WIZS marked 63 years on the air on May 1, 2018. In honor of this milestone, WIZS is reprinting, with permission, an article written by Kathy Watts that appeared in The Daily Dispatch in May 2005 to mark WIZS’ 50th anniversary.
Fifty years of airtime in Henderson
By Kathy Watts
Special to The Daily Dispatch
The smoke is thick in the offices of WIZS 1450 AM, the tiny cinderblock radio station that is 50 years old today. Station owner John D. Rose III, better known as simply John Rose, scurries about pointing to the old transmitters, to the decorative cinder block façade that was added to the original building in the 1970s, to the production room or rather a corner with walls that became a necessity at the busy little station.
A few days later he’s missing lunch because he’s following up on a fire at the IAMS plant, and he’s driving down the road to check it out, even as he talks on his cell phone about plans for the anniversary celebration today. He believes the station ought to be recognized for staying on the air for half a century, that the people who worked there should be remembered. “It was a big deal to me,” Rose said. “I was 11 when the radio station came on the air in 1955.”
WIZS began as WHVH on Sunday, May 1, 1955, and the day after it went on the air, headlines in the Henderson Daily Dispatch proclaimed “Ike says high principles, trade certain to defeat communism” and “Polio vaccine series costs around $12.” It was a time when the upper left corner of the paper read “Evening hours are reading hours,” for there was not a radio station in Henderson that stayed on after dark.
A new station in town
Rose’s grandfather gave him a radio in 1949, when he was five years old. “I thought it was fascinating that somebody would be speaking in Chicago, and I could listen to it at the same time in my living room,” Rose recalled. He’d listen to Burns and Allen (that’s George and Gracie) and Jack Benny. Henderson’s only other radio station, WHNC, an AM station that had started in the mid-1940s, only played during daylight hours, and it was difficult to hear Oxford’s WOXF because of evening interference with the signal.
In 1955, Howard Harrell owned a television and radio repair business in Oxford, and he was also the station engineer at WOXF. There, he met George Corkum. After graduating from college, Corkum worked in a brokerage house in Boston, but decided that field wasn’t for him. He was a singing bartender in Cape Cod when Pat Flannagan, manager at WOXF, stopped in, and they talked. Flannagan encouraged Corkum to come South. He knew he’d have an opening in a few months, he told the young man. “I’m a talker,” Corkum says now, “I love to reminisce and talk baseball and football.”
When his singing job ended after the summer, he found Flannagan’s card, hopped on a bus and went to work at WOXF. Harrell decided to pursue building a second station in the area, and the FCC agreed to a frequency in Henderson. He hired Corkum to be general manager, and the two together acted as contractors for the building’s construction.
Harrell and Corkum found old parts wherever they could, and the tower was brought in from an old hotel in Rochester, Minnesota. The two used an old plow to dig the furrows that held the copper wire that radiated out from the base of the tower to ground it.
After 50 years, the station is still housed in the same building, and the original tower still sends a signal across the area.
The days before the station went on the air were frantic, with Corkum and Harrell fine-tuning details. The night before the first day on the air, Corkum worked at the station all night, eventually falling asleep on the floor. Two nurses from Maria Parham Hospital saw the lights on in the building and went in to make sure everyone was all right, and they found Corkum sleeping on a pile of papers on the floor. “I heard them talking and I woke up,” Corkum says. Fortunately for him, he must not have made too bad an impression because one of the young women, Mary Jane Horton, later became his wife.
Gov. Luther Hodges prepared a message for the day WHVH went on the air, Corkum recalled. It had to be a generic speech or the station would have had to give every candidate for governor equal time. Dignitaries from throughout the area were on hand to celebrate the 250-watt station that had a permit to be on the air 24 hours a day.
Nelson Blackwell, who retired from Frigidaire 20 years ago, was incoming president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce when the station went on the air, and he attended the opening ceremony. “It was very interesting,” he said. WHVH was different because it was going to be on after dark. “It made a difference.”
They were on the air one day before they were shut down, Corkum said. “The FCC called and said, your tower is 15 feet too tall,” he said, adding that he replied, “Do I cut it off at the top or at the bottom?” The FCC gave the station a waiver but required that they install a double strobe light to alert aviation that the tower was higher than normal.
The station was knocked off the air in about 1956 when the tower was hit by lightning. The bolt came down the guy wire, knocked the recorder off the console and melted the equipment in the transmitter. “It looked like a Salvador Dali painting,” Corkum said.
It took three weeks to obtain the specially ground quartz crystals that the station needed to help it be on the correct frequency, Corkum said. They finally received the components, installed them and went back on the air. A few hours later, the FCC called and told them to shut down immediately, and they did. Apparently, one of the quartz wafers had cracked, resulting in the station transmitting on 2700 FM, which was the frequency used for air traffic control, and it was interfering with pilots hearing landing instructions. It took them another 10 days to get back on the air.
In its early days, the station stayed on the air from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Corkum still says those were some of his happiest years ever. He stayed three years, and the people there were like family. “We had a great group,” he said.
Corkum patterned the station’s format after that on WHNC. He hired Tommy Moore as an announcer to do the morning news and a “Farm and Home Show—as Hart Curl did on his show on WOXF in Oxford. Moore was a wonderful singer, who sounded just like country music singer Faron Young, and who, with his wife Mozelle, was a television personality already,” Corkum said.
In offering a job to Moore, Corkum said he walked up to him at a favorite local hang-out and said, “I’d like you to come and work for me.” He recalled that Moore replied, “You’re killing me, man.” Moore died in May 1987.
Bob John was an announcer. Harry Doggette was in sales and later moved on to a television station in Norfolk, Va.
Red Burton, an African American announcer, knew he wanted to be on radio, Corkum said. He started his own rhythm and blues show on WHVH. “He was a very driven guy,” Corkum recalled. “He wanted to get on the air. He thought he could bring us business. I gave him a shot, and he did.”
Jimmy Daniel, then in his mid-20’s, announced with his deep baritone voice. “I used to listen to his show just to see what he’d come up with,” Corkum said, recalling Daniel’s strong stage presence. “We were all young and ambitious and somewhat talented,” Corkum said. “We could do all the jobs. Everyone pitched in when someone got sick.”
New owners, new call letters, more power
A few years later, Lawrence Brandon, who owned WWCO in Waterbury, Connecticut, bought the station from Harrell for $30,500. He, in turn, sold the station in about 1959 to Oxford’s Stan Fox and his partners Irv Fox and Seymour Dworsky. Over the next few months, the station switched its call letters to WIZS and installed a 1,000-watt transmitter. At that time, all local channel stations in the United States were allowed to go to 1,000 watts daytime.
Fox, who just recently retired a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1952 and knew he wanted to do something besides run his family department stores. He’d heard from Flannagan that WHVH was for sale. Though he’d never been in a radio station before, he thought it sounded
interesting.
He and Brandon negotiated, and he was out of town when Brandon agreed to sell. The two men met at the train station in Hamlet to make it official. “When we went into it, it was when people thought radio was dead,” Fox said. “People thought TV was going to kill radio.”
Though he owned five radio stations, Fox never had a desire to be the voice on the air. “The most important thing I did was hire good managers,” Fox said. “I always knew I could hire a person with a better voice.”
Jim Hogsett, 61, was known as “Jimmy” when he was on the air as a young man in 1963 and 1964. When he was 9 years old, he had a 30-minute show on WHNC and was the youngest DJ in the United States, he said. Hogsett grew up loving radios and shared that fascination with Rose. “We built a homemade radio station. He had one in his house, I had one in my house,” Hogsett said.
“I look back now at how much I learned in that business,” he said. He credits the station with helping him hone his communication skills, and also with time management. “You know that commercial has got to go on the air at a certain time,” he said. He also learned to set priorities.
Hogsett worked at the station when it went from 250 to 1000 watts. To celebrate the event, the station dropped plastic ping pong balls with prizes inside them from an airplane. “It was a riot,” Fox laughed. “It did cause quite a stir.” The promotion got people’s attention in Henderson. “People lined up with laundry baskets,” Hogsett said.
Another popular promotion was the money tree, which was a Christmas tree covered in 500 $1 bills, and people filled out cards at stores throughout town to register for a chance to win the tree. “It was a good way to get advertisers,” he said.
The station’s format started with rock n’ roll, and Hogsett played lots of Elvis’ “Old Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel.”
In 1963, Hogsett heard the bell ring on the United Press International teletype machine and watched as the tape tapped out that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. He handed the bulletin to announcer John Price, who was ending his shift.
After Price left that day, Hogsett stayed near the machine, and a few hours later he announced that Kennedy had died. He was on the air the next Sunday when the bell rang again, and he announced Jack Ruby had shot Lee Harvey Oswald.
On occasion, he also learned personal news on the air. For example, his grandfather called to tell him on the air that he was going to have a baby sister: Kathy Perkinson.
Working together through such momentous times in the country¹s history and their own lives brought the employees close.
“It became more and more like a family,” Hogsett said. Burton and Henry Reaves would encourage Hogsett. Reaves’ shift followed Hogsett’s, and he’d often walk past and tell him, “I heard you talking,” and note that he’d done a good job. “It was fellows like them that were very inspirational to me,” Hogsett said.
Sammy Jackson was a movie star who grew up in Henderson and went to Hollywood, Hogsett said. Sammy had wanted to be on the radio, but there was no time during the day to get him on the air. The manager, Mike Hight, gave him a shift from midnight to 6 a.m. so that he could get experience. Warner Brothers called Jackson for a television show “No Time for Sergeants.” Jackson was a big hit for Henderson folks, and the town held a parade for him. Jackson, who died in April 1995, went on to become a very successful disc jockey on the West Coast.
Rose notes that WIZS has nearly always been a place where young people can gain experience in broadcasting.
Today’s “Choice Country Classics” host Martha, who is known just by her first name, has a granddaughter, Heather Grogan, who came to work at the station when she was 11 and learned how to run the “board.”
Rose’s son, John Charles Rose, was 13 when Rose purchased the station, and Rose recalls a time when he would let his son play music and make announcements on the air in the wee small hours of the morning.
Jones Angel, who came to WIZS as an intern doing high school and Recreation League baseball broadcasts, is now helping the Tar Heel Sports Network by assuming some of the duties of Mick Mixon, who recently left Tar Heel to join the Carolina Panthers’ broadcast network.
And Ben Hayes, who was in college when he came to WIZS, is now working in Bend, Ore., with KTVZ-TV as a sports anchor.
Adam Pohl was an intern at WIZS in recent years and announced high school football and basketball at the station. Pohl has since worked as an announcer for the Tar Heel Sports Network, covering baseball and women’s basketball. Currently, the former WIZS announcer is the director of broadcasting and media relations for the Salem Avalanche (a class-A affiliate of the Houston Astros) in Salem, Va.
On one of the station’s anniversaries, Hogsett decided to try to obtain a proclamation from Governor Terry Sanford about the station. Sanford’s office said he’d do it, so Hogsett went to Raleigh, taped the segment and was headed out the door when Sanford said, “What’s the hurry?” He encouraged Hogsett to stay the afternoon and talk and observe state business. Then Hogsett rushed back to the station to play the Governor’s words over the air.
“I’m nothing special,” Hogsett said. “The thing is, I found my calling, I found my mission.” Now he’s president and founder of Worker Ministries, which is dedicated to pursuing the Christian work ethic. In 2004, he published his book, “A Worker Need Not Be Ashamed.”
A baritone with heart
Though Jimmy Daniel had worked at the station as a young man, his career path took him to Greenville in the 1960s to work on Channel 9 television, to Ahoskie to work at a newspaper and to the Henderson Daily Dispatch in the 1970s.
Most everyone remembers Daniel’s deep baritone, his love for performing and his artistic talent. But Daniel also shared a love for people that led him to work with alcoholics at Vance County Mental Health. He felt called to help homeless people, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to bring them to his home, let them shower, feed them, give them new clothes and find a 12-step program for them.
“Mental Health thought he got too involved with the clients,” his eldest daughter Denise McDade said. “He was so personal with them.” He left the mental health department in 1973 and went back to the radio station, where he worked until 1987. Daniel died in August of that year. “There was always something going on,” McDade said.
His wife Carolyn woke up one morning to find a surprise in her bedroom. “Tiny Tim was singing “TipToe through the Tulips” at the foot of my bed,” Carolyn Daniel Spencer said, and Daniel stood laughing in the background.
Greg Thrift started working at WIZS in 1981, when Tommy Moore was manager and Daniel was assistant manager. “Jimmy Daniel was the greatest guy,” said Thrift, who now works as general manager for Lakes Media. “He had the biggest heart. He loved that station, and he loved Henderson.”
On Thrift’s first day at work at the station, where he’d been hired to do the morning news, he walked in, and disc jockey Keith Abbott asked him, “What are you doing here?” Thrift was a little surprised but told him he’d been hired to do the news, and Abbott replied, “No, really, what are you here for?”
The first week, he covered a tornado, an overturned tractor-trailer and a downtown fire. Thrift said that after he had worked only about two weeks, he was fired while he was on the air. He was playing a new country song that was on the playlist, and Moore called up and didn’t like the song. He fired him over the phone. “I had a brand new daughter and a brand new job,” Thrift said. “I called Jimmy Daniel and said, I think I just got fired.” Thrift asked Daniel if he should leave, and Daniel gave him some simple advice. “Jimmy said, No, if nobody shows up and your key still fits Monday, then keep working,” Thrift recalled with a laugh, admitting that he didn’t tell his wife about the incident at the time.
The station switched to country music in the early 1970s, and that was about the time that Tommy Moore covered the front of the block building on Radio Lane with decorative lattice. The station played country during the day and rhythm and blues at night with news every hour. Burton had the earlier shift in the evenings, and Freddy “The Preacher Man” Hargrove of Norlina followed Burton’s show.
“That’s where I got my broadcast career start,” said Mike Brooks, of Mike Brooks Television Productions and Entertainment.
In 1982, Brooks was a junior at J.F. Webb High School, and he and Gary Bowen and Thrift started deejaying at Henderson’s skating rink. Thrift introduced him to WIZS, and took him in the broadcast room. Brooks recalls that Thrift said, “Here’s the soundboard, this is the feeder for the record that’s playing, here’s the feeder for the record you’re going to play next.” And he walked out of the room.”
“That ended up changing my life,” said Brooks, who had been planning to go into forestry. “I was introduced to the broadcast world.” Daniel had a little office about half the size of a small bathroom with barely enough room for a table and a chair. Brooks said that when Jimmy spoke to him, “it was like the voice of God.”
“Kid, they say you’re pretty good,” Brooks remembered Daniel saying. “He hired me on the spot,” he said.
Covering news, Thrift met many good police officers and firefighters. Sylvia Edwards worked in the office at the time. “She was just a darlin’,” he said. “She’d try to keep us out of trouble. We had a wonderful, wonderful group of people.”
Both Brooks and Thrift still remember one of the station’s more infamous promotions: the Great Frisbee Fling. They convinced the fire department to put Santa Claus on the roof of Vance Furniture Company, the tallest building in town. There, Santa flung frisbees that had prizes taped inside the disks. Though most of the prizes were small, like a coupon for a sausage biscuit, some were more exciting, including a $500 prize. Santa tossed the frisbees, and they flew everywhere, Thrift said. Some went on roofs, others on awnings, and people were climbing drainpipes to retrieve them.
Brooks remembers that he was working the board at the station, and he told Thrift, who was live at the scene, “I’ll send it back to you.” Unfortunately, Thrift didn’t hear the cue, and proceeded to shout, “The kids are climbing the awning…. Hey, get down from there!” with a few more words that can’t be repeated here.
Rose was news editor at the Henderson Daily Dispatch then, and the two media outlets enjoyed competing with each other. The next day, the paper blasted the station with the story, “Radio Station Causes Havoc.”
Even though there was expected competition between the newspaper and station, there was also mutual respect. “I’ve known John Rose for years,” Thrift said. “John was working at the newspaper. He said, “One day I’m going to own a radio station.” Rose bought the station from Fox in 1989. “I have nothing but admiration for that man,” Brooks said of Rose. “He never once tried to hold me back.”
When Brooks had the opportunity to go into the television production business, Rose told him, “Mike, I’m never going to hold anyone back who can take a step to better themselves.”
Brooks believes that Rose’s son, John Charles, must’ve been about six when he first started repairing equipment at the station. John Charles would come in with bubble gum and duct tape and fix the transmitter,” Brooks said. “He could fix anything.”
When Randy Travis sang “On the Other Hand,” Brooks believes that changed the direction of country music, which led to its widespread popularity today, a format that WIZS has consistently stayed with over the years.
Still the same
In 1996, WIZS started 24-hour programming, but in many ways the station has stayed pretty much the way it’s always been. You can still hear Town Talk and Tradio on WIZS, it still sits in the same concrete block building it began in with the same tower that Harrell and Hogsett brought down from Minnesota. Acoustic tiles line the ceiling. A hodgepodge of ancient and
state-of-the-art equipment clutters the announcer’s booth. The first transmitter sits next to the third, a 1,000 watt compact version.
Dickie Baker, a sales representative since 1989, sits drinking coffee on a chair near the front door. You can see announcer Sherman Wilson through the two original double-pane windows, which were installed during construction to allow an announcer to see the door while he’s on the air.
The station’s continuity may be its biggest gift to the community over the years.
Blackwell, who attended opening ceremonies, likes Town Talk and Martha’s “Choice Country Classics,” where Martha plays the old songs. She’s been there about nine years, Rose said, and handles Tradio and acts as overall program director.
“I think they really have the heart of the town in mind and try to render a good service,” Blackwell said. “They always seemed to have a good feel for the town. I don’t agree with all the things they say,” he added, but he said he still listens.
It would have been nearly impossible for Rose’s son, John Charles, to have escaped having broadcasting in his blood. He is chief engineer for the sports network at Duke University, and at WIZS he hosts Town Talk, broadcasts Henderson-Vance Recreation League sports live from Aycock Recreation Complex and football games from the high schools and he sells advertising along with other staff.
Former Mayor R.G. “Chick” Young Jr. has lived in Henderson for all but eight years of his life. He played fullback when he was in high school, and he still enjoys listening to the Friday night games. “I think we would have suffered a void in our upbringing if there had not been a station like it,” Young said.
T.W. Ellis Jr. attended the opening ceremonies, too, as a representative of the Lions Club. “It’s a community station,” said Ellis, who serves on the Vance-Granville Community College Board of Trustees now. “The station keeps people up to date with what’s going on.”
Wilson, who owns a DJ company called “Have Music, Will Travel,” has been at WIZS since 2002. He had worked at the Department of Juvenile Justice and remembers that at 5 p.m. his coworkers rushed out the doors to find out what was happening in town by listening to the news on the station. “It’s a synopsis of everything that’s going on in Henderson,” Wilson said. “If you want to know what’s going on in Henderson, that’s what you need to do is listen.”
Wilson turns back to his microphone, which sits between a two-speed turntable and a computer. Behind him, walls are lined with 45s, 78s, CDs and tapes of commercials. A sign on the wall reminds him: “Radio is supposed to be fun and entertaining, are you being fun and entertaining?”
Both Thrift and Brooks talk about their time at the station as if it happened yesterday. “Some of the best time on the air was on that radio station,” Thrift said. “That station has served the community well for so many years.”
Brooks admits he still feels a little surprised that the station led him to a field of work that brings him so much joy. “You go in, you do your job and then say, they want to pay me for this?” Brooks said. “I’ve been blessed.”
In 2002, George Rush came to WIZS as director of operations, sales and marketing. The strength of this radio station is like that of other small local stations, he explains. “You are a part of the community, you are the community’s voice,” Rush said.
It’s a delicate balance, he said. The station serves as not only the voice and conscience of the community, but also must be a good business partner to the local businesses who support the station.
Another of the station’s strengths is its commitment to public service announcements, he said, and WIZS runs eight to 10 a day, from fundraisers for non-profits to bake sales at local churches.
The new Carolina Panthers’ announcer, Mick Mixon, a former co-worker with John Charles Rose, recently observed, “Let me say how lucky the people of Henderson are to have a radio station like WIZS…. Good solid community radio is a dying breed. People just don’t want to work as hard as John, his family and his workers are willing to do.”
When Mixon speaks of a family at work, he’s truly speaking of WIZS. Besides Rose and his son, John Charles, John’s wife Susan, a teacher in Granville County, can also be seen actively involved in radio station activities. The station is owned by Rose, his brother, David M. Rose, and his sister, Cindy C. Rose. John Rose is the managing partner.
John Rose got his start at WIZS in 1959 reading news for no pay on Hogsett’s show, he said. In the mid-1960s, he did the Sunday morning sign-on at 6 a.m. He was back at the station again from fall 1972 through fall 1975 as news director. He returned to the station in late 1976 to serve as assistant manager as well as news director, leaving in December 1979 to go to The Dispatch. He returned to WIZS as the owner in 1989, but still maintains his news director responsibilities.
Each morning to this day, Rose wakes up at 6:30 a.m. and heads to the Vance County Sheriff’s Department to find out what’s happened overnight, then he reports the news at 8 a.m. After that, he goes to the Henderson Police Department at 10 a.m. to check the incidents, then he reports the news again at 12:37 p.m. and 5 p.m.
What’s Rose’s vision for the future? He says he can’t say they’re going to expand, or even that they will do anything different at all. “I don’t want to make it sound like we have no plans,” Rose said. “We want to be a good local channel AM radio station that is in Henderson, by Henderson and for Henderson. That’s what it’s always been.”
He starts to hang up the telephone to get back to work at the station, and adds, “My Mama always said, tomorrow’s another day.”