Roaming the streets of Baltimore on his roller blades, skates or bicycle, young Stephon Dingle was constantly on the prowl for information.
Often chasing ambulances and police cars, the precocious youngster loved collecting news about everything from drug raids to neighborhood construction projects.
When he was just 10, Dingle saw his first dead body not too far from his home on 28th Street in East Baltimore. With a medical examiner’s van blocking his view along Greenmount Avenue, the determined child got down on the ground and looked under the vehicle while a crowd stood behind a police line.
“I still remember the guy’s face to this day,” said Dingle, recalling a harrowing scene seared into his brain for 25 years. “I remember going back around the corner and telling others that it was such-and-such and I’m over here reenacting everything. That’s how curious a kid I was.”
Whenever Dingle uncovered some new tidbit, he delighted in sitting on his porch and sharing it with his beloved grandmother and two trusted neighbors.
“That’s when they would call me Mr. WJZ because they were like, ‘You’re just everywhere – you’re trying to know all this stuff,’ ” said Dingle, referring to the Charm City television station known for its local newscasts.
In a sense, growing up in Park Heights and East Baltimore in some of the most troubled parts of the city was the training ground for the work Dingle does now as a television journalist. Providentially perhaps, Dingle has worked for the very station for which he was nicknamed, serving as an anchor and reporter at WJZ-TV since 2022 after earlier broadcasting stints in Charlottesville, Va.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Louisville, Ky.
But the two-time Emmy-winning reporter also credits the Catholic education he received at Our Lady of Mount Carmel High School in Essex for helping shape him into the man he is today.
“I owe everything that I do to that school,” he said.
Growing up fast
Born on Easter Sunday in 1989 to a 16-year-old mother whom Dingle said struggled with drug addiction, Dingle was largely raised by Sheila Plato, his late grandmother. His father was out of his life from about the time Dingle was 5, he said, and the young boy looked to his grandmother as his moral compass.
Being a kid from tough parts of Baltimore made him grow up fast, he said.
“I knew who the beat cop was,” he said. “I knew who the undercover cop was. I knew who the drug dealer was. I knew who the crack addict was – probably a family member, someone we knew or a family friend – but we never judged them, right?”
Dingle recalled answering a knock at his door when he was 8 and witnessing police raiding his home looking for drugs that weren’t there – an experience he would later use as the opening paragraph in his application essay for Columbia Journalism School in New York, where he received his master’s degree.
Dingle’s grandmother supported him through all those difficult experiences, he said, and she had high expectations – correcting his grammar and constantly encouraging him in his pursuit of knowledge. Together, they watched early morning local news broadcasts on WJZ before school each morning.
“I was that nerdy little kid,” Dingle said with a laugh, remembering how he never let his pants sag and always tucked in his shirt. He sometimes faced teasing from elementary school classmates for the proper way he spoke.
Plato saw education as the pathway to a brighter future for her grandson. That path opened up when Ralph Sears, the president of the Gardenville Baseball League for which Dingle played, suggested the public school student look into going to high school at Mount Carmel.
New beginning
Dingle’s family certainly didn’t have the money to send him to a private school, but Sears, whose grandchildren attended Mount Carmel, encouraged Dingle to look into it. Sears contacted Mike Naunton, then the athletic director at Mount Carmel, and told him that Dingle was a talented baseball player, a smart student and someone who would benefit from a Catholic education.
Kathy Sipes, then the principal of the high school, traveled with some other school officials to meet with Dingle and his grandmother at their home.
“Stephon was impressive from the very beginning,” Sipes recalled. “When I met him, I thought, ‘I want this kid at our school. I want him to have some opportunities. I want him to be able to go to the next step if he makes the right choices.’ ”
Dingle’s tuition at Mount Carmel was covered with scholarship support – including significant funding from Sears himself, who also arranged for Dingle to live with a family closer to his new school.
“Once I got to Mount Carmel, I felt it was literally my duty to give this school everything I could to make good on them allowing me to be there,” said Dingle, recalling that on his first day at Mount Carmel he didn’t even know how to knot his uniform tie. A basketball coach taught him, he said.
“He didn’t say, ‘That’s something your dad should have taught you,’ ” Dingle said. “Instead, it was, ‘I got you.’ ”
Dingle volunteered for everything he could at Mount Carmel and was a gifted three-sport athlete (baseball, volleyball and basketball) who would ultimately make his way into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. In his senior year on the baseball team, he batted .434 and had a 2.27 pitching ERA – striking out 108.
When he wasn’t competing, Dingle cheered on other boys and girls sports teams. His passion was recognized at his 2008 graduation when Dingle was presented the school’s revered “Spirit of Mount Carmel Award.”
Raised a Baptist, Dingle said he was inspired at Catholic liturgies when Sipes would give brief reflections. He and some friends sometimes playfully imitated the chanting of priests they heard at Mass. Teachers emphasized community, he said.
“In this Catholic world, it’s about being believers of doing good – and doing for others and doing it selflessly,” Dingle said.
Being a Black student at a majority-white school in a blue-collar area of Baltimore County was formative, Dingle said.
“That’s where I really learned the nuance of people’s ethnicities,” Dingle said, noting that there were families of Italian, Greek, Polish and a variety of ethnic backgrounds at Mount Carmel. Dingle associated with “jocks” and “nerds” alike, he said, and was able to empathize with everyone.
Today, Dingle said, he’s just as comfortable interviewing a dock worker from Dundalk as he is a woman in Cherry Hill or a multimillionaire in the corporate world.
“I’m a storyteller,” he said. “My job is to get people to trust me to tell their stories.”
Dingle recalled having to interview the mothers of murder victims in Alabama. He was able to get them to talk after he told them how he grew up in Baltimore and was familiar with how violence affects the community. He shared with them how he himself feared getting a call telling him one of his Baltimore relatives had been shot.
“I tell them, ‘I want to give you a chance to memorialize your son and to tell us who he was,’ ” Dingle said.
One of Dingle’s career highlights was covering social unrest in Louisville after police killed an unarmed Breonna Taylor in 2020. His work earned him one of his Emmys.
“I’ll never forget the feeling of tear gas in the air,” Dingle said. “There were Louisville Metro police officers who were shooting pepper ball bullets at journalists.”
At WJZ, Dingle now serves as a Baltimore County reporter and sometimes has anchoring duties. His first experience at the station came in 2011 as a college intern, working with Mark Viviano, former WJZ-TV sports director and a current columnist and radio host with the Catholic Review.
Viviano, who called it one of his career highlights to work beside Dingle, said he knew back then that the emerging journalist was going to become a “standout broadcaster.”
“He has qualities that can’t be taught,” Viviano said. “He’s kind and caring, with a genuine interest in others. He exudes joy, on camera and off. When I see Stephon on WJZ, I can’t help but smile.”
Giving back
Dingle said he never forgets the support he received growing up. He tries to help others make their way in the world. A history major at St. Mary’s College of Maryland in St. Mary’s City, he was the first of his family to earn a college degree. He mentors young people and is involved in the National Association of Black Journalists and the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.
The husband and proud “girl dad” has made financial donations to Mount Carmel and has returned to speak at his alma mater for career days.
“He could have definitely made other choices growing up and not be where he is today,” Sipes said, “but he had a strong character and he had resiliency – and he had people advocating for him and encouraging him. He believed that he could make it. He believed he could make a difference. And he did.”
Email George Matysek at gmatysek@CatholicReview.org
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