The Very Early Days
When I was a little kid all I wanted for Christmas was a record player of my own. We had the family console stereo in the living room that my Mom would listen to her records on, but they were just not my taste. So on Christmas 1962 Santa brought me my own record player and my first 45 RPM record. It was “Telstar” by The Tornados. I must have played it a thousand times.
The Early Days
I guess it all started in Junior High at Independence Middle School when I discovered the auditorium lighting and sound system. It wasn’t much but being able to be creative with the lights and sound caught my attention. It was all pretty crude…a glorified circuit breaker panel for the lights and things like Califone record players and Wollensak reel to reel tape recorders. Once I got to High School, I got involved with the A/V Club making sure all the teachers had their movie and film strip projectors and TV’s for classes. I eventually began doing the morning announcements and ended up running the lighting and sound booth for the new auditorium for all the school plays. The Athletic Club purchased the first video camera and tape recorder to record all the football games for the coaches. Now they didn’t have to wait a week for the films to get developed…they could watch the tapes right away. I was hooked! I was “that guy” known as the A/V Geek. I was fascinated listening to Big Jack Armstrong on WIXY-12-60 in Cleveland and The Big 8 – CKLW. Also a big fan of M-105 and G-98. I applied to get into the WIXY School of Broadcasting (aka Ohio School of Broadcast Technique). I failed their test and was told not to pick broadcasting as a career. Ironically years later I ended up teaching a few classes there!
The College Years
My freshman year I attended Defiance College in Defiance Ohio. It was basically a “teachers college” but I immediately got involved with the campus radio station WDCW, “The Vanguard of Progressive Music”. It wasn’t much of a radio station…2 turntables, one cart machine, a PA microphone and a homebrew control board. It was a carrier-current AM station that you could hear in the dorms and the Student Center. I learned a lot from my mentor Scotty Wyse. The first record I ever played as a DJ was “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. I got to do a Winter internship at WCWA (Seaway Radio) in Toledo. That was “real” radio. I eventually transferred to Kent State University and became the News Director for the campus station WKSR and the NPR affiliate WKSU-FM. We ended up being a Top 5 contributor to the Ohio AP bureau. I had the honor of studying under Dr. Bill Randle, one of the greatest Cleveland radio legends. While at Kent State I was hired part-time at the local commercial stations, WKNT AM & FM, as a news reporter.
Commercial Radio
After graduation I was moved to full-time at WKNT and went from a news reporter to hosting the Afternoon Drive show on the FM side and eventually became Operations Director. At night we had a show called “Dial-A-Date” where we would conference a bunch of people on the telephone and they would try to get a date. I was the weekend host of the show. About several years management decided to drop playing music and go 100% talk. After 8 years, I was out of a job. I ended up working as a Master Control operator for WOAC-TV 67 in Canton, Ohio for a year. The 80’s recession hit and finding a radio job was hard…I sent out a bunch of tapes & resumes, and finally I got a call from a WEWO/WSTS in Laurinburg, North Carolina. We talked and agreed to an in-person interview so I hopped on a plane and flew down. Met the owner, Don Curtis and he took me out to lunch at some Chinese place. He asked me one question and then didn’t say a single word the rest of the meal. I was petrified! I guess he liked what I said because that was the beginning of a 36 year career at Curtis Media Group. During my tenure with the company I worked at their stations in Laurinburg/Fayetteville, Goldsboro (twice), Tabor City/Whiteville, and eventually at the home office in Raleigh where I was Operations Director for WPTF, Webmaster for all the station’s websites, Director of Digital Operations and Affiliate & Operations Director for the North Carolina News Network. Somewhere in the middle of my tenure at CMG, I left to become Station Manager of a new startup station called Thunder 99.5 WTND in the Greenville/Jacksonville, NC market. I retired from broadcasting in 2022.