Frazer Dougherty, Public Access Enthusiast and Visionary Behind LTV, Dies at 101

Genie Henderson didn’t truly understand the meaning of community — until she met Frazer Dougherty.

It was the winter of 1986, she said, as she took her seat in the very first class for citizen producers at LTV, a relatively new public access television station in East Hampton. And even though it was housed inside a windowless old warehouse, on the edge of the town dump, the room was electric.

“There was just something about the vision and the energy and the feeling that we were all part of something really exciting and new and different,” she said. “And Frazer was an exciting person who, by sheer will, was going to make it happen.”

Since its inception in 1983, LTV has grown into a local institution, now home to two channels that air programming that ranges from public meetings and educational content to artist talks, cooking shows and more. And, in large part, it’s due to Dougherty — who, on Tuesday, August 29, died at his home in Aventura, Florida. He was 101.

“Frazer was certainly a presence in our lives,” Henderson said. “Even though he was as old as he was, it just seems very unusual that he would be not on this planet. Maybe he still is, though — I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Born on June 16, 1922, Frazer Lowber Welsh Dougherty was a man who lived many lives. The youngest of four siblings, he grew up in Pennsylvania before his family relocated to Virginia when he was 10. He studied at the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played varsity football, and was on track to attend Dartmouth College on a sports scholarship when what would become World War II broke out.

Instead, with pressure from his father, he enlisted in the U.S. Army infantry and later joined the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry. Two years in, Pearl Harbor was attacked and he leapt at the opportunity to join the Army Air Corps. Flying had been a childhood dream, his daughter, Ariel, explained. When he was a boy, he had small model airplanes all over his bedroom, she said.

As a B-25 bomber pilot assigned to the 345th Bomber Group, 498th Squadron in Papua New Guinea, Dougherty survived 63 missions. He went on to become the personal aid and pilot for Commanding General of the First Air Force Frank O’Driscoll Hunter through the end of the war.

But before his service ended, he met Robert Fulton Jr. at a dinner party — and learned all about his invention, the Airphibian. The plane could fly to an airport and then, after removing its wings, tail and propeller, transform into a car. In 1950, it became the first and only roadable aircraft approved by the Civil Aviation Administration, and Dougherty became its test pilot.

“The reason that my name is Ariel is because the plane made its first maiden flight the day I was born,” his daughter said, adding, “We all flew in it at some point or another.”

Despite Dougherty’s best efforts, the attempt to revive the Airphibian in the mid-1950s failed, and his first marriage to Page Caroline Huidekoper ended in divorce. So she and their four children moved to Washington, D.C., and he landed in New York City, where he worked at the industrial design firms of George Nelson and Robert Gerson.

In 1963, he married Frances Ann Cannon Hersey and, for a few years, operated an air taxi service, Flotair, which transported passengers from New York to Fire Island and the East End. And before he landed there himself, the couple spent nearly 10 years in the 1970s sailing around the Greek Islands aboard “XAPA.”

“My stepmother had a house in East Hampton from the late ’50s, and then they still had quarters in Manhattan, but mostly lived in East Hampton from 1980 on,” Ariel Dougherty said, “and that’s how he got involved with local TV.”

By that time, journalist Jill Keefe and artist Bill King, both political activists, were already in the proverbial trenches, according to Henderson, the station’s longtime archivist. Inspired by New York University film professor George Stoney — who is widely considered the father of public access television — Keefe learned how to operate a video camera at the college and returned to the East End with rental equipment. Facing open hostility, she brought her camera inside Town Hall and filmed the board meetings, in an effort to stop them from selling Napeague oceanfront property to hotel developers.

The pair then set up a video viewing station outside the post office under a tent and invited citizens to watch. It would become “Save Our Beaches,” LTV’s first show — though it predates the station.

And when Dougherty caught wind of this, he knew he had to be involved.

“He was just single-minded in the fact that this was the greatest thing that had ever come down the pike — public access television — and that he was determined it was going to succeed in East Hampton,” Henderson said. “And, boy, was it an uphill climb.”

LTV — the “L” stands for “local” — was not embraced by the cable company, she said, and it certainly was not embraced by town leadership of the time. But it was embraced “by us,” she said, “the citizens, and hordes of people showed up to take the courses. It was just so lively, this funny old place located in the dump, and it was all Frazer really.”

“I can tell you right now that LTV would not exist had it not been for him. It had too many hurdles to cross,” she said, adding, “He was persona non grata for so many years, and he didn’t ever blink.”

On air seven days a week, 24 hours a day, the station is a fixture in East Hampton. For years, Dougherty anchored his own morning show, “Hello! Hello! East End” starting at 7 a.m. — he was an early riser, his daughter said — which Henderson said audiences fondly called “Frazervision.”

“He was fun,” she said. “He was full of personality and high spirits. He was also very difficult. He was frustrating.”

In the 1990s, Henderson recalled when the board of directors voted down the new building that LTV is currently housed in, which was Dougherty’s vision. “The next day, the backhoes were out here digging the hole,” she said with a laugh. “And, of course, the board of directors, everybody said, ‘Well, it’s his thing.’”

Led by Dougherty, the programming that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Air Force was one of the best shows that he ever did, Henderson said. He gathered veterans in the studio, she recalled, and they shared about their experiences in war.

They broadcasted it live, she said, and suddenly, more veterans arrived. They had driven over to share their own stories, too.

“It became just this extraordinary moment for the community to come together and have this storytelling,” she said. “For me, being involved in this station, it’s the first time I ever really understood what community is — that we live in a community of all sorts of different people — and Frazer brought that into my life and brought it into hundreds of other people’s lives.”

After his 10 years working at LTV, Matt Hindra co-founded USA Warrior Stories, a not-for-profit organization designed to record, archive and share videos of veteran stories online — a move that he, in part, attributes to his time with Dougherty, who sat for an interview for the project in 2018.

“I always say that Frazer was someone that if you knew him and you spent time with him, he changed your life forever, because he was someone that made us all realize the importance of being part of the community and looking beyond ourselves,” he said. “And I think that’s true of myself, with my work with veterans and my work with my own nonprofit.

“If it wasn’t for the time spent with him, I don’t think I would have ever done any of those things.”

After the death of his second wife in 2001, Dougherty married Eleanor Sage Leonard in 2006. They moved to Florida, where she died in 2011, and he lived independently until shortly before his 101st birthday — driving his car to his art studio, where he made silkscreens, and cooking his daily soft-boiled eggs.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his three children — Frazer and Rush Dougherty, and Page Delano — and five stepchildren: Martin, Ann and Baird Hersey, Jay Leonard, and Elyse Fried. He was predeceased by his stepson, John Hersey Jr. In lieu of flowers, the family asks donations be made to Southern Poverty Law Center and American Civil Liberty Union.

Dougherty was socially minded, his daughter said. Six decades ago, he attended the March on Washington and, two years later, he participated in the Selma March in 1965 — and photographed both. The day Barack Obama was elected was among the most important in his life, she said.

“He was socially concerned,” she said. “It’s a sort of an extension, really, why public access was important to him — because it was a mouthpiece for the public, not just corporate structure.”

As LTV thrives in its 40th year, Dougherty lives on through the station, executive director Michael Clark said. “He always had a vision of creating this station to be by the people and for the people,” he said, “and that’s part of our mantra.”

He will be remembered for his fight, Henderson said, his enthusiasm and creativity — and his commitment to the place he called home.

“I think his legacy is the underlying spirit of what public access is supposed to be,” she said. “Public access television is really his legacy, and that everybody has a voice. Everybody has a voice in the community in which they live.”