DELMARVA - After three decades, WBOC’s Charles Paparella is starting a new adventure as he enters a retirement sure to be plentiful with even more stories to tell. Today we take a look back at Charlie’s incredible career at WBOC and how he became one of the most well-known faces and voices on the Delmarva Peninsula.
A Delmarva native through-and-through, Charlie is originally from Somerset County and attended Crisfield High School. He then attended the University of Maryland Eastern Shore before pursuing an array of interests and undertakings, including music, cabinet making, research, and muskrat trapping (according to Charlie).
Finally, Charlie found himself in a career as a television news photographer. The rest, as they say, is history.
Charlie began at WBOC as a photographer under the tutelage of the great Scorchy Tawes. Scorchy’s love of the Peninsula, its people, and their stories clearly made a lasting impression on Charlie, who would carry on that legacy after Scorchy’s retirement. Today, Charlie is just as well-known and well-loved on Delmarva as his legendary mentor and friend.
The very first Travels with Charlie aired in August of 2002. Over two decades and about 8,000 Travels with Charlie stories later, he has cemented himself as Delmarva’s most recognizable minstrel.
“You couldn’t ask for a more bountiful harvest of stories and people than this peninsula,” Charlie told Steve Hammond as the two looked back on their 30-year career together at WBOC.
“I was very lucky with the people I got to talk to and the places I got to go.”
Charlie says Travels never would have happened without the support of his wife and soulmate Becky, though. Riding with him on his many Travels, Becky was his partner not only in life, but also in storytelling.
“It was never just mine,” Charlie says. “It was always ours.”
Few cultural institutions on Delmarva would be unfamiliar with the pleasant voice and affable attitude of Charles Paparella. Travels with Charlie saw him frequenting The Mar-Va Theater, the Berlin Peach Festival, the Mount Hermon Plow Days, the Camden Avenue Farmers Market, among many, many others. Music and performing arts have especially been common focuses in Travels.
“The arts always need a bump,” Charlie says. “People don’t understand how important those things are.”
Charlie says he also has a special appreciation for Delmarva’s many churches and religious institutions.
“The people in the churches are so wonderful,” he says.
Charlie’s skills as a photographer never dulled in his thirty years with WBOC, and it seems there is nothing small enough to evade his keen eye. From crabgrass to caterpillars, dung beetles to solitary dandelions, Charlie can find poetry in things most of us would never have noticed. The miniscule has obviously never carried any less importance or inspiration than the grand with Charlie.
That fascination with nature, philosophy, and the universe at large ensured that Travels with Charlie has always been as educational as it was poetic. Few can strike that balance like Charlie does.
The first part of the Final Travels with Charlie aired on WBOC on December 13th, and you can watch it here.
WBOC and all of us at Draper Media wish Charlie continued safe travels. Thank you for all the stories, the music, the laughs, and the memories, Charles Paparella.
