the ABC Radio Network’s top field contributing reporter.
Neal began broadcasting when he was 15, still in high school, and working at WPTN in Cookeville, Tennessee. He read news, spun records, and pushed a broom while learning the basics of life in broadcasting. He expected that career to end as he entered the Air Force in 1975. However, the Air Force discovered his broadcasting background and enlisted him into the military broadcasting field as he finished basic training.
His first assignment in his 20 year Air Force career was Madrid, Spain working in both radio and television, followed by stints in Cold War era Berlin and Kaiserslautern, Germany, Greenland, Texas, Arkansas and Washington, D.C. He was also assigned at one point to the Office of Secretary of Defense working with designers of the military construction budget. Afterward, Neal worked in the SecDef’s communications division producing radio and TV stories about military news to distribute daily worldwide. His assignments put him face to face with many famous people and historic events.
Neal’s experience was also used as a military combat photographer. He traveled to Somalia in the summer of 1992 in civilian clothes to document the famine and fighting before US combat troops invaded in December. He routinely traveled with air crews and relief workers into war-torn Sarajevo in the early 1990s as the city was under siege. He flew with special operations units and rode with tank crews along the Iraqi border. Neal helped document American air, land, and sea military maneuvers during the contra revolt in Nicaragua in the 1980s. He was with the 82nd Airborne as they loaded onto to planes to invade Haiti in 1994, later helping rewrite the Air Combat Command war plans for the deployment of Air Force combat photographers during hostilities.
When he hung up his uniform in 1995, he moved to Alabama and worked for local stations and networks during the 15+ years covering landmark stories, including the hunt for the bomber of the Birmingham abortion clinic and Atlanta Olympics and the trials of two klansmen convicted of the 16th Street Church bombing. For several years Neal worked with sports commentator Paul Finebaum as he launched the Finebaum Radio Network.
In 2018, Neal narrated the U.S. House Intelligence Committee Report on Russian Activities, which is posted on the committee's website.
Neal’s reporting and public affairs training was also put to use as an instructor at media training workshops held for state and federal employees.