Rick Minerd - Life Is A Jukebox

With apologies to all of the wonderful radio personalities who provided the background music for us throughout the 1960's and '70s,  Wes Hopkins will always be my personal favorite.

"Mrs. Hopkins Fat Boy Wes"  as he often referred to himself, and his invisible side-kick,  "Kemo Sabe"  was the calming voice weekday mornings from 6:00 to 10:00  on  "The New WCOL."

I can actually remember the first time I heard Wes when he came to Columbus from Cleveland to take over  'COL's morning show.

It was 1967 and  I was returning home after delivering my Citizen-Journal paper route. I always had a transistor radio to listen to in my paper bag and there was this new guy. Unlike the excitable, high energy voices we had come to know on Columbus' only rock station.

There was this guy cracking corny one-liners between the records and there was actually humor there. Not so much as in what he said, but how he said it, and how "Keem" never got it.

This was before the days when morning radio personalities farted and belched on the air for laughs, and before it required three or more personalities to cue the listeners to giggle by their own giggling. Wes didn't offend, he never talked about his penis and never attacked anyone verbally. He made fun of a guy who wasn't there.

Poor "Kemo."

All of us who listened to top-40 radio in Columbus from 1967 to 1977  know what I'm talking about.

Wes was replaced after ten years by  J. Parker Antrim who was similar in his delivery and hilarious to boot, but the exit of Wes Hopkins was like losing a friend. I really never stopped missing the guy. That is until the 1980's.

I had moved out of my comfortable overnight time slot at WMNI and over to our sister station,  WRMZ for a mid-day,  10:00 AM to 2:00 PM show and a strange format of pop-country mixed with soft-rock music.  Yech!

Eddie Powell, a fellow jock at the station told me that he had heard rumors that WCOL was about to scrap their  "Music Of Your Life"  format and return to it's rock heritage.  Or, an  "Oldies" format.

I quickly made an appointment with their Program Director, Bob Mitchell and within days I was hired.

As part of WCOL's plan to rise from the ashes they had hired a couple of names from the past. Among them, Neal Martin and Wes Hopkins.  When I reported for work my first day I was trained by Wes.  And although he didn't hang around much longer I tried my best to stay in touch with him.

I inherited his 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM time slot and would occasionally slip in some previously recorded sound bites of him from his earlier years at the station. My snappy one liners were as corny as his but he could deliver them better. Plus, I wasn't ready to let him get away completely.

Several years later I called him at his home in Florida and tried to coax him back for a reunion show we were planning and he politely explained that radio was only something he did. Something he would never do again.

He was happily retired.  Shame.       Rick

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