Radio Personalities from the Past
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| Radio Personalities Dick Purtan and Steve Kirk |
Recently, my wife and I attended a memorial service for a golfing buddy and at the luncheon afterwards, by happenstance, we were sitting at a table with a women named Colleen whose voice I recognized from the radio! While driving to work at Ford Motor Company for almost 30 years, I would routinely listen to the morning disc jockey/comedian Dick Purtan and his compatriots tagged as Purtan’s People. The photo below shows the group as they performed a Gilligan’s Island skit at a charitable event. Dick Purtan is the one playing Gilligan with the mustache. Colleen most likely is the blonde in the middle playing Lovey Howell.
Purtan spent a few years at Cincinnati radio station WSAI before moving to 50,000 watt CKLW in Windsor, Canada. No doubt some of you old timers like me can remember CKLW back in the day, as they had such great rock and roll hits with a really strong signal. We would listen to the station all the way down in mid-western Ohio around the clock. It was 800 on the AM dial and easy to find. My favorite was Jo Jo Shutty McGregor, the traffic girl we all fell in love with. Because of listening to Jo Jo's traffic reports, I knew all the roads around the Detroit metropolitan area by name long before moving there in 1973. See the photo of her in her traffic helicopter and a more recent photo with Dick Purtan below.
The station was famous for their 20/20 news, delivered at 20 minutes before and 20 minutes after the hour, which meant every teenage radio listener like me at the time would switch to CKLW at the top and bottom of the hour when all the other stations were broadcasting the news. CKLW’s news was over the top, so even that was entertaining. Click here for an entertaining youtube segment about CKLW back in the 60’s.
Naturally, the conversation with Colleen focused on her days behind the mic as one of Purtan’s People. It was really fun talking to her about those wonderful times. She said her alarm was always set at 4:17am when she got up to get ready for her stint on morning radio. Her husband was with her at the reception after the memorial service and we came to discover they are a house divided; with Colleen a Michigan State graduate and her husband a graduate of Michigan as is obvious from the photo on the right. Although Colleen is a natural talker, being in the radio business and all, she and her husband don’t speak to each other on the day of the big U of M/MSU football game each fall (somewhat like me and my family of avid Buckeye fans on the last Saturday in November each year)! Also, I came to discover that Dick Purtan lives on the same lake we do, and also that Jo Jo Shutty McGregor and her husband used to live on the lake. Little did I know!
Dayton had their own radio personality at the time, Steve Kirk at WING 1410 am radio pictured below. He was known for his trademark remark after telling a joke - “Ha Cha Cha”. Before WING, he also worked for WSAI in Cincinnati with Dick Purtan. While at WSAI, Steve actually interviewed the Beatles in 1964 before their concert in Cincinnati. You could tell Steve and Dick worked together as their antics on the air were very similar. Both also used their celebrity to benefit local charities in the Dayton and Detroit areas, having raised millions of dollars for such charitable causes as the Salvation Army.
Radio personalities like Steve Kirk and Dick Purtan sure provided wonderful entertainment for us growing up around the midwest. And their antics continue, but in a more toned down way, as both have Facebook pages.
Fun times and great memories!
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