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On a cloudy autumn day in New York City, Cheshire native Lonnie Quinn is exuding sunshine while reflecting on his bumpy career -- as he rollerblades deftly to work on 57th Street. "... There are so many hosting gigs on TV today. I would LOVE that," he says via cellphone near the corner of 9th Avenue. "I ... oh, someone just handed me a rose."
Ah, the benefits of being blond-haired, still boyish-looking at 45 and on a TV news show weeknights on WCBS-TV. But Quinn's recent rise to chief weathercaster at the CBS flagship station is anything but typical. His story takes us back two decades ...
It is December 1988 in the Register Features department and a dark-haired TV editor (me) writes a story about a young soap-opera actor named Lonnie Quinn, who just eight years before had helped the Cheshire High School swim team to a Housatonic League championship.
Quinn, whose mother Jane and other family still live in Cheshire, studied broadcast journalism at Boston College, but after doing an internship at WBZ-TV in Boston, "I vowed 'I will never do this for a living.' I hated it!"
He studied acting and, in his mid-20s in 1988, landed the role of Will Cooney on "All My Children," to good reviews. But it was a too-typical actor's life.
"I had gone out...