Work History

In a conversation with one of the employment experts I have searched out about my inability to land a job, he said, "maybe it would be better if your "work experience" data didn't go back quite so far. Try starting with your radio job in 1980."

Here's the funny part, I had not begun at the beginning, not even close.

On a summer day in 1956, my good friend, Bunkie, and I visited the radio station in our Milwaukee neighborhood.  We trucked through Hawthorn Glen, across Hawley Road and up the street marked by a huge broadcast tower and a small cinderblock building.  For some reason, long forgotten, we were welcomed in by the genial General Manager, Bill Weaver, and a friendly Program Director, Gene Edwards.  

Some fella named Gordon McLendon had recently put WRIT on the air.  He was famous in Texas for movie theaters and radio stations but this was his first foray into the midwest, land of labor unions.  He had sent some of his best Dallas folks up to show 'em how it was done, this new Top Forty Radio.  He was a pioneer.  Both of the above mentioned had been at KLIF in Dallas.  The Chief Engineer was a Texan as well.  They were all such nice people!  The air staff came from many places, mostly New York maybe, although I know Red Jones was from Georgia and Chuck Dunaway from Texas.

Turns out the old station had used 78 rpm records and this hot new station was set to switch to 45's. ( It is 1956 people.)  And they needed some diligent and very inexpensive hands to catalog the record library for all the new records.  We got the job although frankly Bunkie thought hospital work sounded like a better money maker and was soon gone.  (She got her nursing degree at Marquette and nursed for many years.)  Money was tight at our house.  My teamster Dad had been on a protracted strike and the possibility of buying some new school clothes really appealed.  They were paying me $25 a month and I had business cards, cards that said Sally Stephenson, Record Librarian.  I still have one.  Beside that they allowed, begged me to take all those old 78 records home with me.  It happened to be what our record player could play.

Short story, I worked at WRIT most of my high school years.  The McLendon ownership was short lived.  He didn't much care for having to pay a separate "engineer" to play the records, run the spots and cue the deejay.  By the second Christmas party we'd been bought by Balaban & Lederer, fancy Chicago and St. Louis broadcasters and the tenor of the place changed.  We had some fairly famous folks through the doors. The night newsman for some time early on was Tom Snyder, what a case he was.  It was a fun way to find a career, one I thought was going to be journalism turned into broadcasting.

It also resulted in my first try at television.  Our 7-midnight jock, King Richard, (he'd been Dick White in the Night at a different Milwaukee station) started a once a week "dance party" show on the newest UHF tv station and I helped.  Sometimes I actually appeared live, on camera, drinking the sponsor beverage.

With graduation I accepted a summer "internship" at KILT, another McLendon station, newly on the air in Houston.  The PD, Gene Edwards and his wife (for whom I had become a regular babysitter) had a new son and offered me room and board at their house in exchange for child care and a job at KILT (this time in Traffic and Continuity) for the summer.  I was in Texas three days after graduation.  Finagled a scholarship at the University of Houston in Radio/TV, naturally.  They had both radio and tv stations and it seemed perfect.
KILT was an amazing introduction into Texas radio and I worked there while going to school.

Unfortunately I "fell in love or something like it," and married that summer, ending my college career.  Lindsey, who was also in broadcasting, had to serve a two year Navy stint in exchange for being in the Reserves.  I left KILT and took a job at AS Black Advertising as Production Coordinator.  Mr. Black was not pleased to find I was soon pregnant and wanted me out but I ended up working until just a month before Laura was born.  In fact I (well my hands) appeared in a Grand Prize Beer TV spot shortly before that.

During our two year Navy duty I gave birth to two, worked at Gimbels toy department, and for an advertising agency in Charlotte that promoted a big time event called Carolinas Carousel.  My boss, Earl Crawford, took me for coffee one morning with Billy Graham's mother.  (Soon after the Navy was over, I had child number three, Lindsey gave up his FM job in Philadelphia and we moved to Charlotte where he worked at WSOC.)

Then he decided we should move back to Houston where he had gotten a job at KTRH.  We left Charlotte on the day John Kennedy was assassinated.  In Houston, with children 1, 2 and 3 years old, I went to work for Brown & Snyder Advertising, Sylvan and Phil, what a pair.  Several clients but the most important was a young man running against Ralph Yarborough in his first political race, George Bush.  He lost.

And I went back to KILT, this time as Continuity Director in the lovely McLendon Building on Lovett Boulevard.  Very few of the same folks were at KILT, Bill Weaver was still the GM and he'd married my pal Beverly who'd worked there at the beginning.  Lots of the stories and people get mingled up.  Richard Dobbyn was fascinating.  Dan Lovett was fresh out of Missouri and green as could be.  Dickie Rosenfeld was just cranking up his legendary personality.  Disc jockeys came and went.  So did record promoters.  One, now famous, Steve Tyrell, brought his buddy, a dj at KNUZ, Paul Williams on one or more visit.  (Should probably note that I was now a single mother of three young kids).  Steve was dating the Traffic Mgr, next office, so Paul talked to me.

Bill Weaver had to fire me.  I sent a whole day's mail out that should have been stamped .05 cents, as .50 cents.  It was a big mistake but probably not the only one I made that year.  Anyway, Dickie called Jack Harris and I got a job at KPRC, traffic assistant and soon radio secretary.  That was a fun time too.  Tim and Bob were local traditions.  KPRC was still sort of block programmed and carried the Astros.  The radio office was down the hall from all of the TV stuff and right outside the coffee bar which was often occupied by "stars" fixing to go on someone's live show.

But enough of my work history .... I guess this is Part I ... 1956 to 1966.  Its not on my resume.