91 WORD Photo Gallery of clips from the Spartanburg newspaper (and a
couple other items)
I was going through old papers in the garage this afternoon in the
Atlanta 'burbs, looking to
see what I could throw away / clean up / etc / et al. You know the drill on such
things if you've ever kept way too many things over the years. I ran across an
envelope or two of clippings my late mom had apparently cut out of the local Spartanburg,
SC newspaper of mostly news items regarding where I worked at the time, WORD radio.
All were from the mid and late 1980's. WORD was one of the more well-known medium
market "top 40" stations for quite a long period of time, and I was fortunate to have
grown up listening to it and subsequently worked there twice. I apparently did ok
(smile), winning a market-wide "Who is your favorite dj?" thing one of the upstate
newspapers did one year. Kinda floored me, didn't expect it. There are so many newspaper clippings! I'll scan more
of these in and post them as I get time or am bored at night. I remember in the
naiveness of my teens and twenties I thought I would always work there... it was too
much fun, even when it wasn't, when Bob Brown would stalk the hallway in his black suit
looking for someone to fire. Actually Bob taught me the finer points of single malt
scotch across I-85 at the bar at the hotel the occasional night when he would hold court
with whomever wanted to come over. Yes his mom DID have blue hair.
Click on the picture to see the full-size image!
(Use Firefox and you can zoom in really easy, or in Internet Explorer
hover your mouse over the picture and wait for the box to appear you can click to expand
the picture to larger size)
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We get an award from the Spartanburg Animal Shelter. |
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CJ resigns from the afternoon show! Uh oh, it made the local paper... |
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Humble Carl and Bob Morgan both return to the air. |
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J.J. Hemingway found before CJ walks out! |
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Russ Spooner hired away from WSB-AM/Atlanta |
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Russ Spooner becomes the highest-paid dj in the state. $100k was a LOT of $$ in 1985! Think I made 1/3 of that... |
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This one is from the late 70's or early 80's, with the logo at the time. I have a partial box of these. |
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I don't recall what year(s) this was from, I am thinking mid or late 70's. |
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Russ Spooner exits, I have a feeling it was the money, too much of it... Steve McCoy was better... anyone notice the Community Cash ad on the reverse? |
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The day the music died in Sparkle City. |
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Ok, call me weird. I had a copy of the WORD night music rotation a la JJ Hemingway in my wallet until just now when I scanned it *grin*. |
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I liked this logo the best. This is from the era when Bobby Dean and moi used to cruise the Beacon in the Mello Yello van trolling for chicks :-) |
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This was my 2nd fave. I liked the black-on-white design. (That Mello Yello van -was- seriously abused by several jocks, glad it couldn't talk heh) |
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This "Delivers" version came out of an impromptu sales meeting in the front lobby. |
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And the other version of that same logo. Amazing what one finds when digging through boxes of clothes, isn't it? :-) |
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I may have pictures of the towers at night with the neon WORD 910 sign lit
on the tallest one. We took the Zero down at one point to make it WORD 91 to fit the
station moniker at the time. For some reason I keep thinking Jeff Herndon had one of
the letters in the back of his truck for the longest time riding it around. -CJ 4.27.2008
Ok, I'm adding one more thing I just found. The picture below was
taken immediately after we cut down the WORD towers on Hearon Circle down. The back
of the picture I scanned says it was developed in 1989.
The folks are, from left to right; Bob Kinder (the upstate's best radio/tv
tower guy for years), one of his crew (in the hard hat), Ted Love (overnight jock on WORD
forever), Tony Brooks (with jacket and drink in hand) Bill Alexander (sunglasses) Mike
Brooks (Tony's son), yours truly (CJ), Mark Kruea (was the WORD news director), I think
Public Info guy for the City of Myrtle Beach, SC now, Phil Tuck (engineer now in Jacksonville,
Florida and who still drives to the Beacon for tea), and Don Crane (consulting engineer
still in Spartanburg). The sections of orange and white are the remains of tower
one, that had the famous neon WORD 910 sign on it. The woods behind the guys are to
the East where the Asheville Highway runs North/South. I-85 would be to the right in
this shot. Just click on it for the full size picture. -CJ 5.6.2008
(This page last updated
01.31.10)
