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Boston Globe

Sonya Hamlin, groundbreaking Boston TV talk show host, dies at 101

Advertisement Beyond the innovations, Ms. Hamlin wanted 'to make alternative programming for women,' she told the Globe in January 1975, after announcing that she was leaving WBZ. 'I wanted to break through the stereotype of what 'the little housewife' wants out of television.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Ms. Hamlin, who went on to host another talk show on WCVB-TV, and then reinvented herself as a high-profile communications consultant to lawyers and business chief executives, 'A very strong light went out. Sonya was a real force,' said Jerry Wishnow, a longtime friend who formerly was creative services director at WBZ. 'She didn't fake it,' he added. 'I was a talk show producer. I watched all kinds of talented people faking it.' Advertisement Ms. Hamlin never did, Wishnow said. Before sitting down with guests, 'she read the book, she knew all about the people she interviewed.' He added that 'she asked thoughtful questions — she could have been a psychiatrist in a second. There was no equivocation. She went right to the heart of the person she was speaking with.' In 2009, Ms. Hamlin was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame. At WBZ, before beginning her talk show, she was 'the first cultural reporter on nightly news in the country,' She was named New England's broadcasting personality of the year in 1972 and received Emmy nominations 'for TV hosting and for her pioneering documentary 'China: A Different Path,' ' the Hall of Fame said. Ms. Hamlin wanted to be more than a midday talk show host. 'I wanted to use this powerful medium to make ourselves more apparent to each other — to really communicate, explain, understand,' she told the Globe in 1975. 'I tried never to be judgmental and always tried to think of myself as a person at home watching. What would I really want to know, to learn, from this person's unique experience?' She later taught that kind of inquisitiveness to lawyers and business executives in her subsequent career as a communications consultant. That work had its origin in a chance meeting in 1976, when she traveled to South America before joining WCVB-TV, Channel 5. In the seat next to her on the plane was a Harvard University professor who was running seminars on trial techniques. Advertisement 'I said, 'What do you think of this? Why not teach those lawyers how to better speak before juries, how to organize information and appeal to feelings,' ' Ms. Hamlin recalled in a 1990 Globe interview. Soon after, she was invited to speak with a Harvard Law School official, who asked her to critique a pair of videotaped opening statements from trials. One of them, she said, was 'forbidding, almost elitist.' A few weeks later, she was giving her first lecture at Harvard. Ms. Hamlin went on to publish books, including 'How to Talk So People Listen: Connecting in Today's Workplace,' and more than one edition of 'What Makes Juries Listen.' Much of her initial consulting was with attorneys, especially when she left her cohosting duties at 'Sunday Open House,' on WCVB. 'My teaching was going bananas,' she recalled in 1990. 'I was overwhelmed by the law — they were taking me everywhere. I was teaching, teaching, teaching, because they realized this could help them win cases.' Chief executives of major businesses also sought her insights. 'I enhance people's presentations,' she told the Globe. Sonya Borenstein was born in New York City on Oct. 14, 1923, and grew up in the Bronx, the younger of two sisters. Her father, Julius Borenstein, was an apartment building landlord in the borough. He and Ms. Hamlin's mother, Sarah, were activists in New York's Jewish community and beyond. 'She was the brains right alongside him and made everything happen,' said David Hamlin, one of Ms. Hamlin's sons. Both of Ms. Hamlin's parents moved to the United States from Poland in the early 1900s. Her mother 'had a real instinct for psychology,' Advertisement A stellar student, Ms. Hamlin skipped grades in school and was only 15 when she enrolled at New York University, from which she graduated with a bachelor's degree. In 1948, she married Bruce Hamlin, who was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard. He went on to own shoe and clothing stores on the North Shore, and to work as an executive with US Shoe Corp. They lived in Marblehead, where Ms. Hamlin initially was careful not to disclose too many details about her professional life in an era of gendered roles, which included teaching dance at Radcliffe College and Harvard. 'I didn't tell most people that I was teaching,' she told Pappers, adding: 'I was concerned about how misunderstood I would be.' Then her TV career turned her into one of Boston's most recognizable personalities. She worked at Channel 5 in the early 1960s, when it was WHDH, and hosted 'Meet the Arts' on WGBH-TV before moving to WBZ. After her husband died in 1977, Ms. Hamlin's teaching included a seminar at Boston University's medical school called 'On Death and Dying,' which focused on how to talk to dying patients. Mark, one of her three sons, died in 1992. Though her professional life was demanding, 'mom was our family's gatherer,' said her son David, who lives in Washington, D.C. 'We came together at her house for the milestones,' he said, added that she 'always brought joy' to every occasion. Advertisement 'I think she took that desire to connect very personally in her work and in her personal life,' he said. A service has been held for Ms. Hamlin who, in addition to David, leaves another son, Ross of Thornton, N.H., and six grandchildren. A mentor to women throughout her career, Ms. Hamlin 'was probably the most extraordinary woman I've met in my life,' said Amy Sriberg, who formerly was her assistant. To Sriberg and other women, Ms. Hamlin would say: 'Be creative, use your mind, do whatever you have to do to try to make your mark in the world.' Ms. Hamlin 'wanted to help women,' Sriberg said. 'She had no problem watching other people succeed. She encouraged that. There was no ego whatsoever. She just wanted people to succeed.' Bryan Marquard can be reached at