Longtime Cincinnati public television viewers remember when Dr. O’dell Owens chaired WCET-TV’s Action Auction televised fund-raiser for a dozen years.
But that will be only a tiny part of WCET-TV’s new one-hour documentary about the West End native who earned a medical degree from Yale after flunking out of Walnut Hills High School.
“His story is just so incredible,” says Richard Wonderling, who is producing the film.
Be the Change: The O’dell Owens Story — premiering 8 p.m. Sept. 24 on Channels 48 and 16 — will tell of his remarkable achievements and community service as an in vitro fertilization pioneer at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in the 1980s; twice being elected as Hamilton County Coroner (2004, 2008); and serving as Cincinnati State Technical and Community College president (2010-15), Cincinnati Health Department medical director (2016) and president of the Interact for Health nonprofit promoting public health (2016-2021).
“He was born in poverty. His mother died when he was 12. His future could have gone south easily, but he earned a medical degree and a public health degree from Yale and did his residency at Harvard. It’s just an amazing story,” Wonderling says.
Wonderling has interviewed 15 people in the past year for the film. Among family and colleagues in the film are his son, Christopher, sister, Belinda Ullmer; Hamilton County Commissioner Alicia Reece; and Calvin Buford, for whom Owens babysat as a teenager. Buford's father, Dr. Clinton Buford, and mother, Cathryn, “took him in and paved a path for him to enter college,” according to Antioch College, where Owens earned a biology degree in 1971.
“Calvin’s family basically adopted O’dell when he was a younger teenager. He became like Calvin’s older brother,” Wonderling says.
Owens returned to his hometown in 1982 to establish an in vitro fertilization program at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He's credited with Cincinnati's first successful in vitro conception and delivery, and the first pregnancy from a frozen embryo in 1988, according to WVXU-FM’s obituary when he died at age 74 on Nov. 23, 2022.
The film includes interviews with two in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients.
“The IVF patients were very emotional, even 30 years after the fact. We spoke to one woman who had a daughter. And we spoke to a woman whose 10-year journey with IVF did not end in success, but she became a close friend of O’dell through the process,” Wonderling says.
Owens chaired Channel 48’s Action Auction, the station’s biggest fund-raiser, for 12 years. He was honored with a mural on the Central Parkway side of the Crosley Telecommunications Center which houses the station, in August 2021.
However, Owens’ involvement with the WCET-TV will be only a small part of the film, Wonderling says.
“When you look at the many things he did, we’re probably not even in the top 10. He did so many important things. I didn’t want this to be self-serving,” he says.
Be the Change: The O’dell Owens Story will be screened at a preview party at WCET-TV, 1223 Central Parkway, 6-7:30 p.m. Thursday Sept. 10. The screening is free and open to the public, but a reservation is required. Reservations can be made at this link or by calling Rachel Farnsworth, WCET-TV community engagement and events manager, at 513-345-6552.
Be the Change: The O’dell Owens Story premieres 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24, on WCET-TV (Channel 48) and Dayton’s WPTD-TV (Channel 16). Both channels will repeat the show at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 27.
Read more:
