College Radio's Best

Ahhhhh…those were the days. The fledgling days when I first tried my hand at teaching. The year was 1986 and the job was radio broadcast instructor at Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey, IL. By my best estimate, I have 40 former students as Facebook friends. Many of them were a pleasure to teach…and a few….well let’s just say we all survived.

In ’86, the program was in bad shape. Coordinator Steve Jankowski had just resigned to take a radio job in St. Louis and LCCC had to serve the sophomore class before they could officially shut down the program. They needed to prop up the program for one year….with someone really cheap. My name made the short list. Jank had been a real disciplinarian.

I was a morning man and the news director at WMAY-WNNS at that time working with a somewhat self absorbed lunatic named Don Jackson. He was without vision in one eye…thus his air name….One Eyed Jack. Jack was fun to be around…and had only one rule to live by…..always break the rules. In order to feed two babies at home, I cleaned the bathrooms at night for pay….and played on t he air each morning with One Eye.

When LCCC offered, I accepted and moved ahead of the family in order to organize for my first class. It helped that I was a grad of the program. I knew what had to be done. I had only two days to look at syllabi and concoct a plan. I want to admit, my first semester was very rocky and I remember one of the second year students actually telling me that she was horribly disappointed in my teaching.

I was broke and drove a huge Chevy station wagon to work. It did not go in reverse….so students who were uncooperative were forced to walk out in the evening and push my car back out of the stall so I could engage it in drive. Sounds funny now…..

We changed the format of the campus radio station to rock….I scrambled to sell underwriting to show the college we were viable…..at at Christmas we played Patsy and Elmo’s Christmas classic, “Grandma Got Run Over By Reindeer” for 18 straight hours. Why? I really can’t tell you except that I knew it would get attention for a station that needed it badly.

We learned together. I taught everything I knew from eight years in radio….and they taught me what would work….and not work in front of a classroom. I made every teaching mistake in the book.

When they couldn’t find me, they knew I was probably in my favorite stall in the bathroom of third floor Erickson Hall. As a tribute, they outlined that stall with broken masking tape to designate it as my office…..like Les Nessman’s office on WKRP.

Many of them are still broadcasters….others have gone on to bigger and better things. It was a pivotal time in my life that spurred me to go back and get more education so I could do the job better.

I loved them. Every one of them. Even the ones that I had to kick off the air repeatedly (Ray Lytle) and the ones who got lost and found along the way. I find great solace that one of them now runs that program (Mike Lemons) and the station and program are better now than at any time in history.

I will return this week to have one of my sons sign up for radio classes with Lemons. If we get time on our visit, I’ll show him third floor Erickson.

My “office” still has the masking tape on the floor.