Television Pioneer. A respected member of the southern West Virginia community, she is remembered as possibly America's first female broadcast journalist. Born Jacqueline Mae Pero, she was raised in the north central Pennsylvania coal fields until relocating to Bluefield, Virginia during high school. In the 1950s she served as chair of the March of Dimes as the organization's focus switched from long term care of polio victims to prevention of the disease. Jackie joined WHIS (now, WWVA) in Bluefield, West Virginia, initially on the radio then shifting to television. On "The Jackie Oblinger Show", later called "The Women's Page", she presented shopping tips, Jackie's Gift Parade at Christmas always introduced by the tune "Sleigh Ride", and interviewed such noted personalities as Liberace, Johnny Mathis, and Jackie Kennedy. Moving to Charleston, she took "The Women's Page" to WCHS-TV and taught at West Virginia Career College before returning to Bluefield where she was a professor at Bluefield College for 19 years. The longtime chaperone of West Virginia's Miss America contestants and a 2008 inductee into the West Virginia Broadcasters Hall-of-Fame, she lived her final years in a Wytheville nursing facility.
Television Pioneer. A respected member of the southern West Virginia community, she is remembered as possibly America's first female broadcast journalist. Born Jacqueline Mae Pero, she was raised in the north central Pennsylvania coal fields until relocating to Bluefield, Virginia during high school. In the 1950s she served as chair of the March of Dimes as the organization's focus switched from long term care of polio victims to prevention of the disease. Jackie joined WHIS (now, WWVA) in Bluefield, West Virginia, initially on the radio then shifting to television. On "The Jackie Oblinger Show", later called "The Women's Page", she presented shopping tips, Jackie's Gift Parade at Christmas always introduced by the tune "Sleigh Ride", and interviewed such noted personalities as Liberace, Johnny Mathis, and Jackie Kennedy. Moving to Charleston, she took "The Women's Page" to WCHS-TV and taught at West Virginia Career College before returning to Bluefield where she was a professor at Bluefield College for 19 years. The longtime chaperone of West Virginia's Miss America contestants and a 2008 inductee into the West Virginia Broadcasters Hall-of-Fame, she lived her final years in a Wytheville nursing facility.
Bio by: Bob Hufford
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