Decorated Veteran. Intelligence Officer. Weapons Inspector. Congressional Fellow. Lobbyist. Business Executive. Public Speaker. Contributing author. Radio host. Award-winning television journalist.
In more than 30 years, Mark Hyman has served around the globe in a variety of capacities. He has performed activities that other journalists only talk about. He hosted The Point with Mark Hyman, an award-winning commentary television program that took him across the country and to locations abroad, including reporting from the war zone in Iraq.
The Point was featured on 32 television news stations of the Sinclair Broadcast Group with an aggregate daily audience in excess of two million viewers. He is a guest radio host and a contributor to The Washington Times, D.C. Examiner, American Spectator, Human Events and other publications.
Mark served briefly in the Army before attending college on an Army ROTC scholarship. He was later accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1981. He served as a naval officer on ships assigned to the east and west coasts and he served in the U.S. Navy’s European headquarters in London.
He has conducted worldwide travel with extensive time spent in the Middle East. Following active duty he worked as a civilian with the Office of Naval Intelligence and with the U.S. On-Site Inspection Agency as a disarmament treaty weapons inspector in former Warsaw Pact countries and the former Soviet Union. While in the Navy Reserve, he served in leadership positions in CIA’s National Warning Staff, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, Naval Space Command and Naval Intelligence.
In the mid-1990s, he attended the Johns Hopkins University on an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship and worked in the U.S. House of Representatives. He joined Sinclair in 1997 as a corporate executive and assumed the duties of news commentator in 2001.
Mark has appeared on network and cable television news programs, on nationally-syndicated and local radio programs, and has been interviewed for numerous national publications. He is a frequent public speaker on college campuses, before community organizations, at numerous conventions, and he has testified before Congress.
The military organizations in which he has served have been awarded four CIA National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Commendations during his service, and he has been awarded the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award and several Navy and Joint military awards.
Mark was selected as an International Who’s Who of Professionals for 1998 and 2001 and Who’s Who for 2001 and 2002. He was selected as Best Local TV Personality for Baltimore in 2003. He is a winner of twelve Telly Awards for Excellence in Broadcasting and six Aurora Awards for Excellence in the category of Social Issues and Documentary, including two Platinum Best in Show awards. He is active in several national and local community charity organizations.
Dick Kerns was born in Camp Lejeune, N.C., the son of career Marine and
Fort Hill grad, Class of ’46, Bill Kerns, and Dorothy (Lancaster)
Kerns, Beall High Class of ’51. Raised in Thurmont, Dick has come to
the mountains all his life, visiting relatives and the Savage River
summer cabin where his heart resides.
A 1985 graduate of Frostburg
State, he completed journalism studies at the University of Maryland.
Dick’s journalism career began at the weekly Frostburg Journal in 1988.
In 1990 he began a three-year stint at the Frederick News-Post. He came
to the Cumberland Times-News as a reporter in 1993 and was elevated to
editorial page editor in 2000.
In the fall of 2005 Dick was the
liberal half of the point-counterpoint Sunday “Faceoff.” Owing to the
popularity of that feature, he began his own weekly column soon
thereafter.
After Faceoff was killed in 2006, Dick continued
writing his own column until the publisher spiked the feature in
August, 2007. One month later he was fired for nefarious reasons
documented at www.geocities.com/rkernsburg
A native of Cumberland and have lived in the same house all my life. A 1969 graduate of Allegany High School, I attended Allegany Community College and began reviewing concerts for the Cumberland News, beginning with Guy Lombardo and the Grass Roots in 1971. My first review actually was Dawn in July of 1971; and my by-line was omitted, thank goodness! It was a fake "Dawn" and not the real group! Began writing Jack's Music in 1974, which appeared in the Cumberland Times-News from Oct. 5, 1974 until August, 2007.
