Wishing WCCO photojournalist Joe Berglove farewell after 39 years

MINNEAPOLIS — Many of you know the faces of WCCO — the news anchors and reporters on TV every day. But rarely do you get to see the amazing team behind the camera that help tell your stories.

One of them is photojournalist Joe Berglove, who is retiring from WCCO after an incredible 39 years.

It's a story that starts in Elk River when the small-town kid got a big-city job at WCCO-TV as a security guard.

If anybody knows Berglove's story, it's former WCCO reporter Bill Hudson — the two grew up together in Elk River.

"We lived across the lake from each other. We went to the same church, we had the same Sunday school, so I have known Joe Berglove pretty much my entire life," Hudson said. "He has this hard exterior but deep down there's nobody with a bigger heart."

Berglove got his big break at the 1987 World Series when he got his hands on a WCCO camera.

"They just dropped me off outside the dome. Well, I climbed up on a giant cement pole, had a guy help me get my gear up there. And I heard the rumbling inside the dome and I thought, 'They must have won!' And so the people came out and I started rolling, and I turned on this gigantic Sun Gun light and people just went absolutely crazy," Berglove said. "My first shot that I ever shot as a 'CCO photojournalist was on the network news that night. How lucky is that?"

Luck had nothing to do with it. From that day on, the skilled photojournalist captured some of Minnesota's biggest stories.

"YOu can't go to the scene of a tornado without being affected, especially the one that sticks in my mind is St. Peter," Berglove said. "All these trees are gone. There are boats from the marine dealer up in trees a half a mile away. It was just that whole town was transformed."

But one story that really hit home was the Jacob Wetterling story.

"It was really hard seeing that family and that community go through what they what they did," Berglove said.

Berglove was thorough and curious — he created a trademark WCCO series "Good Question."

He got an idea one night in 2005 while he and reporter Ben Tracy were watching people at a bar play trivia.

"And that kind of got the wheels clicking and I'm thinking, 'Wait a minute. People love trivia.' And, at that time, we had just kind of kicked off our website. We're trying to drive people to the website. And so I thought, what if we answered people's questions?" Berglove said.

Second to his beloved family, Berglove treasured his career and WCCO has treasured him.

"That's why I love it. It's just such an interesting job, you get to meet interesting people. And yeah, you'll run into people on their worst day, but sometimes you run into people on their best day," Berglove said.