Coming to SIU in the fall of 1977, I was fortunate to land a one time only morning drive shift on WSIU Radio in October.  Like many R/T students, I dreamed of the days of being on air.

WSIU-FM control room 1977

Nervous as hell, I flipped on the mic for the obligatory top of the hour ID, and the few other times you were allowed to speak during the NPR show.  Then the phone rang.  OMG!  Who could it be?!   They didn’t tell me what to do when the phone rang.  So I answered timidly, ”WSIU Control?”  It was the chairman of the department, Dr. Charles Lynch, old crabby pants.  OMG!

Dr. Charles T Lynch (pants not shown)

“Maria”, he began, “It’s HALLoween, not HOLLoween, All Hallow’s Eve. I died of embarrassment and mumbled something in response.  “Maria, I’ve seen many aspiring announcers come and go, and I’ve got to tell you, behind the mic is not for you.  Contact a Patty Reilly, the sales manager at WIDB Radio.  I think that is where you need to be.”

I was devastated.  First of all for being SO bad that I was reprimanded while still on air, and secondly for having to let go of the on-air dream.  So I uncovered where they hid WIDB and begrudgingly trudged over to Wright 1, looking for this Patty Reilly gal.

What Maria found when she got to Wright I. (Patty on left).

I don’t remember much about our first meeting, but I do remember thinking ‘Oh my!” when I first walked into the station.  What I didn’t know then is that WIDB would be the first step in a long and fulfilling Broadcast Sales Career.  And that Ms. Patty Reilly Murphy would end up being a lifelong cherished friend.

So in retrospect Dr. Lynch was right.  I NEEDED TO BE AT WIDB,  I am forever grateful for his sage advise, although to this day I wish he would have found a kinder way to tell me!

by Gary West

I found WIDB before I had ever seen SIU or C’dale. It was almost a year before I started there.

It was because of Dave.  We were always hanging out in high school, and Dave graduated a year ahead of me.  So my high school senior year, Dave comes home to visit in October with reel-to-reel WIDB airchecks.

Dave. (Ed at left).

I’m 16 years old, still in high school and listening to Jeffrey Thomas (“In the Nighttime”) and Sam Glick, and Alan J. Friedman doing news.  I’m hearing the ID (“WIDB Carbondale…is…Together”) It all sounded great, like a real station, almost like WLS.  Dave lived in Wright I (second floor) so he was at WIDB all the time.

Dave reported that in his first R-T classes, the professors told the students not to consider working at WIDB because it was not “real radio” and if you worked at WIDB you would “never work in broadcasting.”

This made Dave head straight to WIDB immediately.  (Dave just retired after 40 years at CNN as Chief Engineer).

A few weeks later, in early November 1970 I took the pre-Amtrak train to visit C’dale for the first time.  We stayed with friends in Schneider, and Dave took us to WIDB.  At that point, WIDB had existed for 7 months and had been on air maybe 70 days (30 days in spring, off summer and 40 days in fall).

A REAL radio station

I found a real station at WIDB.  There was a control room, audio board, turntables, CART MACHINES, a playlist, a 45’s and LP record library, a jock studio, a news studio, a production studio AND a teletype UPI machine.  There were schedules for jocks, newsmen, board operators.  There were people there, and everyone seemed to have a sense of purpose; they all had something to do.

Alan J. Friedman (left) delivering the news.  Jeff Butler, right.

I was talking nonchalantly to Alan J. Friedman in the news studio when he said “Shut the door.”  I obeyed and he immediately hit the mic and delivered the news headlines.  I was impressed this was done so professionally, in such a relaxed, confident manner.  And it all sounded so great to me.

After a few hours hanging out at WIDB, I realized that no one there was over 22 years old.  “Where are the adults, the supervisors,” I asked Dave.  “We don’t have those here,” he said.

10 months later, my father dropped me off at my dorm.  As soon as he left, I headed for Wright I.

This time, the station was different.  It was not full of people (classes hadn’t started yet).  The UPI machine was not working.  There was no newsman on duty.

I was immediately drafted to do news.  There was no copy, no teletype.  We had to use newspapers, SIU press releases and a few recorded reports, mostly outdated.  There was no one to train me.  I was still 17.

Gary, age 17, prepares the next newscast

People were coming & going as jocks and board operators, but no newsmen.  I kept trying to leave, but there was no one else to do news.  That day I did all 14 newscasts.  I became known as the “One man news Department.”

This set the tone for me as I spent probably 85% of the rest of my SIU time at WIDB.

Anybody else get recruited in high school with WIDB airchecks?

by John (Hot) Spotts (himself)

I moved from Michigan in the middle of my junior year of high school to Downers Grove.  My new school was on complete lockdown –  my former HS school had a completely open campus and I lived so close to it many days I went home for lunch and played pool/ping pong in my basement with friends.

Arriving in February at a very overcrowded Downers Grove North –  counselors gave me a schedule where my first class started at 740am and last class ended at 440pm!  Finishing off the junior year of HS featured FIVE study hall periods and a lunch period!  I wasn’t allowed to leave the building to go outside for any of it.

I met Don D’Agostino.  He lived in my new neighborhood.  I discovered D’Ago spun records in the radio station at the high school.  Better yet this station WDGC was located in a portable class room outside of the main building but you either had to have a Radio licensing class in it or a special pass to allow you to get in and out of the building.

Don D’Augustino

So my plan was hatched….having no knowledge or much interest in Radio or Radio licensing…. this purely an avenue to escape that hell hole of a HS building and attend worthless study hall periods.  By default that special pass let me hang out at DGC all the time and I ended spinning records that summer, caused trouble with Dave Price (another IDB alum) and generally not heeding anything the faculty instructor said – never did take a Radio licensing class even during my senior year….which featured some really bad play by play calls of rain soaked football games. I was the only one who really knew football that wasn’t already on the team working at the station willing to do it.

The WDGC gang 1980

Let’s fast forward a year or two…. D’Ago ended up going to SIU to pursue an R/T major….he followed after Timmo Cawley (who never did quite understand how I got shifts at WDGC despite never taking licensing classes).  I went to College of DuPage still trying to decide on my major and was about to get my Associates Degree.  D’Ago convinced me to visit SIU during the spring of his freshmen year for a weekend.

It sounded like fun so I hopped on the Amtrak from Union Station to C’dale.   I arrived at his dorm (3^rd floor of Allen 1). D’Ago and his roommate DJ were highly agitated.  They were in the middle of fight with several guys who lived down the hall from them and in other buildings– firing tennis ball cannons at each other primed with rubbing alcohol!   It got so loud we had to get out of there and out of the line of fire.

The cannon that propelled Hot Spotts to WIDB.

D’Ago said let’s go! At full speed we ran out to the blare of cannons dodging tennis balls out the windows of Allen – even some cannon fire from higher floors of Neely all the way past the Boomer Triads.  We sought refuge entering the front door of Wright 1 going to the down the stairs In Da Basement.   And that’s how I got to WIDB.

by Chris Wissmann

I wasn’t interested in radio per se. I had done radio speaking for my high school speech team, mainly because I had a crush on one of the girls on the team—and nobody else wanted to do radio, so I was on the team. Neither of those things worked out—I was terrible at that kind of speech competition and the girl left the team. But I got to spend a few extra Saturdays with one of my best high school friends, Jeff Whitten, who also started competing in radio.

After high school I came to SIU in 1987, and Jeff went to Augustana in Rock Island, where he started DJing for his college station, WAUG. Jeff encouraged me to see if SIU had any similar opportunities—and it turned out it did.

I came to WIDB in spring 1988, my second semester at SIU. The only thing I knew about it was that WIDB was on the Student Center’s fourth floor. I still didn’t care about radio. I was just interested in music—mainly recording engineering, because I can’t play an instrument or sing—and thought that ‘IDB might get me moving in the right direction while giving me access to an amazing record library.

What WIDB was playing when Chris came

Sure enough, it did. The music was amazing—records by bands I read about but had never even found in record stores, let alone had a chance to hear anywhere else. And it was all there for us to play.

Chris and Kevin (Tyrant) Lange at WIDB

About a year later, I was able to join radio with recording engineering and began a local band show where I recorded and mixed live performances for broadcast.

But most importantly, WIDB was populated by an amazing assortment of freaks and geeks with whom I fit in perfectly. It was home. Starting in my junior year, I lived with WIDB coworkers and former coworkers until a few years after I graduated. I formed most of my best and deepest friendships—particularly with Mark Venegas, Kevin Lange, and Jeff Stapleton—at WIDB.

Chris (left), Slimb, Jazzy Jeff, Kevin (right) and Mark Venegas, foreground

I can’t wait to see them, or many others I befriended over the years, in 2020.