Fred Mooke, an award-winning Miami television pioneer who produced Ralph Renick’s groundbreaking newscast for 22 years, and mentored young reporters and students who achieved major-market careers in both English and Spanish, died of pneumonia Jan. 27.

“Fred wrote the words that came out of Ralph Renick’s mouth,’’ said WFOR-CBS4 anchor Elliott Rodriguez, a Mooke protégée in the early 1980s. “He made Ralph a star.’’

Renick, who died in 1991, was the first news anchor on Miami’s first TV station, WTVJ, which carried all four networks when it went on the air in 1949: NBC, CBS, ABC and DuMont.

It became a CBS affiliate in 1956, the year Mooke graduated from the University of Miami with a journalism degree and joined WTVJ as a cameraman. He rose to writer/producer for the Ralph Renick Report, and made highly regarded documentaries.

Born Frederick Martin Mooke on Oct. 6, 1931, in New York City, he was 80, an active widower who regularly walked Dadeland Mall with friends, squired female companions to dinner and shows, and adored the Miami Dolphins.

A connoisseur of bad puns and good wine, well-made umbrellas and swinging jazz, Mooke lived in Kendall. He served with the U.S. Army’s post-World War II occupation forces in Germany, and played sax in an Army band.

“He was an excellent photographer’’ and an accomplished cartoonist, said his niece, Susan Spiegel of New Jersey.

In 1968, he left the station to become a radio news director, at Miami’s WIOD. He returned to the station three years later, then left for the last time in 1985, when new station ownership ousted much of the veteran staff — including Renick, the iconic anchor.

Mooke went into public relations: for BellSouth, the city of Miami Beach and the American Red Cross.

In 1986, he had to handle a controversy over the phone company’s decision to forbid the word “gay’’ in a Real Yellow Pages display ad.

As spokesman for BellSouth Advertising and Publishing Corp., Mooke explained: “We’re going to have little kids and people from another generation who can’t stomach two men sleeping with each other picking up our directory, and these are the people we are thinking about.”

By then, Mooke had developed a second career in the classroom, first at his alma mater, then at Miami Dade College’s Kendall Campus’ Writing and Communications Center.

“He loved playing with the English language,’’ said Spiegel, who noted that many of her father’s students kept vigil at Baptist Hospital after Mooke was admitted in early January. “He had such wit and was so quick.’’

He hosted the occasional “Mooke’s Corner’’ on the center’s Facebook page. His last entry, on Oct. 30, 2011, reviewed the Martin Sheen/Emilio Estevez movie The Way, and praised “a terrific restaurant named Whisk at the site of the former Italian eatery called Botticelli’s in South Miami ... I had a whole hog snapper, so good I finished the entire fish and went home without a doggie bag.’’

Mooke’s television colleagues remember him as an old-school journalist with high standards.

“Fred knew how to cover the news and get the best product on the air,’’ said Al Sunshine, consumer reporter for WFOR-CBS4. “He respected the role of the media in the community and took it seriously. He did it with compassion and concern, and balance and fairness.’’

Ike Seamans, a retired WTVJ correspondent who ran overseas bureaus for NBC News, recalled how inexperienced he was when Renick hired him in 1970, and how Mooke tutored him.

“Nobody would tell me how to do a story, whether it was right or wrong, except Fred. He helped me, and without him I would have been toast,’’ Seamans said.

“He was a very tough producer and didn’t take stupidity kindly, but he went out of his way to help many people who had great careers in the business.’’

Rodriguez said that when he joined WTVJ in 1980, he too “knew nothing. Fred taught me how to write and tell a story for TV, and have a sense of humor even when the newsroom was crashing down around you. He had nicknames for everyone. I was ‘Elrod.’ Diana Gonzalez,’’ now with NBC-6, “was ‘Gonzo.’ Nick Bogert,’’ now in Chicago, “was ‘Nibo.’ ’’

He always carried an umbrella, Rodriguez recalled, and “made a point to go out to lunch every day. He had things in perspective. He enjoyed life.’’

Among Mooke’s honors: the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Silver Circle Award and the prestigious Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for A Seed of Hope, an hour-long documentary about a Fort Lauderdale drug-rehab program. His monthly, half-hour documentary program, For Your Information, also won awards, as did The Plight of Pepito, about Cuban refugees.

Mooke was married once, to the former Jane Ackerman, who died in 1989. They traveled the world tasting wine and shared a great love, niece Susan said.

In a 2001 letter to The Miami Herald’s Action Line, he explained one way he memorialized her.

“On May 31, my $37.50 check and order for an umbrella were returned with a note: ‘We cannot accept your check without the number of the check imprinted...’

“I write in the check number for sentimental reasons. Check No. 1 was written on Aug. 19, 1962, the day I married my wonderful wife Jane, now deceased. I’m up to check No. 13,845.’’

His subsequent relationships remained platonic, his niece said. Mooke wanted company for movies and plays, and women of a certain age “got to out with a gentleman and a great conversationalist [who could] still drive at night.’’

In addition to Spiegel, Mooke is survived by nieces Martha Mooke, Dawn Ackerman, Darcy Ackerman and Tania Leon; nephews John Ackerman, Paul Ackerman, Michael Spiegel and Dan Gallagher. The remains were cremated.