I knew by the time I was six that I wanted to be on the radio. Because of my love of music, my parents gave me a radio for my fifth birthday, which I spent hours listening to. I was amazed and even a little dumbfounded by the technology. Some of my earliest memories are of listening to the radio, thinking there were little people inside it, talking and singing to me. But I soon learned that voices and music could be transmitted through the air and that I wanted to be part of it.

After talking with the receptionist we walked upstairs to the second floor where the control room was located. I wish I could remember the name of the DJ, but he was a friendly guy. He showed me the equipment, how it worked and let me watch as he talked on the air. In fact he tried to get me to talk with him during a break, but I was too nervous. I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything. I guess I missed a good opportunity. After spending a bit of time with him, the DJ gave me two albums, Joe Walsh and Pablo Cruise, and sent us on our way.

I was euphoric after the visit. Seeing what the station looked like definitely reaffirmed my desire to work in radio. More than 15 years later I would return to the same building, which still houses the station, even though it has changed formats and identities several times since and is now know as KKPT, The Point 94.1, which is a classic rock station. I was meeting a friend named Linda Glenn for lunch, who I had worked with at KARN when she was in charge of payroll. She had changed jobs and I met her for lunch there one day. It was almost eerie how well I remembered the layout, all the way down to the stairs that went from the reception area up to where the control room was located.

While attending Northeast High School in North Little Rock during my junior year in 1988, I was finally able to take a first step toward getting on the radio. I, along with two friends, took a radio broadcasting class that was offered as part of a vocational program. We would drive to the Metropolitan Vocational Center in Little Rock in the mornings, spending the first half of our days there, then come back to school taking regular classes in the afternoons.

The instructor of the class was a guy named Bob Gay, who had retired from radio after a lengthy career at many big stations. He did a good job of teaching the basics of what radio was really like and what was needed to succeed in a difficult industry. The facilities there included two control rooms and two production rooms with professional equipment. We also had a low-watt AM transmitter and simulated how a commercial radio station operated, hitting the air each day at 9 am and broadcasting for two hours. Rotating shifts each week, students took turns in different positions: being a DJ, writing and putting together hourly newscasts, producing commercials and writing commercial copy. It very effectively conveyed what it took for a radio station to function.

Bob also helped me get my first paying job at KBBA later in the school year. While I went on to take higher level radio classes at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, I still feel like I got more real practical knowledge from Bob. I'm happy to say that I still see him for lunch periodically when I visit Arkansas, with the photo to the right taken in July 2004.

While in high school I also had a mentor of sorts in Sherry Westbrook, who I met through a mutual friend. Known on the air as Sherry Books, she had been the nighttime jock at Little Rock's KZ95 (KZLR-FM 94.9), a rock station that hit the air in May 1987. I liked the station a lot because it seemed more interesting than the established rock station there, Magic 105. Unfortunately it wouldn't last. After only two and a half years the station changed formats, becoming oldies as Cool 95 (KOLL). Sherry was able to stay on, becoming the midday jock. It was around that time that I met her.

Having just started in radio and working mostly at little small town stations, I looked up to her as someone who had made it and was working at a big station in a real market. Many times she would take me out to eat and we would sit and talk at length, with her telling me what radio was really like. She would also let me come up and visit her at the station, which was then housed in a strip mall on Rodney Parham Road. This was important because I was seeing what a major radio station's equipment looked like, as opposed to the mostly dilapidated equipment I was working with at the time. She would also give me some of her airchecks, which, for those not familiar with radio lingo, are recordings of a DJ's airshift, made from a cassette deck that only records when the studio mic is turned on. I saved two of those for more than 15 years and have dubbed them into digital files that you can download below as MP3s.

It's fascinating to listen to Sherry on the two stations, comparing the differences. On KZ95, she is the typical female nighttime rock DJ, with the way she talks while plugging upcoming concerts or the stoner, midnight laser rock shows at the UALR Planetarium. Then on Cool 95, she's working to appeal to a middle-aged oldies audience. The recordings are also interesting to me because neither station exists any more. Clear Channel, which eventually bought the signal, has since changed its format several times.

Sherry would later work as Music Director and nighttime DJ at the dominant country station in Little Rock, KSSN, using her real name Sherry Westbrook. I visited her a few times then, back when the station was still housed on Cantrell Boulevard and was locally owned. Now it is yet another name on the Clear Channel roster. For a time in the mid-90's I also used to see her periodically when we lived in the same apartment complex, but then lost touch. Looking back, I now realize how much insight she really gave me at a critical time as I was trying to get into the business. She was also incredibly supportive to someone who wanted to do the same thing she was doing.