Loss
I've lost a dear friend, colleague, and mentor. My first full time radio job was as a disk jockey in a small station an hour and a half drive from my home town. While there, my parents sent me a newspaper clipping about a local radio station changing its' musical format from rock & roll to country & western. I figured I had nothing to lose by applying for a job even though I had only a little over a year of experience and a jump from my small station to the larger market would be very unusual. Wayne, was program director at the station, the guy in charge of hiring and firing the air staff and programming the rest of the station. But, he didn't like c&w and was going to another local station. He contacted me and told me he liked my audition tape and would recommend me to the new p.d. I got the job and stayed with the station almost two years before going to another local station. At the new station I eventually got into news. By this time, Wayne had gotten into news also and even though he worked at competing station, he showed me the ropes of getting stories around town. Wayne got into television news and we shared stories since we weren't in direct competition. We got re-acquainted when I got a job on the tech side at the t.v. station where he worked. We used to swap memories of the good times when radio news was important. I will miss him.
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