They Speak the Same Language Four members of the Eolin family use the college's television-radio program as a springboard to success. By Keith Davis
	Sometimes my friends tell me that their parents think the only thing television-radio majors do is work with VCRs," said Sara Eolin '98. "But when my sister and I go home and sit around the dinner table and talk about new editing equipment, my dad and mom know just what we're talking about." That's because Sara's sister, Jennifer '95, mother, Dee '68, and father, Bob '65, are not only Ithaca College graduates, they, like Sara, majored in television-radio. "We're all broadcasters," said Bob Eolin (prounced O-lin). "In fact, that's how Dee and I met. She was from Sea Isle City, New Jersey, and I was from Corning. We both came to Ithaca College because we wanted to go into the business and we knew that was the best place to go." "It was the strength of the communications department that drew us to I.C.," Dee added. "A lot of the professors had worked in the industry, and they taught you things you weren't going to learn in a textbook. Plus, I knew I was going to get real hands-on experience. At a lot of other colleges I'd looked at, you had to be a junior before you could go into the radio station. At Ithaca, I was there a week, and already I was on the radio." Dee and Bob married in 1968 and set up housekeeping in Binghamton, where Dee was a copywriter at WNBF/WBNG-TV and Bob worked as the station's program director, promotion director, and director of commercial photography. In 1980 he became vice president and general manager of WLYH-TV, Lancaster-Lebanon, in Pennsylvania, and in 1990 the Eolins bought a radio station in Corning. They are now co-owners of Radio Works, a group of four radio stations in the Elmira/Corning area. The household that Jennifer and Sara grew up in was steeped in the broadcasting industry and strongly connected to Ithaca College. "The broadcasting business is made up of a relatively small number of people, and a lot of them are Ithaca grads," Bob said. "Also, the time Dee and I spent at Ithaca was a happy part of our lives. You tend to gravitate around things you know and love. That's why we stayed close to the College. As far as our family all being in the broadcast business, people are usually turned on by what their parents do or they're turned off. In the case of our daughters, it happened to be the former." Sara agreed. "Our parents never came out and said, 'We want our kids to go to Ithaca College.' In fact, when I was in high school, I thought everyone in my family had gone to Ithaca, we need to break out a little. Originally I wanted to study business, but I found out I didn't really like it, that communications was the thing for me. When I was looking around for schools, I saw that Ithaca had a great deal of hands-on instruction and offerings, like the program in Los Angeles. I realized it was simply the best school to go to. It was Jennifer's first choice too. The school was just that good." Jennifer spent the last semester of her senior year in the Ithaca College Communications Program in Los Angeles, attending classes and interning as a writer at The Tonight Show. After graduation she remained on the staff at the show and then worked as a script supervisor for Save our Streets, a newsmagazine show. She is now a writer's assistant for Seinfeld. Sara also took advantage of the Los Angeles program and spent her internship working in the production department at NBC's The Single Guy. Another nine-week internship sponsored by the International Radio and Television Society gave her what she calls "enormous opportunity" in advertising. One of 18 students picked from a national pool of more than 600 communications students, she spent nine weeks at the New York City headquarters of Grey Advertising, where she worked as an assistant producer in the broadcast production department. "I was lucky enough to get there at a time when all the producers were overworked," she said. "As a result, I got to do a lot of things interns don't normally do, and I got involved in every phase of production of a national television commercial, from casting to shooting to post- production effects and editing." Jennifer's goal is to stay in the writing end of the business. She wants to eventually be a scriptwriter for television sitcoms. Sara wants to go into advertising as a producer and write on the side. She hopes to then move to Los Angeles and write for television shows and someday own a production company and produce sitcoms for television. "We never forced them into the business," Dee said. "And we never told them that they had to go to Ithaca College, it just worked out that way. They found that they had certain interests and certain talents, and we're very happy to see them doing what they want to do." "We're very comfortable in where our daughters are going and what they're doing," Bob added. "We're very blessed to have this happening."