Big Daddy Bob Barnett ... and Radio/TV Memories

There was a time when folks identified the North Coast with the people on KRED, KATA, KINS...or way back when...KDAN.

Few likely remember them, but my top five, all-time favorite North Coast radio personalities are...with some honorable mentions:

1. Big Daddy Bob Barnett...he was KRED AM and was the king of county Top 40 radio in the 1960s. Lots of contests. Lots of prizes. He had an out-sized personality and seemed, to me, to be way bigger than the market he served.

2. Dean Elliott...he was a senior statesman at KINS when I began following the San Francisco Giants, literally, on a tiny transistor radio. It seemed like he was on the air leading up to every single Giants' broadcast...and every broadcast seemed to be preceded by a Ducks Market jingle, "Ducks Market is open today! YES! Ducks is open tooooday!" Then, Elliott would intro the Giants lockerroom show. There was indeed a time when there was no way to get the score of a Giants game if it went final after the 6 o' clock news and before the morning paper came out. My mom made Dean Elliott's existence much more uncomfortable on the night in 1965 when I griped about not knowing if the Giants beat the Reds in Cincinnati and she said, "Why don't you call KINS and ask them who won?" So...I called...Elliott answered the phone and gave me the score. I called a lot ... like every night that my Midget League baseball game started at the same time the Giants game started in the midwest or back east. The last time I called Elliott, the sound in his voice made it really clear that he had been particularly pleased to hear the phone ring and ring and ring and ring until he put on song and could answer. He still gave the final score, though.

3. Tom Kenlon...TK! He was KATA when I was listening to Top 40 all the time and cheering the fact that the hidious country format on K-A-T-A (which was then pronounced like "Arcata," sans the "Ar"...sounded hillbilly, just like the music) had disappeared. Kenlon had a rich voice...pretty good sense of humor and sounded more like a Top 40 DJ than any Top 40 DJ of the time. Then, I met him when I did a daily sports report on KINS in the 1980s and, while he was a really nice guy, he didn't look like he sounded. By then, I guess, none of them look like they sound.

4. Bob Turner/Gary Meade...They both were radio and TV personalities of note in the 1960s and, in Turner's case, into the early 1970s. Turner did a lot of everything and, again, I thought he was better than being stuck in Eureka. Meade hit his zenith when he did the weather on KIEM, when it was still telecast in black and white. That was a big move for a radio DJ. They had the area temperatures written on a white board in grease pen...and Meade played it straight as an arrow, in his dark suit and thin dark tie.

5. Bob Wells...He was at KINS when I was doing that 5-minute daily sportscast. Great voice. Funny guy with a dry sense of humor that got lost as KINS slid further from music and more toward...yuk...talk radio. He had intelligence that, once I got past living and dying to hear Casey Kasem's American Top 40 on Saturday evenings, I appreciated. When I think of radio...I think of Bob Wells because, as mentioned, it's never what we imagine it to be. I was driving around one night, listening to Wells and the music. I had to stop at KINS for some work related thing. I pulled in and I could hear Wells talking and laughing and joking...and I could see him in the DJ booth through the glass on the front door of the KINS offices,er, the KINS broadcast center. Wells was in the building alone. There wasn't a car in the parking lot. He was just standing out there at the foot of the marsh...in the dead of night...sounding like he was at a cocktail party we all wished we could've crashed. That, my friends, is talent.

6. Brad Stanhope/Paul Bressoud...Brad and Paul did Humboldt Crabs baseball games on the radio while they attended HSU and did their best to ruin the reputation of K-HSU and the Humboldt Crabs. I wouldn't necessarily tell either of them this if I saw them...but, they were the only even adequate baseball announcers the Crabs have ever allowed to drive Don Terbush nuts calling games from the Arcata Ball Park. Now, I know that old Hoke Holcumb (Huck Hokum?) guy referred to former St. Bernard High pitchers David Sharp and Tyren Sillanpaa as "diaper dandies" and "fabulous freshmen" and all sorts of silly things when they first spent time with the Crabs...and no dad can knock anybody who'd give his son and his wish-he-was-my-son nicknames...but, Stanhope and Bressoud were better than Hoke or Hulk or whatever his name is. (And, I wish I knew his name because I'd use it correctly here.) And, Brad and Bressoud were just kids...or, as Hoke might say, "members of the kiddie corps." With the exception of the time something came unplugged and they did most of a game into dead microphones...and drove Don Terbush batty in the process...they were good.

7. Norm Souter...He did a little bit of everything for KRED and other stations in the early 1970s. At one point, he did play-by-play for high school basketball games. I really wanted to be a radio guy...or a TV guy...and play-by-play was my goal...then, I walked into the St. Bernard High gymnasium one night and saw Souter huddled on the end of the top row, headphones on, microphone in hand, scorebook perched in his lap...people bumping into him...calling a game as though he were at the NBA Finals. More power to Souter, but I immediately realized I didn't have the stomach for the climb up the play-by-play ladder.

8. Bill Terry...I know the guys who do prep sports back home now are famous, but Terry started the real committment to broadcasting local sports events out of the station in Fortuna. While I loved that a former Fortuna police chief would turn to doing high school and sometimes Little League games on radio, I also liked that Terry took the game seriously but didn't take himself seriously. There are some wildly popular guys doing broadcasts in the Napa area who are so wrapped up in being them that there's really no point in listening to the games on radio. The score, the details...are secondary to their personalities. But...Terry...ah...every game was the most important thing. I have cassette tape recordings of him doing the Little League Tournament of Champions ... with the team I coached, that included my then 10-year-old son Trent and his buddies, playing. Terry clearly couldn't memorize 18 Little Leaguers' names in a matter of minutes...but, he did a masterful job calling the game using their numbers and referring to them by their position. (Plus...we can hear a very, very young Ben Larson -- who went onto sports stardom at Eureka Hig -- shriek when we scored a run. He sounded like Casper the Friendly ghost.)

9. Dee Shanahan...She was on radio and, I'd bet, did TV later. She was the first woman I heard or saw on the air. Carol Olson followed her and built a respected career on the North Coast.

10. Don Michaels...He was county recorder to everybody else, but he was the Walter Cronkie of North Coast TV news to me when I was growing up. He certainly merits a special mention as the best newscaster, all-time.

At some point, Rollin Trehearne (who debuted as Rollin "The Rat" Trehearne with Dana Hall, er, Arcata Slim on KATA in the 1980s) will crack this list. Ah, Trehearne and Hall are on the list already...take away the numbers...they can't be in order. I remember when I enlisted "Slim" and "The Rat" to work the March of Dimes Walk-a-Thon in about 1979...and realized that "Slim" wasn't slim at all and that, I suppose, "The Rat" was a pretty good nickname for a very, very young Trehearne.