It was a Sunday night, minutes away from one of the last newscasts Mark Eubank would do before he retired. Suddenly the ever-passionate meteorologist had a breakthrough. While he and his producer checked the graphics for the weathercast, Eubank's brain hit on a way to show people why Cache Valley gets so cold.
As it happens, Eubank is as slim and energetic as he was when he started as a weatherman 42 years ago. He always dashes around the KSL-TV Ch. 5 studio. That's why none of his co-workers even looked up when he ran by, headed for the cafeteria.
Eubank hurried back to the set carrying a bowl and a saucer. He then cut up several slips of paper. He scrawled the word "cold" on each paper and put them in the saucer. He stared into the bowl, muttered "ice cubes" and sped off again.
Presently, Eubank popped up on camera next to anchor Keith McCord and started talking about how winds can blow cold air out of a wide valley like Salt Lake — but not out of a deep valley like Cache. He puffed his cheeks and blew, and, presto, the little papers tumbled out of the saucer and the ice cubes stayed put in the bowl.
He grinned. The camera turned away to the sports desk.
Maybe it wasn't a perfect illustration of valley wind. (Could folks at home even read the word "cold" as the papers flew by?)
Still, this is the perfect illustration of Mark Eubank's exuberance. It made viewers realize he is having as much fun as he ever has.
And that, in turn, made us wonder: Won't Eubank miss television? What's he going to do now? Did he only decide to retire because he knew his son was waiting to replace him?
When you ask him, it seems the last question is the easiest to answer. Eubank says he decided a long time ago to retire at 65.
In television, he says, people either like your personality or they don't; they either accept your looks or they don't. He didn't want to stay too long. He didn't want people who have always liked him to start worrying about how old he looks.
And, yes, it's great that KSL hired his son Kevin Eubank to take his spot. But regardless, Mark says, he would have left in 2006.
As for Kevin, who is 31, if you had asked him when he was young if he wanted his dad's job, he'd have said he was going to be a helicopter pilot.
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To be one of the seven children of Jean and Mark Eubank is to know weather. Their father actually chose the site for their home, on the bench above Bountiful, so the Eubanks would be the first to get the storms crossing the Great Salt Lake. Sharon Eubank, the eldest child, says she's sure her family talks about weather more than most.
As Kevin, the sixth child, was growing up, he didn't mind all the weather talk. He didn't mind that everyone in town recognized his dad. But he did feel overwhelmed by expectations. His elementary teachers always sounded so hopeful when they asked, "Kevin, do you want to do your report on weather?"
So Kevin dreamed of flying. Then when he was 19, he went to Chihuahua, Mexico, on an LDS mission. "For the first time in my entire life, I saw the impact," he says. He saw floods. He saw what they did to people's lives.
When he came home from his mission, Kevin told his dad he wanted to forecast weather on TV.
Mark was quick to list the drawbacks. "Dad said, 'TV is a very fickle business. Your career is determined by viewers who don't know you."' Mark told Kevin he'd work at the whim of contract lawyers and marketers. Kevin recalls him saying, "It is a competitive business. Full of pitfalls. The odds are against you ever getting a job in this market."
Then Mark concluded by telling Kevin, "I believe in you. You can do this. You'll make a good living at it." Father and son agreed Mark would do everything possible to get Kevin some interviews, and Kevin would take it from there.
At the University of Utah, Kevin was able to meld two majors into one degree: broadcast meteorology. Next he prepared a video of himself and took it to KSL, where he was granted an audience and told, as he recalls, "You are awful." He asked for another chance and worked on his presentation for a year, and was told, "You still aren't what we want."
By then Kevin had a management job with Mrs. Field's Cookies. Then he started representing a clothing manufacturer. He loved the interaction with people and started a couple of businesses of his own.
In 1999, KSL asked him to fill in on two weathercasts. (Mark says proudly, "Kevin took to that green screen like a fish to water.") Again, Kevin wasn't offered a contract.
But someone from KUTV saw him and asked him to fill in there. And then he was invited to fill in for a few more shows on Channel 2.
And so Kevin was on the noon news, on Aug. 11, 1999, when the tornado hit Salt Lake City. Kevin stayed on the air for hours, repeating everything he knew about tornadoes. Three days later he got a contract with KUTV.
Over the next five years, before he was hired by KSL, Kevin and his dad were competitors.
As he scrutinized the competition, Kevin began to respect his father not just as a scientist but as an artist. Mark has a way of teaching without talking down to people, the younger Eubank says.
Of course, Kevin's bosses at KUTV were eager to point up his differences from Mark, notably his youth and athleticism. One day they had Kevin deliver the weather on top of the Wells Fargo building, and then he hopped over the edge and rappelled down the side of a building. Another day, wearing a dry suit with his microphone, Kevin did the weather while wakeboarding on Willard Bay.
These were things his father did not do. "Ask Mark what he likes to do in the snow and he'll say 'Stay warm,"' Kevin says. "He likes to be inside looking out." But Kevin likes to snowboard.
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At least once a month the Eubank kids and spouses and 14 grandkids are invited to Mark and Jean's for sourdough pancakes.
On this particular Saturday, Kevin comes late and is all dressed up. (He's been to a baptism.) With him are his wife, Jana, and their four children: The three oldest are towheads who quickly finish their pancakes and trot off to play with their cousins. The baby is a girl who gets cuddled and passed between aunts and grandmother.
As Jean and Mark and the grown children pour syrup and talk about their sourdough traditions and their camping traditions and describe their family life, it becomes clear that Mark has always been as energetic as he appears on TV. For years, it turns out, Mark held two full-time jobs. He says he just never trusted the television-rating system, not when it came to supporting his family.
Mark and Jean moved to Utah in 1967 so Mark could get a degree in meteorology from the University of Utah. He'd been a weather forecaster in California for four years before that. Once in Salt Lake City, Mark went to college by day and did the weather for KUTV by night. He soon became noted for his intense style of delivery. His ratings climbed.
He started WeatherBank, a meteorological consulting firm, in 1972. His clients were radio stations, filmmakers, resort owners, the gas company.
In 1989, he announced he would leave KUTV for KSL. Anchor/reporter Carole Mikita still remembers where she was when she heard the news (in Cedar City, covering the Utah Shakespearean Festival for KSL). She says, "My reaction was, 'Wow, this is the steal of the century."'
Mark moved WeatherBank closer to KSL and worked only the one job for a year, until the non-competition clause in his KUTV contract had expired and he could go back on TV. He missed television during that period, he said.
Unlike producers and anchors who stay at the station between shows, Mark always came home for dinner no matter where he worked. Granted, the kids had usually been fed at 5, he says. But he and Jean always ate together at 7. He'd be home until 9, when it was time to leave for the station to get ready for the 10 o'clock news.
As they talk around the kitchen table, Sharon recalls his punctuality. The family would often go to the movies on Monday nights, and no matter how exciting the plot or how near the ending, her dad slipped out the door at precisely 9 p.m.
Mark says he started being home more in 1992, when he sold WeatherBank. At this, daughter Marley Billings reassures him. She says he was home on weekends and every night for a few hours, and he made it to all her important school events.
Mark seems to enjoy helping his grandchildren with school projects, and attending their plays and activities. He'll do that in retirement. He'll take on some consulting projects through the company he owns, WeatherCycles Inc. Mark also plans to devote one day a week to exploring the community with Jean, finding new and fun things to do.
Once the holidays are over, he says his life will take on the new rhythm. He'll go to bed at 11 and wake up fairly early. (The scientist in him wonders how long it will take Jean to revert to her preferred time of early rising. He says it took him 20 years to get her to adapt to waiting up to talk with him at midnight, while he ate ice cream and relaxed after coming home from the station.)
In retirement, Eubank doesn't plan to vary his morning routine of checking the instruments around his house and yard, and searching through the computer weather models. But most important: Two days a week, he will immerse himself in his long-range research.
For decades now Mark has been trying to make extremely accurate one-year forecasts. A few years ago he became so discouraged he gave up his dream. Now, he says, he wants to plough back into the project.
"My goal is to advance, day by day." Gradually, he believes he will achieve accuracy a month off, then two months off. "I have some ideas," he says. Last week he was at the U., accepting a lifetime-achievement award, and he spoke to various professors who offered to point him in new directions.
Eubank believes. That's the thing. The more he learns about the universe, the more he reads the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the more he believes. God has a plan.
Mark says it is not really a math problem he must solve, though meteorologists do know calculus. He says it is really more a matter of recognizing patterns. He'll use his brain the way you use your brain when you put together a puzzle.
Mark says the federal government has had limited success in long-term prediction because the federal model only uses one variable. (The temperature of the ocean at the equator.) Mark will likely use three variables. The jet stream will probably be one of those variables.
If you talk to KTVX-Ch. 4's Clayton Brough, he will say how much he is going to miss watching Mark on television. He'll say Mark is still on top of his game. He'll thank Mark for being his mentor and friend.
Brough wishes him well with his research. However, Brough believes in chaos theory. We are getting more accurate in our one week forecasts, Brough concedes. But 14 days off? 30 days? The further out you go, Brough believes, the less specific you will ever be able to be.
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Over the past few weeks, as he moves toward full retirement, Mark has taken over the weekend news, ceding the weeknight spot to Kevin. His children say they can't get used to hearing his voice when they call their parents' home on a weeknight.
Only once during November did Mark come in on a weeknight, and that was the night that he and Kevin were predicting a storm. Mark will not (he stresses this) turn over his white snow-prediction sportcoat to Kevin until he officially retires.
So, on the white-coat night, when he came in and saw the crew he used to work with, he was as sincere as always when he told them he misses them. He'll tell anyone that this is the hard part of retiring.
KSL-TV anchor Dick Nourse understands. Nourse says the crew may not socialize much away from the station, "But when you walk into work at night, you walk into a roomful of friends."
Then Nourse describes his friend Mark, chuckling as he does. "The most amazing thing about Mark is, he really does live the weather every day. He has instruments at home. This guy knows what is going on even when he is on vacation."
Mark's co-workers tease him about his zeal for weather. Nourse says, "He takes the jokes quite well."
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Not long after Kevin came to KSL, his co-workers asked him how old he is. He knows 31 is young to have this prime spot. He sometimes jokes about his father having very large coattails.
If you go to the station to watch Kevin do the weather, you might not notice any difference between the way he works and the way his dad works. They both consult a variety of computerized weather models (NAM, the North American model, is the favorite of both). They both seem happy collaborating with a producer. You might notice that Kevin seems a bit chattier.
Bingo, says meteorologist Keith Merrill, who was Mark's producer for many years and who now works with Kevin. Mark is quieter, Merrill says. "He focuses so much on finding information." When Mark retires he will enjoy his time off, Merrill knows. But his passion for weather will not lessen one bit; it will merely be redirected.
On the other hand, "Kevin really wants to touch the public," Merrill says. Kevin loves to shake hands, visit schools. Merrill can see Kevin gaining influence in the community just because he loves being out in the community.
Meanwhile, if Kevin hears Merrill talking about the similarities and differences between him and his dad, he may feel compelled to interrupt. He may start to feel some of the pressure he felt as a boy. Stop, he'll say. "Mark is an icon."
Please don't compare me to my dad, he'll say. Or if you have to, Kevin requests, could you first just give me 30 years to catch up?
E-mail: susan@desnews.com
The Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV are involved in an ongoing news-gathering partnership.