Wink Martindale, a Jackson native whose broadcasting career spans more than 50 years, will visit Union Communication Arts students Thursday, Oct. 25th, during the 12:15 hour.

Mr. Martindale will conduct and Q&A session with students in the Television Studio on the second floor of Jennings Hall. A video of his career will be shown prior to the Q&A session. The entire event will be televised live on EPlus Channel 6.

The host of 19 games shows and currently seen as the Orbitz Man in commercials for the national online travel service, Martindale began his broadcasting career at WDXI in Jackson in 1951 after "pestering his Sunday School teacher, who owned the station, to give me a job." Eventually, he worked for two other Jackson stations before vaulting to an on-air job at WHBQ in Memphis, the most popular rock music station serving West Tennessee in the 1950s.

With his popularity growing on radio, Martindale migrated to WHBQ-TV, where he hosted two successful local broadcasts: "Wink Martindale and the Rocket Rangers" and "Wink Martindale's Top Ten Dance Party." On the latter show, he periodically interviewed Memphis native and music legend Elvis Presley. Martindale's interviews with Elvis are credited with helping propel The King in his early music career.

In 1959, Martindale took the plunge and moved to Hollywood, where he hosted a live television dance party show in Los Angeles and did an four-hour daily pop music show on radio. The same year he was tapped to do a narrative song, "Deck of Cards," the story of a soldier who did not own a Bible but used the numbers on a deck of playing cards to depict the impact of the Bible and Christ on his life. The song soared into the top five on the Billboard charts. Martindale performed the song on the Ed Sullivan show in New York.

In 1964, he began the journey as a popular television game show host. "What's This Song?" was a forerunner of today's "The Singing Bee" and " Don't Forget the Lyrics!" Over the next 36 years, Martindale hosted more than 18 more game shows. His longest running favorites: "Gambit," which ran on CBS from 1972-77, and "Tic Tac Dough," which ran from 1978-85. In the late 1990s he had another long run with "Debt" on Lifetime.

In 2006, Martindale was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In July 2007, the Game Show Congress presented him with the Ralph Edwards Career Service Award for this lifetime of charity work, including the Wink Martindale Cerebral Palsy Telethon, which raised more than $1 million for Jackson's Cerebral Palsy Center from 1978-88. Two weeks ago, Martindale was inducted into the Game Show Hall of Fame at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas.

Wink and his wife, Sandy, are both devout Christians and have lad several tours to the Holy Land.

All Communication Arts students will be excused from 12:15 to 1:30 classes to attend the session with Wink Martindale in Thursday and are able to ask him questions about his career during the event.