Our pictures in the paper…
Another pleasant surprise today…
Two weeks ago, a reporter for the Fresno Bee newspaper(and a good friend of mine), Ron Orozco, visited the KMJ studios as we recorded our gospel music show…he was there to do an article on the show’s main host, Earline Starnes, the daughter of the program’s originator(and former Blackwood Brothers bass singer), Don Smith.
Earline deserves an article…for she has carried on her father’s vision of keeping gospel music at the forefront of life here in Central California…and everywhere else our 50K AM signal reaches. She is also bringing in gospel singers from far and wide(of course, when you’re in California talking about gospel singers, there’s nothing BUT far and wide!)just as her father did for so many years. She has faithfully carried out his original radio vision for our show, which HAS to be the longest contiunously running gospel music radio program in America(In one form or another, Don Smith has had a gospel music program on KMJ for the past 59 years!). And that article(complete with our pictures as we were doing the program…yikes!)appeared in the Bee today.
And Ron was the perfect person in town to write the article. For many years, Ron was a sportswriter for the Bee, and then in 2001, finally got the green light to start a new section in the paper on Saturdays…a religious oriented section entitled Faith and Values. Ron is a very strong Christian and a member of my church who grew weary of watching the religion section die on the vine under its’ predecessor, a man of no faith that didn’t really understand the subject matter to do a credible job.
But Ron does, and for some time he has wanted to do an article on our show, being that it has been an area tradition for over a half century. And Don is still remembered very fondly by our audience, even though he passed away in 2004 at the age of 89 due to complication from Alzheimer’s disease. Earline has been involved with the show since 1986, when Don’s second wife Peggy(who did the show with him at that time), who was her mother, was killed in an auto accident that year. Her father raised her well, and she stepped in and began to take care of more and more of her father’s business. My own involvement in the show dates back to 1987, when the opportunity arose to help out on the show. This I was egaer to do, because I had grown up listening to Don’s show as a boy in Kerman, and it was there that the first seeds of my lifelong love affair with gospel music began.
Unlike many of my acquaintances, I didn’t choose to bring it up on gospel music message boards to simply revel in the attention of some publicity, and get “congaratulated” for appearing in one of Central California’s leading newspapers. We did nothing to be congratulated for…we’re just there, doing our jobs every week, and thanking God for blessing the show as He has. One reason that it remains on KMJ(a heritage news/talk powerhouse that airs no other music programs)is because after 59 years, it still has among the most loyal and large audience of any program we air…and we carry shows such as Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s during the week.
No, we need no congratulations…I’m talking about the article here to make sure Earline’s contributions get an online mention…for they truly deserve them. And I also want to take the time to thank and give credit to Ron Orozco for a job well done, and for deciding to use his part of the paper to recognize our humble work. Ron truly captured the essence of Earline and our program.
So thank you, Ron…and good job, Earline…I can envision her father smiling broadly from heaven because of the article.
Posted on Jul 08, 2006 - 09:07 PM | [0]
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