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4:41:00 AM EDT
Hearing Paul Williams
Waking Up Alone
Photo borrowed from mikeadams.org
I still remember the first morning I woke up to find Wes Hopkins gone from WCOL and lying in bed listening to the man who replaced him, and knowing that an era had ended.
That the radio station I had grown up with would never again be as friendly in the morning.
J. Parker Antrim was a talented and funny radio personality, and I found myself laughing between the songs as he introduced Columbus radio listeners to his style of morning radio, but somehow I knew that I would miss my old friend, "Mrs. Hopkin's Fat Boy Wes" and his silent, invisible sidekick, "Keemosabe."
I had been listening to and enjoying Wes for a decade, as was every other Columbus radio listener who tuned into 1230 AM for their morning dose of Top-40 hits and corny jokes.
And now he was gone.
I was working as a DJ across town at WMNI playing Country music at the time but WCOL was still my station of choice because at twenty five years old I had not yet grown out of my preference for Rock & Roll, and in spite of it's FM challengers, 'COL was a habit that was hard to break.
Listening to Wes Hopkins was a habit impossible to break.
Something about his smooth delivery and folksy manner that could calm the trauma of prying one's eyes open in the morning and get ready for what ever the day would bring.
He was like caffeign for the soul.
From the day's when I was a teenager getting up early to deliver the Columbus Citizen Journal, to getting up for school and later in life for the work day.
Wes was always' there.
And as time went along and WCOL would introduce other DJ's in the morning slot I would wonder, whatever became of my friend and could never have imagined that he would one day return to WCOL as an evening DJ, or for that matter, that I would leave WMNI and go to work there and be trained by him.
When I went to work for WCOL in the early 1980's I was told by the Program Director who hired me, Bob Mitchell to report to the station at 6:00 PM and hook up with Wes who would be showing me the ropes.
Nothing Bob could have said could have made me more eager to get started.
I adored Wes Hopkins.
What I didn't know was that he was planning to leave the station again, and that I was to become his replacement.
I had heard rumors of plans to move him back to the morning show where he belonged but that wasn't to be.
Not long after I signed on he left, but through the years I was able to stay in occassional contact with him by calling and interviewing him from his home in Florida, each time asking him when we could expect another return performance by him on WCOL.
Each time he would chuckle and explain those days were over.
And each time he would say that I didn't want to believe it.
This past Friday Wes Hopkins passed away.
He was 81.
I got the news from former WCOL air personality and Operations Manager, Bryan McIntyre and it's not news that's easily taken.
Throughout this journal I have written other essays of my admiration for this former Columbus broadcasting icon, and how much of an influence he was to my own radio career, and knowing that he is gone changes the way I will listen to morning radio from now on, even though it's been more than thirty years since I woke up hearing him.
Because even though he hasn't been on the air in decades there was comfort in just knowing that an idol was still around somewhere.
As I get older they are becoming fewer and fewer.
Another important figure from my own youth gone, and each time I get news like this it makes the world around me a little lonelier.
It's So Easy.........
Hearing Buddy Holly
Having written a few emotions I have about the passing of former WCOL morning DJ Wes Hopkins I was reminded of another guy who's landing at that legendary radio station was easier accomplished than my own hire there.
It took me several years and only the postman knows how many mailed audition tapes and resumes.
But Bryan McIntyre began his amazing journey through the WCOL studios and management offices not unlike some others who were able to walk in at the right time and impress someone enough to be hired on the spot.
Bryan was introduced on the overnight show and trained by Mike Adams in April, 1967, the same year Wes Hopkins got on board and the same year I biked around the Southside of Columbus throwing newspapers on porches.
No resume, no audition tape, just good chemistry between him and a guy in a position to make it happen, Dan Morris, another long ago station DJ and ultimate Station Manager.
Being tipped off by a college fraternity brother that there was an opening at the station while he was sitting in the Char Bar Grill, Bryan made the wise decision to forego driving his 1957 Ford, electing instead to hop a bus to 22 South Young Street after consuming a few beers to try his luck.
Showing up dressed as most of us did in that era wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, loafers and no socks, he was taken into a studio for a live audition- reading news wire copy, and while "auditioning" Dan called a reference that Bryan had offered from a radio station he had worked for previously in Clarksburg, West Virginia when he was in high school.
The reference must have been glowing enough to land the job, he was hired then and there.
Dan Morris, a man who has probably never been accused of making a bad decision in his radio career must have seen the future, Bryan went on to wear many hats with the station, including Program Director and Operations Manager.
These days whenever his name is brought up he's remembered as Mr. WCOL.
He shared those second floor studios on South Young Street with the best who ever worked in that building.
He is as synonymous with the station as Mike Adams, Lou Henry, Jerry Dean, Wes, Bob Harrington, Johnny Hill, Johnny Lane and anyone else who ever introduced Rock & Roll records there.
Even at the end of WCOL's glory run as the premier Rock station in Columbus, Bryan went on to help mold it's sister station, WXGT-92X-FM into the new industry leader with it's switch to Top-40 programming.
I never tire of talking about, or writing vignettes about the old, "New WCOL" gang because these guy's as a collective group were the reasons I aspired to have not only a career in radio, but one that eventually ended in that landmark building at the corner of East Broad Street and South Young Street.
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