Andy DeSantis sat at the 40-yard line for a Buffalo Bills game in 1976 with his brother.
He wasn’t focusing on quarterback Joe Ferguson or running back O.J. Simpson.
He was focusing on his future.
“I started watching the photographer running up and down the sidelines with cameras and I started to critique them,” DeSantis said in an interview. “They should be in front of the play and not behind it. By the end of the game, I said ‘I’m going to do that. I love football, I know football and I love filmmaking. This is what I want to do.’ ”
It led to an award-winning 41-year career as a WGRZ-TV photojournalist, 25 years of which he shot Bills games for various outlets.
Andy DeSantis won eight Emmys, among other honors, during his lengthy career as chief photographer at WGRZ-TV.
DeSantis, 67, who retired the day before last Christmas as Channel 2’s chief photojournalist, has the injuries to prove carrying 80 pounds of equipment along the sidelines can be as taxing on the body as playing professional football.
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“Even when I was younger it took me two-three days to recover,” said DeSantis, who has undergone two knee replacements and a surgery on his spine.
The party celebrating his career was delayed until a few weeks ago due to the pandemic, a winter in Florida and the time it took to plan it.
His Channel 2 colleagues speak of him the same way that Bills fans speak of legendary players.
Co-anchor Maryalice Demler was paired with DeSantis for her first on-air reporting assignment in 1993.
“That day and every assignment afterward felt like a Master Class,” wrote Demler in an email. “Andy DeSantis’ contribution to the success of 2 on Your Side cannot be overstated and it goes well beyond his award-winning skills as a videographer and editor. Andy’s leadership as chief photojournalist was the foundation of Channel 2’s excellence for decades.”
Co-anchor Scott Levin recalled DeSantis edited his demo reel 25 years ago for focus groups to view before his hiring as the evening anchor.
“He affectionately tells me he liked me the best … and added a little extra ‘pizazz’ to my clip!” wrote Levin, who added DeSantis was affectionately called “Chief” in the newsroom.
“Chief had the uncanny ability to take a run-of-the-mill dayside news story and take it to the next level with his shooting and editing ability, always looking for the next ‘Great Shot’ with his camera.”
Anchor-reporter Claudine Ewing wrote in an email that “working with Andy made me a better reporter. He made sure I knew writing to the video was important.”
She recalled starting a story with DeSantis when a premature baby was in the neonatal unit and doing follow-up stories when the child went to kindergarten, graduated from high school and college and became engaged.
“Andy was big on detail and making sure the right video was used that could be memorable. He is one of a kind!”
DeSantis said he was inspired by the late Ken Feltges, who taught a filmmaking class at Kenmore West. In one assignment, DeSantis and some classmates shot a three-minute film without sound, “Dead Man’s Hand,” about a card game set as a Western. It was mostly shot by DeSantis.
“People who took the course six-seven years later said he would show it to them as an example of how to tell a story of three minutes with no sound,” said DeSantis proudly.
He attended the University at Buffalo for a year and Alfred State for two years before getting a degree in broadcasting at SUNY Buffalo State in 1980. He had two internships at Channel 2 starting in 1979 before being hired to run the station’s film lab. It enabled him to start shooting stories on weekends.
“It got to the point some of the reporters were asking for me to shoot their stuff,” said DeSantis. They included Rich Kellman.
“Rich was a big influence because he is a great storyteller,” said DeSantis.
DeSantis developed a close relationship with another great storyteller, the late Scott Brown.
“When Scott passed away, I think a little of me died with him,” said DeSantis. “Nobody (ticked) me off more than Scott. He was anal about everything. But nobody made me better in my job than Scott. And I think I did the same thing for him.
“He’d walk up to my desk and say, ‘I have a good one,’ like a salesman,” recalled DeSantis.
The most memorable story DeSantis did with Brown concerned Anthony Capozzi, who was imprisoned for 22 years for crimes he didn’t commit.
After the arrest of bike path killer rapist Altemio Sanchez, DeSantis said Detective Dennis Delano told him they believed the same guy did all the rapes. They included two Delaware Park rapes in the 1980s for which Capozzi, who suffers from schizophrenia, was wrongfully convicted.
It led to an hour special, “They Made a Mistake,” that won a New York State Emmy over competition with New York City stations. Capozzi’s mother used those words in the call telling her son he was about to be freed.
DeSantis said he had the living room set up for interviews with family members when Mrs. Capozzi called a timeout.
“She said, ‘time for dinner, sauce is ready,’ ” recalled DeSantis. “I know you’re not supposed to get emotionally involved with stories, but I just fell in love with these people.”
His other memorable stories included a 12-part series and hour special in 1990 with Don Postles during his Channel 2 tenure about a trip to Poland and Hungary a year after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
“That was memorable just because of the historic value,” said DeSantis.
And, of course, there were the Bills' four Super Bowl losses, including the first one in which he had to share a room with sports director Ed Kilgore.
“We almost came to blows a couple of times,” laughed DeSantis.
He was on the goal line on the end zone, equal to the upright, for Scott Norwood’s unsuccessful attempt at a game-winning 47-yard field goal in Super Bowl XXV in 1991 against the New York Giants.
“From my angle you couldn’t tell [if it was good] because I was on the left side of the post … It looked like it went through … My stomach sunk. I felt sick. I thought for sure it went through.”
But he experienced some worse moments at Channel 2, which has had eight owners, eight or nine general managers and 13 news directors during his time.
The station competes with WIVB-TV for news supremacy now, but DeSantis remembers when the place was holding a “Dead Man’s Hand.”
“One day, four guys with hardhats came in with Niagara Grid,” recalled DeSantis. ”The (hardhats) were going to turn the electricity off before a newscast was getting ready. They said, ‘you pay the bill now or we’re going to shut the electricity off.’ The electric bill hadn’t been paid for like eight months in the early '90s. They paid the bill. We were like, this can’t be for real.”
It wasn’t the only unreal moment DeSantis experienced.
He was covering a story at a Disney World resort when he went into the women’s restroom by mistake to throw some water on his face. A woman combing her hair alerted him to his mistake.
“In her deep voice, she goes, ‘you are in the ladies’ room.’ It’s Lauren Bacall.” She come out and goes, ‘there he is, that’s the guy who walked in the ladies room.’ ”
Little did she know she was talking to a legend, too.
