PROFILE: Elaine Skypala
Elaine Skypala has come prepared for our meeting with an outline in hand. “It’s funny because as I told my friends I was doing this interview, everybody said, ‘You have to tell that story or that story!’ When I think about it, it makes me feel good about the things that I’ve done.”
Elaine is a storyteller with a career in television that reminds one of a young Oprah, Fran of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, or perhaps Mary Richards from the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
It all began in Pennsylvania. “I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and my husband is also from Philadelphia. We have since sold our home in Pennsylvania, so we now have a house, a little 100-year-old cottage in Avalon, New Jersey which is a beach town.”
Elaine mentions that both Boca Grande and Avalon are only seven miles long. “We tease people that if it’s longer than seven miles, we don’t want to live there,” said Elaine with a laugh.
“The story starts with me in Philadelphia,” she said. “When I graduated from high school I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I thought it had to do with medicine and Temple University is right there in Philadelphia and offers everything.”
As an only child off to college, Elaine enrolled at Temple University planning a career in medicine. Because of an unfortunate chemistry partner assignment, children’s television in Philadelphia gained a star.
“I had a chemistry course and they randomly assigned you a partner,” she explained. “My partner started a fire and all the water sprinklers went off. A few weeks after that, he mixed two chemicals that he shouldn’t have and the whole building had to be evacuated. I took that as an omen.”
One of Elaine’s sorority sisters was taking communications courses and writing commercials and it seemed like fun. It also seemed less dangerous, so she changed her major to communications.
Keep in mind that this was before cable television and social media. Television stations were limited in numbers. “People looked at my parents like I had decided I wanted to be a sword swallower and I would never get a job,” Elaine laughed. “There were three major television stations in Philadelphia, and one was owned by a man Walter Annenberg, who is very well known.”
Walter Annenberg was a former United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom and was an American businessman, philanthropist, and diplomat, and owned Triangle Publication which included The Philadelphia Inquirer, TV Guide, and Seventeen Magazine. Elaine was able to get a job working at their FM radio station doing “traffic,” meaning she placed the commercials into their slots throughout the programs. It turned out that the FM station salesman didn’t like doing commercials, so Elaine stepped in and started writing commercials.
“One day I was walking through the station and this fellow who later became known as Captain Noah was dressed up in this crazy captain’s outfit. Children’s television at that time was mostly nice people standing around, talking a little bit, maybe wearing a costume and showing cartoons. You have to understand that Sesame Street was just getting started and the ABC station that I was with decided that they wanted to do a children’s show that meant something.”
The result was Captain Noah and His Magical Ark with a show that aired two hours live every morning, Monday through Friday.
Elaine just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
“This man said, ‘I see you in the hall all the time. Would you be interested in coming over as an associate producer?’ The idea of this show was not to teach children how to read and write. A lot of children in Philadelphia, even back then, were going on the wrong path. We wanted kids to know that you could be anything that you wanted to be.”
Dressed as a sailor, just like Popeye but with a red hat and scarf, Elaine put people at ease and moved them into place during the production.
The world of television was exciting, with Philadelphia a large enough market to attract celebrities including Lauren Bacall.
“Lauren Bacall would come on our show and she was unhappy with the hotel she was staying at. So I got some florists to make up a beautiful bouquet and sent them to her hotel,” Elaine said.
Another celebrity that Elaine met was Robert Goulet, a man who just wanted a home-cooked meal.
“When he was on the show he was saying how he was between marriages and how much he missed a home-cooked meal. So Mrs. Noah and I got together and we cooked a chili dinner for him. I sat down and had dinner with Robert Goulet.”
From Fonzie of “Happy Days” fame to celebrity news commentator/comedian Jon Stewart, Elaine had a fascinating career. When Stewart told her she was part of the reason he became interested in being on television, she knew she had arrived.
When Walter Annandale decided to sell the station, many people were let go.
“There I was, a lowly associate producer, and they moved me into all these producing shows,” Elaine said. “One was a game show which was in several different states called “Dialing for Dollars.” That was great fun. And then we did a show called “AM Philadelphia” which was just like the Today Show. But then, one day about seven years later, I decided that I didn’t think I was doing anything truly important, and I wanted to do something that made more of an impact for people.”
Elaine decided to make a significant career change. The Pennsylvania SPCA had a headquarters in Philadelphia, and because there weren’t many animal rescues back then, the SPCA had to take in every animal. When she found out their public relations director was leaving, she left television to become a a star to countless homeless animals.
Elaine worked her way up the ladder and became the chief operating officer and chief program officer for the Pennsylvania SPCA.
“We put together a really good team of humane officers that did all kinds of incredible work. We even appeared on Animal Planet in a series called, ‘Animal Cops, Philadelphia.’ I believe they still rerun them every once in a while; we had 12 episodes.”
From closing down puppy mills to offering social services to families, Elaine has seen it all … including a woman who had to be taken to assisted living who had been living with five monkeys.
“It was very rewarding to see animals that came from terrible conditions moving to great situations after they were released to us and back in good health,” Elaine recalled.
Despite her busy career, family is everything to Elaine. She and her husband went to the same Philadelphia high school, with 900 people in their graduating class.
“We didn’t know each other and we had both been married before,” she said. “At our 20th reunion, mutual friends introduced us and that’s the way it happened.”
Ed is now a retired lawyer, and he likes to enjoy his time in Boca Grande.They have been here for 17 years now.
The Skypala’s have three children. Alex and Eddie are engineers and Danielle is now a judge in New Jersey.
Elaine is on the board of Royal Palm Players and it is a duty she loves. It was an obvious choice for her, considering her background.
“We have such fun and they’re great people. We want to get more people involved.”
To encourage more participation, the Royal Palm Players have come up with a series of workshops. “We’re calling this series ‘Curtain Calls.’ If you’ve come out to see a play and at the end of it you love it and you’re thinking, ‘Look at all those great costumes! I’d love to learn more about that.’ We will be holding a Curtain Call Costume workshop.”
From costumes to props, lights, sound, directing, acting and so much more, Royal Palm Players will feature workshops in the coming year to introduce people to all aspects of the theatrical arts. Keep reading the Boca Beacon to find out when those workshops will begin.
As the years have passed since she was in that Philadelphia television studio, she has realized that “making a difference” in people’s lives comes in all forms.
“I do want to say that my idea has changed about one important thing,” she said. “I told you that I left television because I thought that entertaining was not serving a purpose. But as I get older, I realize that entertaining and making people happy is probably one of the biggest services out there. The work we did – especially in children’s television – did make a difference.”
