Thirty years ago, I didn’t know WVPE existed. But I did know I wanted to work at an NPR station someday. I was living in Dayton, Ohio, where my wife at the time was attending medical school. I had tried, unsuccessfully, to get a job at a public radio station in the market and ended up working in Christian radio for a few years.
After my wife matched at St. Joe Med Center’s family practice residency, we moved to South Bend. We also discovered we were expecting our first child. We had already planned that I would be the parent that spent most of the time at home, but I still hoped to keep my hands in radio.
I visited WVPE for the first time in April 1997. Program director Joan Swanson showed me around the station on the second floor of the Elkhart Area Career Center. Joan called me that summer to tell me there was an opening for Operations Manager that also included hosting All Things Considered. I came in to interview with her and station manager Tim Eby.
Now, remember how I said I was going to be the primary home parent?
Yeah.
I asked the following question fully expecting to get laughed out of the building.
“Could I just host ATC?”
To my surprise, they said yes. I mean, they did have to think about it. But on my 30th birthday, Joan called and offered me the job.
So I was the dad who stayed home in the mornings and hosted ATC in the afternoons. Then I switched to Morning Edition in 2000.
I remember the morning legendary Indiana Hoosier men’s basketball coach Bob Knight was fired. One year and one day later, I saw a breaking AP news alert come over the wire that a plane hit one of the World Trade Center towers. Carl Kassell announced it in the next newscast.
WVPE that morning tried to pick up as much from AP and BBC as they could give us, as NPR at that moment wasn’t swift in its response to what was happening. However, NPR’s coverage in the aftermath was thorough and robust.
Not long after 9/11, I decided it was time for a break from news about the war on terror and the increased xenophobia and “rah-rah-rah” for war that accompanied it. So I went to work somewhere else — at Mennonite Mission Network — in the communications department for a few years. I continued as a holiday and vacation fill-in host at WVPE.
In 2007, I came back to WVPE and All Things Considered. Morning Edition host Michael Linville and I were the station’s only reporters. Combined with our hosting duties, that meant we really only had one reporter. We covered the historic 2008 Indiana Democratic presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Obama visited northern Indiana six times; half as a candidate and three as president. I stood a few feet away from him on one of those occasions at the Sunrise Cafe on the west side of South Bend and interviewed him on the phone when he was on Bank Street in Elkhart.
That same afternoon, I watched Senator Evan Bayh introduce Hillary Clinton across from Howard Park in South Bend and met David Greene, who was covering the Clinton campaign for NPR.
One of the reasons Obama visited northern Indiana so often was because of the hit the RV industry took as a result of the great recession.
Eventually, that rippled to WVPE and led to some cuts of our own. My position was cut in half in 2009. Two of my colleagues lost their jobs. I was the fortunate one, even though it didn’t feel that way at the time.
Eventually, I came back up to full-time and became the operations manager, then program director.
In the past decade, listeners and many businesses and organizations have helped bring WVPE back to more solid financial footing. And we have built an amazing news team that has gotten better with each passing year. Last week, Sid Shroyer told you how we got through COVID.
I am not one who bets in prediction markets. I can assure you I would have lost a bet on January first of this year that would have suggested that I would stop working at WVPE this year, rather than continue toward… shall we say… a more ripe… retirement age. But an opportunity arose that I needed to explore.
I first entered a radio station more than 40 years ago at my alma mater, Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia. Goshen College, also affiliated with the Mennonite Church, reached out to me to see if I would consider working with their media students. It’s an opportunity that completes a circle in my career. I look forward to preparing the next generations of media professionals. Maybe one of them will work at WVPE someday… or at NPR.
Thank you for allowing my voice to enter your home, your car, your office… over the past “nigh-on-to-thirty” years! Thank you for your patience with our shortcomings and the chance to flex some problem-solving muscles. Thank you for your generous financial support. And thank you, listeners and colleagues, for making WVPE a difficult place to say goodbye to.
Music: "Hello, Goodbye" by The Beatles
