590 MIGHTY MEMORY #482

PHOTO INDEX: WARM'S NORM HILL.

A WARM CHRISTMAS MEMORY

First off, I have been fortunate to have never had a bad Christmas. Through pain, personal loss, chemo therapy, crazy things that happened to me, I can honestly say I never had a bad Christmas. But there was one year in the early 1990s when I was having one of those holiday seasons where everything was going wrong. No matter how hard I tried, there was no way I could please anyone. It was Christmas Eve and I was down. Naturally I had my radio on after having to work on Christmas Eve. Driving home my car stopped. Electrical failure. . Christmas Eve, 4:45Pm, a few miles away from my house. Thank goodness I was near a pay phone. I hoofed it to the phone and called Triple A. I had one quarter left. Earlier in the radio, before the car fiasco I was listening to Norm Hill on WARM. Norm hosted “The WARM Hall Of Fame Show” from 7 to midnight for a while. Later he worked in traffic, did mid morning and was also a swing man. Norm was saying on the air how much he missed being home on Christmas Eve. (WARM then went with pretaped Christmas music after the 6PM newscast) So with the change I had left, I called Norm. We had been familiar with each other because of my appearances on WARM for public relations projects I had been working on. Norm had also done some voice overs for me too. I explained to Norm my situation and after he asked if he could help, I told him I had the car situation under control but that if he wanted he could play something for me, hell for us, two guys stranded on Christmas Eve. When I got back to the car, Norm was still in commercial break but when he came back on the air he said, “This song goes out to a good friend of WARM Radio, Dave Yonki who will, sooner or later like me, be home for Christmas”. The auto club came and I did get to my destination but the great thing was WARM played a song that made me laugh out loud, made me smile and think that “Hey this is still Christmas Eve!” My problems were minor compared to the stuff other people were trying to handle. And WARM Radio, whether it was Norm Hill or any of the talented jocks who commanded the airwaves was there to fill the void in whatever Christmas spirit was missing. After all these years, I remember Norm Hill, this incident and especially this song that came on WARM, the Mighty 590 during that challenging Christmas Eve trek home.