TV personality Alice Weston dies

Alice Weston, who started her broadcasting career with a cooking show on WEWS Channel 5 in 1948 and retired as a seniors reporter for WKYC Channel 3 in 1996, died Tuesday at her home in Sheffield Lake.

She was 95.

When she became the host of one of Cleveland's first television shows for women, her name was not Weston - and she hated to cook.

"When I was beginning, there was only one path available for women in the new medium, and that was the discussion of food," Weston told an interviewer in 1978. "We've come a long way since 1948."

WEWS executives didn't like the real name of their newly hired happy homemaker - Alice Schowalter. They chose "Weston" as her small-screen surname, because its ring was similar to that of the station's call letters.

In 1968, she went to WUAB Channel 43 to help the fledgling station get started. What was supposed to be a six-month project stretched into a 26-year career. She served as public service director for Lorain and hosted such shows as "Lorain Conversation." In the 1970s and '80s, she co-hosted "43 A.M." with Linn Sheldon, better known to many as the elfin star of the children's show "Barnaby."

In 1994, Weston left WUAB for WKYC Channel 3 to do news segments about senior citizens.

She was born Alice Boter in Holland, Mich., to parents who emigrated from the Netherlands. Her father, a merchant, helped found the city's famous Tulip Time Festival.

Alice Weston 1911-2007

Survivors: Daughters, Susan Ruffing of Sheffield Lake and Sara Walters of Chicago; two grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Services: Pending.

Arrangements: Bauer-Laubenthal Funeral Home, Elyria.

Click on the headline to read the full story by Alice Baranick in the Plain Dealer.