590 MIGHTY MEMORY #457

PHOTO INDEX: TOP SPOT FAST FOOD JOINT UNDER WATER IN WEST PITTSTON DURING THE FLOOD OF 1972.

WARM AND FLOODS

As I took a break from all of the flood coverage last week by listening to WARM’s True Oldies Format, I found that WARM Radio was offering flood updates. Phil Galasso was giving updates throughout the day on river height, road closing and evacuation centers. This was extremely important to those in the Tunkhannock area where they were hit very hard. WARM of course carries well into that Wyoming County area.
Back in 1972 WARM Radio was a very big part of communication between those residents who lost their homes. WARM suspended programming and became the linchpin that people depended upon. A full staff was unleashed to cover the biggest story to hit WARMland since the Kennedy assassination. Sales manager Dick Bolin had his brother who was involved in civil defense take news reporters around in jeeps to survey the damage. Terry McNulty then a WARM newsman said, “I will never forget the mud and disease..the people who lost everything. It’s one thing to cover a story like that when you’re miles away, but when you’re in the middle of it, you’re really with these people”.
WARM later produced a record “River On A Rampage” which was a good audio starting point for future documentaries on Agnes. After the waters subsided WARM had banner sales months getting orders for businesses that needed to relocate and reopen. The Mighty 590 also was involved in community involvement and also played a jingle that sang out, “Wyoming Valley, coming back now better than ever, WARM the Mighty 590!”
Sam Liquori would be a future radio host and board operator at WARM in the late 90s and into the 231st century. But in 1972 Sam was doing mornings on WBAX Radio in Edwardsville. The water came up suddenly on Route 11 and Sam had to beat a hasty retreat with his car to get out of there with life. Hearing the WARM flood updates brought back those memories of Agnes and the Mighty 590.

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #458

PHOTO INDEX: THE LATE LEN WOLOSON.

LEGACY OF LENNY

How memorable were the guys at WARM? Well this week I received two e mail communications from people with fond memories of WARM, particularly Lenny Woloson. A woman e mailed me to see if I could provide her the sound from Woloson’s show where there was a gaggle of young girls cooing “Lenny, Lenny”. She wanted to put it in a type of time capsule/cassette for her husband's birthday. I sent her a soundbite from the You Tube video I did on WARM. , I hope it helped.
An e mail came from Maryland. Mike Lewis had this memory of WARM and Woloson.
I discovered WARM at the end of August, 1970, the week before I started eighth grade. It took only two songs to do it --War's "Spill the Wine" and Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime" -- and I was hooked. Every morning that year, my
radio alarm woke me to the sound of Len Woloson's voice. For some reason, all through that January he played Todd Rundgren's "We Gotta Get you a Woman" promptly at seven a.m. I still remember his quirky sense of humor, which was much more subtle than any DJ I've ever heard. One example sticks out. That fall there was a song by the Flaming Embers called "My Brother's Keeper," and Woloson told a joke about a zookeeper who came across a chimpanzee who had a copy of the Bible in one hand and Darwin's Origin of Species in the other. "What are you doing?" he asks. And the monkey says, "I'm trying to find out if
I'm my brother's keeper or my keeper's brother." Somehow I can't imagine a DJ saying that today. Even 41 years later I remember the kind of intelligent wit that made waking up a very pleasant chore that magical year.
Woloson was not your typical punchline joke teller. He was more of an observer of the current scene and did a tremendous amount of work with “drop in” voices. Lenny would cue up a voice and have it interspersed with his bits. Some of his humor was so simplistic that it was funny. Plus Woloson used area towns as references to his show. One of his favorite tag lines was “winner of the Honeypot beautiful child contest”. Woloson did seem to play the same songs in rotation almost to the minute but I think that was more of a happenstance due to a crowded morning commercial log than anything else.
Four decades later…….the memories of Len Woloson and WARM just keep on coming.

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #459

PHOTO INDEX: SECOND ANNUAL REUNION.

WARM AND THE POCONO DRAG LODGE

Please join all fans of WARM for the Second annual WARMLAND Mighty 590 reunion, to be held at the Pocono Drag Lodge reunion, 648 Meadow Run Road, Bear Creek, on August 6, 2011 from 9 am to 5 pm. There will be a WARM display setup, and will be dropping the WARM jingles between the oldies. You might even hear the old Stop n' Go Burger commercial. We will have some WARM celebrities on hand, as well as some pictures, old surveys, and more WARM related material. Come help us celebrate the Glory days of the best station, ever, anywhere!! Plus witness the Old Drag Lodge come to life for a day! Food and memorabilia will be available. For more info, contact Charlie Hulsizer, email: ecoair9798@aol.com....BE THERE!!!!!

You heard this song on WARM back in the day, stop by this weekend and hear those great old memories.And see them too!

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #460

PHOTO INDEX: TOMMY WOODS THEN AND TOMMY WOODS NOW.

TOMMY'S TUNE

Did you know that one of the Sensational 7 cut a record? Well Tommy Woods did and it was released and became a minor hit. Called "LIttle Lorraine" the song is a repetitive tribute to a girl who loves the 50s, 60s teen age party scene. Back in the day as the kids like to say, disc jockeys sometimes took a turn at doing a song. In Pittsburgh, my late cousin Ed Price took a turn at crooning. He had a pretty good voice and honed his skills in the service singing sat various USOs with a former local ad agency executive Gene Stone. But back to Tommy, "Little Lorraine" is on You Tube" and for all we know could go viral. Take a listen:

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #461

PHOTO INDEX: WERNER ERHARD.

WERNER, WOODY AND ME

One of the classic Bob Woody stories I have is the way he embraced the teachings of EST. Werner Erhard was a new age guru who Woody really believed in. A few in the Woody circle went to a weekend seminar.
“The Forum” was the Werner Erhard seminar that Bob Woody persuaded his friends and clients to attend in Edison, New Jersey. Each
client Woody represented was given the opportunity to go to the event.
Some took kindly to his browbeating and others essentially threw him out of their offices. Woody did have the power of persuasion though and after the Twin Valley project, Woody got some of the committee members to go to New Jersey and partake in the seminars.
His sales pitch to me was that I needed something like “The Forum” to center my professional life. He felt that I needed to be more dynamic and serious in trying to get rich. I was told that I needed to have a better work ethic. This is where I disagreed with him. I had been working since the age of 14 and felt that one could work hard but have fun at the same time. He asked me to set down goals and mine were 1. Be more assertive in saying “no” to things like the Forum,
2. Less womanizing and
3. Losing 60 pounds.
I set out to Edison, New Jersey with a guy named George who was the Sales manager at KRZ FM. This was in 1989, March. Nice guy, drove a white Acura. We stayed at the Holiday Inn in Edison where the two weekend, 8am to 10pm seminar started. During the course of the weekend,
everyone there committed to “working on themselves”. The northeast delegation numbered about 12. The instructor’s name the first week was Randy who sat alone on a stage and made pronouncements. Then we each had to make our list and tell the group of 100 where we needed to “work on ourselves”. (100 times a $600.00 price tag equals $60,000 for the weekend).
There were people there (one guy who looked like Robert Palmer) who talked about the death of a son, another talked about his demons with alcohol and another woman talked about her problem with fidelity which caught the attention of most of the men there.
There were bathroom breaks but they were timed out tightly. And if you were late, you were locked out of the room and you were instructed to handle the situation. No excuses were broached. If you had your leg blown off that was not an excuse. “Handling it” meant accepting responsibility for your mistake of being late).
The second weekend we had an instructor named Lon. I knew I was getting bored when I began to silently sing the words to the Angels “My Boyfriends Back” substituting his name. (“Hey Lon, hey Lon, my boyfriends back”). Finally, graduation came and Woody, Rene and Bert Ayers drove down from Scranton to congratulate us. We were happy because we went through an endurance race. I had to admit it was a good feeling. After the ceremonies, each graduate was invited into a little room for a one on one personal coaching meeting. At this meeting you were congratulated and then had an offer extended to you. The offer was to do an 8 week “Forum Maintenance” program which would enhance the skills you garnered in the original one. It was an 8 week, 2 day a weekend, 12 hour day series that was essential to your further growth and education. In my meeting, I was slightly distracted because the woman with fidelity issues was in the office next to me and I was trying to eavesdrop on her. But in the end, I said no because I did not want to spend the time away from home on a weekend, I did not think my company would pony up any more money for this and I was at long last asserting my authority in saying “no” to people who were trying to persuade their belief systems on me. They called in the instructor, the coordinator and then Woody who used his oft quoted line, “you don’t know what you don’t know”. I replied that what I wanted more than anything else out of “The Forum” was to assert my authority to be able to say “no” and that I accomplished that goal. It was getting late and they knew I wasn’t going to budge so that was that. Me and George with his white Acura from KRZ went home and that was my experience with Werner Erhard, “The Forum” and Edison, New Jersey.

ANOTHER EXPERIENCE

Here's another person's take on their weekend with Werner.
http://www.rickross.com/reference/landmark/landmark269.html

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #462

PHOTO INDEX: BOB WOODY, BLOG EDITOR DAVID YONKI IN MIDDLE AND BERT AYERS TALKING STRATEGY OVER WITH WOODY BEFORE A TWIN VALLEYS NEWS CONFERENCE.

WOODY, ME AND THE TWIN VALLEYS

In 1987, Bob Woody, by that time running the Ad Agency had a big idea. He felt that there was this big wall between Lackawanna County and Luzerne County and felt that something should be done about it. He was the ad agency for the Sheraton Crossgates at the time and the GM of that property was working as a volunteer as head of the tourism board. Bob wanted to bring the two regions together and took his idea to the chambers of commerce who were lukewarm to the idea. So he formed his own committee of people and it was called The Twin Valleys Committee. The first group of members were himself, as chairman of Lackawanna County and me as Chairman of Luzerne County. Board members were Bert Ayers, Lee Flynn, Rene Laspina (you already see how this is going don't ya!!) Dick Mackey, Dale Rapson from Pocono Downs, an older sales
rep from 22 who's name I don't recall, Mike Raymond from WSGD FM and Lisa Lebonson from Rock 107, a few hotel operators as well as some other people who came and went. The meetings were held every Friday at Pocono Downs at 10AM. If you were late, you had to give a reason why you were late. If you weren't coming at all, you had to send what Woody called "an emissary". Your emissary did not receive your voting power if we decided something, but the responsibility of the emissary was to make certain the absent person knew what went on at the meeting. The committee's charge was to bring the two cities together via a media message that we beamed to ourselves first and then hopefully to outside markets. The advertising would come through the Ad Agency (which got 15%) and most of the TV advertising wound up at WNEP TV (the sales rep (Lespina) got 15% commission for her efforts. Media sales reps populated this committee in the hopes of getting "a buy" from the Ad Agency. Some did, some didn't. (Right those without emissaries did not). In October of 1988 we pulled off this big event at Pocono Downs where we had all the radio stations lined up, crafters, food guys, etc. About 2000 people came. Then we had a tuxedo clad dinner at the Downs where 250 people came to enjoy the races. We were generating some excitement and some good publicity. Like any group or committee, the more people contributed, the more they wanted to give their input. Bob took some of this input as criticism. Less media people started showing up and less started sending "emissaries". The straw that broke the camel's back came in March of 1989 when we were having our weekly meeting at Pocono Downs. When Bob spoke, he wanted the entire attention of the room. Dale Rapson had given us the run of Pocono Downs for all of our meetings every week for about 2 years. One day, during a meeting, while Bob was speaking, Dale's beverage guy came in to take Dale aside to the back of the room and speak to him about an emergency at the Downs. Both went to the back of the room and began to confer. Woody stands up and says to Rapson, the guy who had been housing and feeding us for free, "Uh, we can't have two meetings going on here at once. Can you either take that outside or send in an emissary?" As soon as I saw Rapson's face and look of incredulity, I knew the next time we came to the Downs we were going to be paying admission. That afternoon, Woody's assistant called and said the new meetings were going to be held at Perkins in Pittston. The Twin Valleys concept lost a great deal of steam after that and eventually died a peaceful death. But a few months later Bob contacted the committee members who stuck it out through the end. He wanted us to meet a friend of his from Edison, New Jersey.
NEXT TIME: WOODY AND WERNER-the next big thing.

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #463

PHOTO INDEX: BOB WOODY.

WOODY AS A NEIGHBOR PART 2

WOODY'S BIGGEST REGRET

In 1980 I was on my way to Yankee Stadium for Old Timer's Day. The bus was sailing along when we were told we had to make a turn to come back and pick up some stranded passengers who's bus broke down. I became very good friends with a guy who was Woody's next door neighbor. Through the years this guy and I remained friends. In my visits to this guy's house, I saw Woody as the neighbor. Quiet, kept the place up, at one point had his parents living with him. In the winter when I had to pick up dubs in that box outside the studio it was an adventure going down that sidewalk on the side of the house when it was icy. I seem to remember getting dubs for Music Box Playhouse, Motor Twins and a few others. One time I asked Woody if in his long career he had any big regrets. He thought a moment and said, "I wish I hadn't driven George Gilbert as crazy as I did. I wish I was a little bit less confrontational and easier on him. I'd like to tell him "I get" what he was trying to say to me". I don't know if he ever told "double G" that but I'd like to think he did. The house at 317 Harrison Avenue belongs to someone else. My friend still lives at 309 Harrison. Because of my accident I can no longer make the steps but every once in a while when I drive down Harrison Ave to pick up my buddy for a Yankees game or a night out, I half expect Woody to be charging out of his house on some mission that he only "gets" in its full magnitude.