Gloria Jean Sykes (Class of 1969)

 

Gloria Jean Sykes earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Southern Illinois University.  She taught grade school and high school art for a year, and returned to school to complete a master’s degree in radio, television and film from Northwestern University.  Meanwhile, she was getting experience in working on animation specials.

 

Since 1975, she has worked in many capacities behind the camera, writing, directing and producing for television and film.  In her many media projects, she has specialized in investigative segments for TV news magazines and reality-based series.  For NBC-TV’s “What Happened?” series she researched singer Ricky Nelson’s death, the USS Iowa, and other high profile disasters.  She is proud of her documentaries for A&E--“Multiple Personalities”, “Psychic Spies” and “Marriage and Murder”--and her work on “A-Pac-O-Lafs-Now,” a four-hour live comedy special with Robin Williams, and “The Best Years of Our Lives” with Keith Knudson of the Doobie Brothers to benefit the Viet Nam Veterans Foundation.  She was feature producer of “Cheater,” an Emmy-nominated HBO TV movie based on the 1995 Academic Decathlon competition in Chicago. 

 

Most recently she has taught English classes as an adjunct professor at Wright College.  She has co-authored a book, “Shattered Sense of Innocence, the Child Murders That Changed the Way America Looked at Itself” about Northwest Side’s 1955 Schuessler-Peterson murders-now waiting for publication.