MAKING IT IN THE BIG APPLE; FORMER CAPE MAN WINS EMMY IN NEW YORK

John Lewis has come a long way from his days in Cape Girardeau as owner of the Mule Lip Lounge.

Now a news cameraman with the New York City NBC affiliate, WNBC, Lewis last month won an Emmy award for coverage last August of a hostage taking in Brooklyn.

The Emmy, awarded for outstanding coverage of a breaking news story, is Lewis' first.

He was outside an apartment building with his camera when a man at gunpoint took his girlfriend, her three children and her grandchild hostage.

After the hostages were released, the man shot a policeman in the leg prior to being gunned down inside the apartment building.

Lewis said the man fired a handgun as he emerged from an apartment and was met by a burst of 30 gunshots.

"We happened to be close to the scene," Lewis said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "There were two cameramen there from NBC and while one of us was shooting the proximity, the other was rolling on the front of the building

"What made the piece is we were rolling on the front of the building when the shots rang out and you could see the people scream and scatter."

Lewis, 41, a Van Buren native, has been a WNBC cameraman for about a year, after a number of years "paying my dues" in other capacities at NBC, Lewis said.

He said he was initially hired by the company to fill a two-week position answering phone, but worked his way up to a network videotape editor before becoming a cameraman for the network and local New York affiliate.

Lewis lived in Cape Girardeau about 10 years after coming to the city in 1973 to attend Southeast Missouri State University. While here, he said, he also operated a downtown silver smith business called "The Patent Shop."

After he sold the Mule Lip, he moved to Connecticut. With the help of Jeff Pylant, a former Cape Girardeau news personality, Lewis got a job as a desk assistant with the now defunct Satellite News Network, he said. Pylant was a weather man for Satellite News.

The job was Lewis' first in the business, and at 31, he was "ripping scripts with 18-year-old interns," he said.

When Satellite News went off the air, Lewis moved to Manhattan, where he was hired for the temporary position at NBC.

Now, Lewis said, he chases news stories around New York City in his Ford Crown Victoria Sedan, shooting for both WNBC and the NBC network. He works with a correspondent.

"We do the shows," he said. "We do whatever happens. This city's amazing. I shot a Mafia package the other day for network."

On Tuesday, he said, he shot an interview with Malcolm-Jamal Warner of the Cosby Show. Later that day he rushed to cover a story about an elderly man who drove through the front of a store, seriously injuring five people.

Lewis said he wasn't particularly impressed with winning the Emmy because it was a matter of simply being in the right place at the right time.

"I just didn't feel it was a labor-of-love story that I had worked days and weeks on to win the Emmy," he said. "Hopefully I'll earn one one day instead of win one.

"It's like a bowling trophy sitting here on my television. I just haven't absorbed it."

Lewis said he plans to visit Cape Girardeau next month.

"I need a vacation and a cold Stag," he quipped. "Everybody used to make fun of me for drinking Stag beer, so that's sort of my trademark."

Despite New York City having thousands of restaurants and every kind of imported beer, he said, there's not a Stag to be found.

"It makes a fellow want to move to a civilized city," he said.