Dick Shepard, who hosted shows on WNEW  for more than twenty years, from the 1950’s into the ’70’s, died October 15.  He had turned 90 on August 25th. 

Bill Diehl on Dick Shepard

I arrived at WNEW in early 1967 and worked the overnight, often with Shep on “The Milkman’s Matinee.”  We had lots of time to chat and I mentioned that my marriage was over and I was single again.  Dick didn’t miss a beat and had to tell our audience that I was now one of New York’s most eligible bachelors. WNEW’s signal was really big at night and a few days later I got a letter in the mail from a woman in Maine with a picture of her, her mother and two children. The letter said “Mr.Diehl, if you’ll pay my travel expenses, (and my mother’s) I’ll be happy to come to New York to meet you.”  I sent  note back saying thanks but that wasn’t going to happen.  Dick was the consummate professional.  It was a pleasure working with him at the  Big W.

Mitche Lebe on Dick Shepard

Dick was a tremendous talent and a friend. He entertained millions for decades on WNEW. And oh what a salesman. I especially loved his commercials for Air France.

Andy Fisher on Dick Shepard

Dick was the DJ on whose show I did my first part-time WNEW newscast.  I was trying to move from writer/editor to newscaster, and Dick’s unfailing encouragement was a big part of that.  He was gone when I finally made the move in 1974, but he knew how much that encouragement meant to me.

His departure from WNEW was the central event in the greatest story of bad timing I have ever heard.  Al Wasser was the morning editor and, as a loyal WGA artist, was rarely seen on the premises after noon.  One afternoon he came in to pick up his paycheck, and saw Shep standing in the hallway. “Hey, Shepard,” he cracked in his usual brusque way.  “They haven’t fired you yet?” Dick smiled the faintest of smiles.  “They just did, Al,” he said quietly.  And they had!

Mike Eisgrau on Dick Shepard

 Sad news about Dick. Of course my story goes back to two days before I started at WNEW News in 1967. Saturday, June 25th.  I had just driven in from Chicago. Before I went to my apartment in Forest Hills, I went up to the second floor studios at 565 5th Avenue and 46th Street to see what my new surroundings would be like.  In a hallway outside the studio I met Shepard. He warmly welcomed me to my new job as reporter/editor and we had a nice chat.  As I left I said “Well, Gene, it has been a pleasure meeting you and I look forward to working with you and other folks in my new job.” His face turned sour and I was on his s… list for a long time. Frankly, I’d never heard of Dick Shepard—only Gene Shepard.  

Let them both rest in peace.

Gary Alexander on Dick Shepard

It is difficult to comprehend how long I actually knew Dick Shepard. But I can tell you I was on the air with him…I flew through the air with him…and I shot plenty of breeze with him.

Dick Shepard was a large teddy bear…with a generous heart. When I was a young, part-time news guy at WNEW for Shepard’s show, Dick actually took a crazy chance and generously invited me to take the mike and repeat one of my silly off-mike comments to him ON THE AIR! Of course I never forgot that (fortunately he probably did!) We flew in his plane together.

He really WAS a helluva pilot. (I thought better than he was a driver!) When we landed at various airports in New Jersey and the Poconos it turns out he seemed to know even more people in the aeronautics circuit than in the restaurant realm. (Every time I bumped into Dick and Judy having dinner it was in the company of no fewer than nearly a dozen people.) Dick invited me into three of his homes…and brought me into the N.Y. Friars Club.

He could tell more stories than anyone I ever knew…and knew more stories than I…(which made it very difficult for me to sneak in one of mine that he didn’t already know). Happily, one of those stories was HIS being at MY wedding!

The times we spent together at Hemlock Farms in PA., including a memorable celebration of his 80th birthday at the humble Boat House were delightful…as was Dick’s more costly Sapphire Bombay Gin which he insisted was the more preferable to the plain Bombay, although he couldn’t really say why.

To say Dick Shepard WILL be missed sounds awfully cliche but it is more than that…because it is less than the truth. When Dick isn’t at Hemlock at his Canoe Drive place to me to drop by…; when the Shepard’s aren’t at dinner and I’m not vying for the next story…; when old “Shepard, Richard A witcha” ain’t on the air, whether it be WNEW, WPAT, WABC or WNYC, there’s gonna be a void, a vacuum, an empty place.

Dick Shepard is ALREADY missed.

By Bob Gibson

Veteran New York broadcaster Dick Shepard is gone.

Better known to his legion of listeners on WNEW at different times in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s as Shepard Richard A, Dick passed away Monday after being hospitalized in south Florida for a week.  His wife of nearly 65 years, Judy, told me he was taken to the hospital in Boynton Beach on Tuesday, October 9th after complaining of not feeling well.

Dick. who also worked at WABC Radio in the late 50s and  during part of 1960. also appeared as a commercial, on-camera announcer on some ABC Television game shows in the 50s, and was a busy voice-over talent  during parts of five decades in New York.

Sadly Dick and I just got together to celebrate his 90th birthday early last month and Ed Brown was in the process of posting a picture and a story about that when he was alerted to Dick’s passing.

A photo arrived the other day from Glenn Crespo, at one time a WNEW News desk assistant.  His caption:

“I found a picture of Bruce Charles, myself, another Desk Assistant Mary Ellen Kowalski and, if you look close on the left side, fill -in reporter Randy Place.  This was taken after we moved to 3rd Avenue and must have been in the early 1980’s.”

In response, we asked Glenn to send a few lines about his time at WNEW and where it led, which turned out to be an impressive string of call letters including the new, all news WNEW in Washington, D.C. 

“I was  (at WNEW, New York) from  January 1977 through September of 1991, starting as a desk assistant, hired by Jim Gordon.  From 1978 through 1980, I was a weekend anchor at WFAS in White Plains.  I continued as a desk assistant at WNEW and then, under Mike Prelee, began doing sports reports in 1986 and weekend anchor shifts in addition to anchoring news on the NY Giants football network. I free-lanced for AM and FM until AM went off the air. . . My time at WNEW was a great learning experience, working with Bob Hagen, Bruce Charles, Charles Scott King, Andy Fisher, Mike Eisgrau and Peggy Stockton. There were many major news stories covered during my time there, “Son of Sam,” The Northeast Blackout, the helicopter crash on the Pan Am Building, hijackings, presidential elections, the First Gulf War, the Battle for the Falkland Islands, the blizzard of 1977, transit strikes, the murder of John Lennon, the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan and the Challenger disaster, to name a few.

 After the news department was “downsized” in 1991, I worked two years for WXPS in Hawthorne New York as the morning anchor, co-host and News Director.I also free-lanced for WHUD, WFAS, WBLS, WFAN during this time. Went to WJUX in Dumont New Jersey in 1993, where I worked as the afternoon anchor and moved to WVNJ in Teaneck as the News Director and anchor in 1995.  In 1997 I joined Shadow Traffic and remained there for 10-years doing traffic on WINS and news on WQCD.

 In 1997 I began freelancing for the Wall Street Journal Radio Network and continued to do so off and on there until I was hired full-time in 2012 doing overnight reports for Dow Jones Radio on the Wall Street Journal Network, WCBS and WNEW (in Washington D.C.).

 The WNEW (New York) News Department was a very interesting, volatile, action-packed place to work.  A lot of different personalities thrown together.  But at the end of the day, getting the news on the air was what mattered and getting it right was what mattered.  The business has changed so much since then with sensationalism, character assassinations and speculations now being the norm. I will always treasure my years working in the WNEW News Department.”

 “Martin Block, host of WNEW’s ‘Make Believe Ballroom’ demonstrates his secret remedy for all-night partying.”  That’s the caption that accompanied this photo in the book “Airwaves of New York,” from McFarland Books in 1998. 

The Airwaves of New York        
Illustrated Histories of 156 AM Stations in the Metropolitan Area, 1921-1996.  Bill Jaker , Frank Sulek and Peter Kanze  Foreword by Joe Franklin
Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-3872-3.  68 photos, bibliography, index 215pp. softcover (8.5 x 11) 2008 [1998]

http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-3872-3

WNEW1130.com has no affiliation with McFarland Books.

We noted here, about a month ago, the passing of R. Peter Straus who, as president of  WMCA 570 AM, New York,  “combined Top 40 music with socially conscious journalism and ground-breaking public service to animate broadcasting’s most successful and influential big-city mom and pop radio station.”

An e-mail arrived recently from Chris Albertson who was WNEW’s Continuity Director in the early 1960’s. He was also producing  jazz recordings   and working nights as a volunteer at leftist, avant garde WBAI-FM. He left WNEW in 1964 to work at WBAI full time, eventually becoming General Manager. (See Posts: “Civil Rights Jazz,” and “Civil Rights Jazz P.S.”)  Chris’s most recent e-mail tells how his activist ire, provoked by a WMCA contest,  found an ally in R. Peter Straus.

“I am sorry to hear of R. Peter Strauss’ passing. I met him in April of 1965 when he handed me a check for $1,000 for WBAI. I was doing the morning show and I used to take a cab to work each morning. One day the cab driver had his radio tuned in to WMCA and I heard them pitch an unusual contest. To enter, one had to send in a photo that showed the WMCA call letters on one’s body, by way of a sun tan, and the clearest call letters won a car.”

” The first thing that occurred to me was that this gave white or very light complexioned people a distinct advantage, which made the contest unfair. That morning, I urged my listeners to give WMCA a call and protest this inequity. The station was apparently flooded with calls, because I received a call from WMCA’s publicity dept. asking me to stop. Later that day, a call came to me from R. Peter Strauss, who was very embarrassed, thanked me for pointing this out, told me that he had killed the contest and that he wanted to donate a thousand dollars to WBAI. He did more than that, actually, because he placed a couple of ads in the NY Times urging people to subscribe to WBAI (we were a listener-sponsored station).The following day, Mr. Strauss told me to come and get it! I did, and here is the moment as captured by WMCA’s PR people.”

 Thought you might find that interesting.

            Chris

Typical of the legendary musical talent heard regularly and live on WNEW beginning in the 1930’s , was the “Bunny Berigan All Star Broadcasts.”  The All Stars included Benny Goodman, Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Count Basie, Red Allen, Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins, Gene Krupa and other jazz greats.  The photo below is the cover of a 1999 CD collection of broadcast sessions between 1936 and 1940, which includes recordings from “Jam Session,” a WNEW, broadcast of July 6, 1938 and a “WNEW Make Believe Ballroom” session on June 14, 1940. The collection also includes Berigan broadcasts on the “CBS Saturday Night Swing Club.”

All Star Broadcasts music CDs

Photographers: Edward Burke, Ken Whitten.  All Star Broadcast songs.

Bunny Berigan’s trumpet solos during a 1935 tour with the Benny Goodman band, helped propel Goodman to “King of Swing” fame. By the summer of 1940, Berigan was bankrupt and had to dispand his own band. In failing health, due mostly to alcoholism, Berigan played for a  time with the Tommy Dorsey band and toured with a small group of his own.  Stricken by a  hemorrhage on June 2^nd, 1942, he was dead at the age of 33.   E.B.

Photo: http://www.theorchard.com

Sources

In the summer of 1961, WNEW’s GM, Jack Sullivan, appointed me Director of Special Projects when Bill Persky and Sam Denoff left the station to write for Steve Allen’s new weekly TV Variety show.  A few years into my “drektorship;” —that would be the summers of 1965 and ’66—I fielded a WNEW softball team  to compete with other NY stations. 

 On the roster were:

• Ed Dennehy–WNEW’s business manager.
• Sales reps–Bob Goldsholl, Marty Ross, Bob Faselt and Bob Mounty.  Faselt and Mounty became sales managers and Mounty became WNEW’S GM.  Ross became my sales manager when I was sent to L.A. to run KMET. 
• Chip Cipolla–originally an overnight newscaster and subsequently the sports reporter/color broadcaster on Giants broadcasts.
• Bill O’Shaughnessy–a Sullivan assistant without portfolio.
• Jerry Graham–WNEW News Director.
• Steve Nelson–engineer.
• Allan Richman–systems analyst hired by Gerry Carrus, Metromedia’s comptroller.  Carrus subsequently owned Trinity Broadcasting.  Richman eventually owned stations run by Mel Karmizan, who was GM for both WNEW-AM and WNEW-FM before becoming top exec at Infinity, CBS Radio, Viacom (#2 there) and Sirius.
• Me.

Some station-wide memos of results are all that remain of those epic contests on the diamonds of Central Park.

The New York City Hall news beat consisted of a close knit group of reporters.  Peggy Stockton of WNEW News was proud to be a member of the Room #9 crew.  For over 12 years Peggy covered four New York City mayors. She interviewed dozens of council members and a large list of political leaders. Election night was her specialty.  Mayor Edward Koch is one of many who never passed up her questions. (photo below) 

Peggy was a member of the New York Press Club, and the Inner Circle.  She also was the recipient of many news awards for her on-the-scene coverage including the Associated Press Award for spot news reporting; The Press Club’s Byline Award; and the Olive Award for her program on “The Runaways of The City.”  Peggy lived in Greenwich Village, a stone’s throw from City Hall.

Peggy Stockton and I co-anchored WNEW’S coverage of the fireworks display from beneath the famous Brooklyn Bridge on its 100th Anniversary celebration.  We sat under the Bridge in the city she loved watching the historic event.  We were like two kids, totally awestruck as we described the sight.  Her first love, however, was the political and election coverage beat where she made a host of friends.  Millions of listeners recall her signature radio closing to a story…Simply: “This is Peggy Stockton, WNEW News… New York City Hall”  Peggy died of cancer September 12, 1988.   Mike Prelee

Mike Prelee served as WNEW’s news director from 1981 to 1992.

Julius LaRosa’s Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame can be found on the south side of the 6200 block of Hollywood Blvd.

From Bill Diehl’s magazine rack

Julius LaRosa (WNEW 60’s-70’s) twice made the cover of Radio-TV Mirror in 1953 (Radio still came first then) a solo picture in September and a cover shared with Lou Ann Simms the previous March.

The story in the March issue concerned cast members of Arthur Godfrey’s radio and TV shows, and a trip they took to Miami to christen TV station WTVJ’s new studios, and do a show there.  They flew down in a charter National DC-6 from Idlewild,  (now JFK International.)  As the plane approached Miami, the article quotes Lou Ann (19 from Rochester)  as saying, “It doesn’t look very big.”  Julius (22, Navy vet from Brooklyn) at her elbow laughed and said “There’s more than meets the eye, believe me.”  

A red plush carpet was rolled out on arrival and “when Julius walked down the steps a sea of Miami girls were there yelling his name and waving autograph books.  He signed his name over and over, grinning and happy.  Lou Ann waited, beginning to see what Julius meant.”  

There was a reception at WTVJ and then the drive up fabulous Biscayne Boulevard and across the causeway to Miami Beach and the Kenilworth Hotel.  Again quoting from the article:  “And now the kids could let go.  They had each asked for a Cadillac convertible apiece to drive while they were here. But incredibly, the demand for rented Cadillac convertibles that weekend was overwhelming, and most of the available supply was already taken.  Eventually the Godfrey troupe got theirs, but for tonight Julius had to make do with a Buick.”

Oh yes, and there was Floppy, the Night-club Doll, a large doll, says the article, that Lou Ann was given at the Clover Club.  “What Floppy needs,” said the irrepressible Julius, ‘is a little excitement.’   The article goes on “…Julius the sadistic kidnapper, if you judged by his fiendish laughter and her blood-curdling shrieks of dismay…stood on the highest diving board, holding Floppy out over the drink. Floppy fell into the pool, ‘poor Floppy’ said Julius, sadly. ‘Beast, beast,’ Lou Ann cried. With that Julius dived into the pool, came up with Floppy in his mouth and paddled ashore like any brave dog rescuing a drowning baby.”

The article concluded with the flight home. “Julius slept. Lou Ann held Floppy under the air-conditioner above her seat.” It sure was another time, wasn’t it!  B.D.

The caption beneath the photo above, reads: A host of little Godfreys—both newcomers and veterans, beaming in the Florida sunshine: Left to right, Julius LaRosa, Janette Davis, organist Lee Erwin, Lou Ann Simms, Marian Marlowe, frank Parker, and Haleloke.

When the photo at right was published in “Radio-TV  Mirror” magazine in December, 1949, Martin Block was back at his old stand on WNEW after an unhappy year-long engagement with KFWB in Los Angeles, the station where he first went to work in the early 1930’s.  L.A., the second time around, rejected him as a slick, know-it-all New Yorker.   Block, in 1949, was five years away from ending permanently his long run on WNEW which had begun in 1934, when the 31-year old super salesman made an unannounced call on WNEW Station Manager Bernice Judis. After reading a few commercials and, the story goes,  speaking lovingly and at great length  about a common pencil she asked him to describe, he was hired as a part-time announcer for $25. a week.  By the time the “Radio-TV Mirror” photo was published,  he was earning more than $20,000 a week.   

After years of reigning atop the world of popular music with twice-a-day and nationally syndicated “Make Believe Ballroom” shows, movie shorts for M-G-M, TV announcing, music publishing, song writing and other enterprises, Block left WNEW on January 1, 1954, to be heard locally in New York, on WABC.  His final new-beginning was a move to WOR in 1961 for the weekend “Martin Block Hall of Fame” shows.  He was, by then, a stranger in a strange land of Beatles, Stones and Monkeys, no longer the singular voice that called the tune.

  When leaving WNEW, Block was quoted as saying it was strictly business, ABC (his syndicator) had offered him “a much better deal.”  But The Associated Press, in a September 19, 1967 dispatch following his death, quoted a friend of Block’s as saying, “WNEW never let go anybody they wanted to keep.”  

Martin Block’s “Make Believe Ballroom” is best remembered for its big band popularity polls and hit song countdowns, but the man who led the revolution on radio from live to recorded music, hosted many live on-location and in-studio music specials featuring some of the greatest talents of pop music, big band swing and jazz. For just one example, we direct your attention to “The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong: 70 Years of The Martin Block Jam Session,” which includes audio of a session including Jack Teagarden, Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong.  E.B.

http://dippermouth.blogspot.com/2008/12/70-years-of-martin-block-jam-session.html

Thanks to Bill Diehl for another flea market photo find.

 WNEW1130.com has no affiliation with “dippermouth.blogspot.com” and other websites whose links may be published here.