Dick Bertel
Richard Bertelmann (January 6, 1931 – September 11, 2023), professionally known as Dick Bertel, was an American radio and television personality and broadcasting executive who was best known for his work locally in Hartford, Connecticut, nationally on the NBC and Mutual Broadcasting System radio networks, and internationally for the Voice of America. Early life Richard Bertelmann was born on January 6, 1931, at Bronx Maternity Hospital on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx borough of New York City, to Meta Katherina "Martha / Mattie" (née Delvanthal) Bertelmann, the daughter of German immigrants living in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, and Heinrich "Henry" Bertelmann, who immigrated to the United States from Hemmoor, Germany in 1909, disembarking from the steamship President Lincoln at Ellis Island. He was naturalized in 1933. Bertelmann's only sibling was his brother Henry John "Harry" Bertelmann, a U.S. Army veteran of World War II. His mother claimed that as Bertelmann first learned to talk, he would frequently babble a version of "W-E-A-F New York," the hourly legal identification of one of the most prominent stations in New York City at that time. During his early childhood, family and friends called him "Richie." While growing up in the