590 MIGHTY MEMORY #580

PHOTO INDEX: THE LATE RON ALLEN.

THE JOYOUS GOODBYE

Wakes can go either way. They can be a maudlin experience or an uplifting one for those the deceased left behind. On his radio shows, Ron Allen was fond of saying, "Don't get maudlin on me!" I went to Ron Allen's wake on Friday afternoon and it was anything but maudlin. To be sure it was sad but tinged with that sorrow were great memories and stories of Ron as a man, a father, a husband, a broadcaster and as a sports fan. In his coffin was a Baltimore Orioles cap. His wife told me, "We watched every game this year and they finished 27 1/2 games out of first!" Only a sportscaster's wife would know that statistic.
There were old radio guys there, people who were part of the WARM family, extended and otherwise. I sat with Tommy Woods and his wife and after sharing some funny stories, Tommy said, "You know, we were like family. We were collectively the Sensational 7 but we were all for one and for the most part one for all". Bill Kelly from WVIA TV and FM stopped by and shared a lengthy conversation with Mrs. Allen and his daughter. Bobby Day from WBRE TV and long time media and records guy Joe Middleton paid their respects as well as countless others I can't even mention. What was striking were the number of people who came from out of the area, John Hancock, Program Director of WARM in the 80s and now a major personality on WBT in Charlotte was there. "When I told Ron I wound up in Charlotte, he immediately interrupted me and said, "WBT, that's the big time!", he was so proud and I was so glad he was so tickled". Kelly Reed came in from out of town as well as others who had to say the final goodbye. "I told him I'd see him again and here I am" said Hancock pointing toward Ron.
On air radio and TV tributes flooded the airwaves on WNEP with Sara Buynovsky, WBRE's Andy Mehalschick and WYOU'TV's Lendell Stout. Joe Thomas and Rob Nyehard devoted a large portion of their Saturday talk show with hilarious remembrances of Ron Allen.
There were numerous flower arrangements in the funeral home. One was from the Dickson City Class of 1955. By chance, two of Ron's old classmates sat by Tommy Woods and me. And they shared their stories. Like Ron's nickname from gade school. It was "Pi", after the mathematical equation because it turned out that Ron was the only kid in the third grade who knew about that aspect of Math. We asked what type of student he was and she said he was brilliant but never wanted people to know he was that smart in high school. "That changed when he got into radio" said one of the classmates. "I thought he was the smartest guy in the world". The two recounted Ron's return to their 50th class reunion and how even hobbled by his stroke, he was the star of the event. Ron's classmates talked about how kind he was in school and how he enjoyed late night TV, especially Steve Allen. One classmate said, "It was a big deal for us in the fifties to stay up late nights and watch TV while we were in high school. Sometimes we'd go to my house and Ron would love watching Steve Allen who I think was his idol if you ask me".
That memory brought to my mind one word to describe Ron Allen: BIG. His ideas always were innovative, they were usually new and they were big. What better way to remember Ron Allen, his contributions to sports talk radio, top 40 radio and broadcasting than the signature Steve Allen theme, "This Could Be the Start of Something Big".

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #581

PHOTO INDEX: RON ALLEN BEING NAMED MEDIA MAN OF THE YEAR, RON ALLEN IN A MID 60s WARM SURVEY SHEET WHEN HE DID 3PM TO 6PM, A SKETCH OF RON ALLEN IN 1967 WHEN HIS AIR SHIFT WAS 1 PM TO 4PM, RON ALLEN SUITED UP FOR SOME SORT OF AN EVENT, A DRAWING USED IN THE EARLY 60s OF RON ALLEN AND RON ALLEN WITH HIS FOOTBALL HERO, JOHNNY UNITAS.

REMEMBERING RON

I first met Ron Allen was I was 17. He was doing the 1 PM to 6PM Countdown Show on WARM and I had a scoop. It turned out our high school, St. John the Evangelist in Pittston was bringing in "Digger" Phelps, the Notre Dame Basketball coach for a banquet. I walked into the main studio area and Ron was sitting on the sofa, perusing the Racing Form and eating a Snickers Candy Bar. I introduced myself, breathlessly told him my news and Ron Allen said, "I know". It was then that I realized that no one could ever scoop Ron Allen.

As a listener, he first came to me on the radio after school when he did the 3PM to 6PM shift on WARM. If you listened to the show, you were "palin' with Allen". On the weekends, he did the top 40 Countdown Show. Every kid in WARMland listened to that show, survey sheet in hand, looking to see where our favorite group landed. Allen had as his sidekick "Mother Fletcher", an irracible person of seasoning who escaped from "The Home For the Terminally Silly". His bits with her/him??? were hysterical.

Allen bridged the gap from entertainment to sports. He foresaw that AM radio and its role in pop music would not be dominant and he turned WARM, the place for Music and News as the place to turn for sports. With George Gilbert and Pete Erickson, Allen re-invented WARM into a sports leader. Starting on a Sunday night, the show was live and began in 1974. High school basketball, football, and the Ron Allen Sportsline became a "must listen" entity if you were a sports fan. But Allen, with his vast knowledge of all things sport, also had a way of getting those uninterested or uninvolved with the games to somehow understand it. He was well known on the banquet service and no visit by a sports head of state was not complete without an appearance by Ron Allen. He moved easily among the DiMaggios, Aarons, Mantles and superstars but was almost giddy when you mentioned the name Unitas. A diehard Baltimore fan, Allen rooted for his Birds and Colts but muted that passion to make room for his audience's favorite teams.

Ron Allen worked at the same place for nearly four decades. But don't mistake him for "the company man". Allen seemed to take all the curveballs Susquehanna Broadcasting could toss at him but always seemed to make the ideas work into a particular radio format mandated by the suits in York. Because of his creativity and savvy, thousands grew up with and then matured with WARM. One Susquehanna GM even gave him a "lifetime contract", the only one bestowed on a WARM employee.

Ron's death seems different to me from others because his presence was absent the last 15 years or so. After suffering a stroke, that gift of gab and exhibition of language was silenced. But his old friends kept in touch, getting the hugs and that patented Ronzie smile. Ron Allen might have died physically today, but those of us who loved music, sports and a good lively discussion will always hear forever, "hello everybody, Ron Allen here................". Like the sports heros he covered, Ron Allen gave us time away from the cares of the big bad world, whether it be school or work. Thanks Ron, you will remain "the best there ever was".

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #582

WARM TRIBUTE VIDEO

Since there is really nothing in video form on the net about WARM, we acquired the knowledge and the tools to put a tribute video on YOU TUBE. It is incomplete because we could not get everyone ever involved with WARM in our production. But we hope you enjoy our tribute to WARM!

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #583

PHOTO INDEX: THE HEADLINE.

The following is a verbatim newspaper account from the Times Leader on the morning of Sept 9th, 1966. The names of the kidnapper, his family, the victim and her family were deleted from this article.


A four day old infant was kidnapped from Taylor hospital during the predawn hours by a 25 year old Taylor man who telephoned a Scranton radio station demanding $20,000 from the child’s parents. The baby was returned to the hospital several hours later unharmed. Agents of the FBI are holding the kidnapper pending an arraignment. He is a former employee of the hospital and at 3am he went to the nursery where he picked up the four year old girl. The kidnapper walked out of the hospital unnoticed.
At about 425am, the man called Joseph Shaver an all night disc jockey on a Scranton radio station and asked to speak to Harry West, a daytime announcer on the station. West was not working at the time so the kidnapper told Shaver that he had taken a baby from a hospital and wanted $20,000. Shaver turned on a tape recorder and got most of the conversation with the kidnapper on tape. He immediately called Taylor hospital and confirmed that the baby was missing, advising the hospital to call Taylor police. Shaver then telephoned the FBI in Philadelphia and special agents Thomas Williams and Robert Harvey were dispatched from the Scranton field office to the Taylor police station. The kidnaper called the radio station 6 or 7 times during the early morning hours but Shaver did not put the information on the air for fear he would not call back. Shortly before 7am West arrived at the station and received a call from the kidnaper. Telling West he had the missing baby, the kidnapper declared, “Listen carefully, I’ll say this once and once only. I want $20,000 before 8 o’clock tonight and I’ll call later for details.”
West had a tracer put on the station’s lines by Bell Telephone company but the kidnapper never got the chance to call back. After hearing the tape recording of the kidnapper’s voice and checking various other information, Chief Joseph Wincovitch of Taylor deduced who the kidnapper was. The Chief declined to be more specific as to how he knew it was the kidnapper but stated emphatically that the kidnapper is not deranged. Pressed for information, the Chief replied, “I know the people in my town.” Driving to the kidnapper’s home chief Wincovitch knocked on the door and learned that the kidnapper’s wife had just arrived home from her shift as an LPN at Taylor hospital. It was about 7 am by then. The police heard a baby crying upstairs and after questioning the kidnapper they learned it was the missing child. They took the kidnapper into custody and returned the baby to the hospital. Following a physical checkup it was learned the child was unhurt by the experience.
A few things about this article, notice how it was written, a lot of redundant phrasing. And nowhere in the article is WARM mentioned, rather it was “a Scranton Radio station”. Until the early 1980s, the lines between print and broadcasting rarely crossed and this article and incident is a prime example.
In Sept. 1966, one of the songs Joey Shaver was most likely playing during this drama was "Sunny" by Bobby Hebb.

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #584

PHOTO INDEX: THE OLD WARM BOOK COVERS.

BOOK IT!!!!!

Going back to school in the mid 60s was as the Buckinghams sang "Kind Of A Drag". To ease the way, Carroll's fast food restaurant ran a promotion where if you walked into the eatery, you'd get a WARM book cover. The back of the cover had photos of the jocks who were part of WARM at the time. This was mid '60s according to my estimates. There was a Sensational 7 but on the cover there were only 6 photos. My only thought on this is this might have been a transition period for Joey Shaver who was hired from WBAX to be the all night announcer. Shaver later was flipped to the 7 to midnight slot and Bill Stuart was moved to the overnights. If anyone can illuminate a bit more on this, please post a comment.
The WARM bookcover promotion was a sure sign that summer was coming to an end. The only solace was that in lieu of a transistor radio plugged to your ear, you got to take "The WARM guys" in your bookbag to school.

Here are two "Back To School" videos from YOU TUBE: Timmie Rogers and Herman's Hermits.

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #585

PHOTO INDEX: THE LATE DON STEVENS HARD AT WORK OR PLAY IN THE WARM STUDIO AND STEVENS ON THE POPULAR WARM SURVEY SHEET. THIS SHEET WAS FROM OCTOBER 15TH, 1966. THE NUMBER 1 SONG WAS "96 TEARS".

WE'RE HALFWAY HOME

The first words I heard about Don Stevens were ones of ridicule and derision. It was all part of Harry West's way of busting his fellow jocks. Jack Donager was "Jerk" Donager and Don Stevens was "the old man of radio". Don Stevens was "the guy Columbus left behind when he discovered America!" Don Stevens was so old......", you get the point. As a young listener, my curiosity was aroused and I wanted to see how bad this guy really was. After all, if the comments were coming from the lips of my radio idol, Harry West, then Don Stevens had to be a feeble old guy with a puny voice.

WRONG! The first time I heard Don Stevens I was blown away by his voice. It was powerful and forceful but at the same time could modulate down to a gentle cadence that most likely made WARMland housewives swoon. Don held down the 9am to noon slot and after the 1030AM edition of WARM news, (I believe that was the 21rst edition) Stevens would open the mike and boom out "WE'RE HALFWAY HOME". Once in a while, Don would actualy sing on his program. He'd run an instrumental cut of the song "Welcome To My World" and belt it out over 5,000 watts of power. If only there was a tape of that somewhere! But we have a version of "Welcome To My World" which I'm sure even Don Stevens' would approve of. From YOU TUBE, the late Jim Reeves singing the late Don Stevens' signature song.

UPDATE

On 590 Mighty Memory 588, we were wondering who the Original Sensational 7 were. Well with a little research we found that the original guys were Harry Newman, Len Woloson, George Gilbert, Don Stevens, Vince Kearney, Jack Murphy and Jackson Gower.

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #586

PHOTO INDEX: FORMER WARM STAFFER AND CURRENT WVIA TV AND FM PRESIDENT BILL KELLY.

WARM MEMORIES

Bill Kelly became one of my first bosses when I first got out of college. As a matter of fact, the first plane ride I had was with Bill when we both went to a broadcast convention (NPR) in Chicago in 1978. Bill Kelly was also the first guy I saw after I tore a bulletin off the UPI machine located in the hallway between the FM and TV studios one hot, cloudy, muggy August afternoon. It simply said, "Presley dead at 42". On that day, we shared a link to the past of rock and roll. In my tenure at WVIA, we never talked much about WARM because we were both looking to build Public Radio. But in the back of my mind, I always had the thought, "This guy worked at WARM!" So it was a pleasant surprise when I found out that one of the first contributors to 590 FOREVER was Bill Kelly. Here's his memory of what WARM meant to him and all of us.

FROM BILL KELLY

Ok Dave, you got me. Today’s posting about your “590 FOREVER, WARM RADIO” blog site catches me nostalgic for the days when The Mighty 590 meant Hollywood to me in far away Towanda, Bradford County. Each of us who worked there, in fact all listeners captivated during those grand years now long “gone from the charts but not from our hearts” have stories linked to the Mighty 590, the Sensational Seven, The Five Towers of Power, PAM Jingles, P.S.B.B, Operation Contact, The Softball Softies, Superior Sonic Sound, the Station of the Year, Top 40 sheets and the Pick Hit of the Week.
George Gilbert, Terry McNulty, Bob Oliver and many others are gone, several are ill, some fervently wish they could go back to that time and a few can’t shake bitter memories of fickle broadcast politics in Avoca. It is indeed hard for young people, and for many our own age, to appreciate what WARM meant to those of us who wanted nothing more than to be on-the-air at a radio station that loomed huge in our sense of the business we loved and thought was perfect.
Some of us learned that WARM was not all we imagined from years of being teen-aged Fans glued to transistor radios. That was a coming-of-age experience for me, and I was beyond lucky to know when to leave and to find truly stimulating work after the WARM Building. This veteran broadcaster came to WARM after six small-market stations, incredulous one day when Double G called me while student teaching at Danville High School to say “We want you.” I was not the first who got that call and almost found a yellow puddle at my feet.
Thirty-seven years later, a short few months ago, Tommy Woods and I gave a Eulogy to George Gilbert that made me realize how much more important he was than “just” the PD of WARM Radio. Getting re-acquainted with his family as George faded made me realize that even the superstars of radio are at their best as husbands and fathers.
WARM was phenomenal – nothing in our experience will quite match it.

Our YOU TUBE song of this Mighty Memory is Mary Hopkin's, "Those Were The Days".

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #587

PHOTO INDEX: THE FVE INCARNATIONS OF THE POPULAR WARM SURVEY SHEET. THE FIRST SHEET OFFERED BY THE STATION was an 8 1/2 BY 11 SHEET OF PAPER, THE ONES IN ASCENDING ORDER WERE POPULAR WHEN I WAS IN GRADE SCHOOL AND THEN HIGH SCHOOL.

SURVEY SAYS

Never in the pop culture of teenagers growing up in WARMland was there a more sought after piece of paper than the weekly WARM Music Survey sheet. It usually came out on Fridays, just in time for the Saturday countdown show from 1pm to 6pm. In my youth, Ron Allen did the top 40 countdown every Saturday afternoon. Back then Catholics had no Saturday night Mass so the last half hour of the show was listened to by WARM listeners who wanted to know the top song of the week. There were times when WARM caused some consternation by not getting the sheets into the stores on time. Gulp, sometimes you got them on Monday but even if you knew the number 1 song, you just had to have one. The survey sheets were available wherever records were sold. You could drop by The Globe or Spruce Street Records in Scranton, Richie’s Record Rack or the Kresge Store in Pittston (the manager at the Kresge Store delighted in not putting the sheets out when they were available and harshly rationed them out. God forbid if you took a handful, he’d chase you out of the store!) Miracle Mart in Kingston, The Book and Record Mart in Wilkes Barre, or The Square Record Shop to get your hands on one. As a youth, I rooted actively for my favorite groups to take the number 1 slot. In 1965 I had a “two for” when the 4 Seasons hit the number 1 spot in November 1965 with “Let’s Hang On” and then repeated the feat with their version of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice” under the name The Wonder Who. In the 60s by the way, whatever your favorite group was, you just never rooted against the Beatles.
The survey sheet was compiled by the Music and Program Director. They took the national trends, called around to the local record stores, got the sales figures, tabulated input from phone calls to the station and came up with the list. When you look now at a WARM survey sheet, you’ll see everything from the Rolling Stones to Gary Lewis and the Playboys to Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Eddie Arnold on one given compilation week. That tells me that while most people were listening to WARM, the powers that be who formulated the Surveys also listened to the voice and taste of the listener.
There were five incarnations of the WARM survey sheet. The first an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, the second a smaller long sheet with the photo of a member of The Sensational 7, the third with an artist’s rendering of the personality and the fourth and fifth editions were small red, white and blue versions, first with a photo, then a artist’s portrait. Some of us saved many of the WARM survey sheets, one or two people might have saved every one. The secret of the success of WARM was to make the small details other stations ignored a “must have”. By 1960s printing standards, it was a minuscule financial investment. But the free survey sheet was worth its weight in gold to young music fans that would gather every Monday and discuss where their favorite group or song landed on Ron Allen’s Countdown. And just in case any of your peers doubted your claim, you had the survey sheet to prove it! From You Tube, the number 1 song on November 13th, 1965 (Ron Allen was on the sheet) Barry Young’s “One Has My Name, the Other Has My Heart”.

And from October 15th, 1966, the number 40 song in the Countdown, "Girl On A Swing" by Gerry and the Pacemakers. Don't believe me? Hey, survey says man!