Obituary of Patrick Leon McLaughlin

McLaughlin, Patrick L., ?Pat?, 81, of St. Petersburg, died Wednesday May 9, 2007 at St. Anthony?s Hospital. Born in Ann Arbor, MI, he moved to St. Petersburg in 1954 from his native city. He helped usher the Tampa Bay area into the television age and was for many years chief engineer of Tampa?s WFLA-TV. A long-time resident of St. Petersburg, McLaughlin was a broadcast engineer whose career began after service in the United States Navy in World War II and afterward, studied electronic engineering on the GI bill and culminated with his retirement from the television industry in 1985. ?He, and many radio-and-television pioneers like him, literally helped get television off the ground, laboring behind-the-scenes to usher in the dawn of modern, electronic television,? U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson has said of him. ?For the technicians and engineers of those early days of TV, it often was a low-budget, low-glamour profession. But they pressed on and built an extraordinary industry.? In 1954, Mr. McLaughlin helped build up West Central Florida's first television station, WSUN-TV, Channel 38, according to a Jan. 14, 2003 entry in the Congressional Record on file in the Library of Congress. Later, he served as chief engineer at WFLA-TV, Channel 8, in Tampa, now one of the country's largest media markets. The station is owned by Media General Inc., which also owns The Tampa Tribune. Survivors include his five sons, Michael McLaughlin, Venice, Daniel McLaughlin, Washington DC, Thomas McLaughlin, Patrick McLaughlin Jr., and Terry McLaughlin, all of Tampa, FL, a sister, Susan Bolls, Urbanna, VA, his caregiver, Sally McLaughlin, six grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Anderson-McQueen Funeral & Cremation Centers ? N.E. St. Petersburg.