Posted by Steve Green on October 05, 2009 at 02:17:50:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jim Nettleton has passed posted by Marc B on October 04, 2009 at 17:33:47:
It was around 1990 when I figured I knew enough to build my own house and was looking for a suitable Gulf lot in Florida (where all of us wind up anyway :-). It would have been nice to have a job in the meantime, preferably in radio, back when radio was still an actual means by which to make a living.
Living in Philadelphia at the time, and gradually being phased out of Philly radio because I wasn't never of the good-old-boys Philly clique, the only live 'lead' I had in Florida was WDAE Tampa. They were on their traditional 1250 then, a sort of hybrid MoR/Standards much like Philly's WPEN, with a little WHLI and late-Sixties WGBB thrown in. And WDAE was a station I'd always loved, anyway.
I was all but hired and given an air shift, when Jim Nettleton stepped in to call me and said 'Not so fast .... We're likely to be changing format soon'.
Seems he was OM of the place, and had to've known that his own days there would be coming to a close.
Wow. He didn't have to make that gesture at all ; that warning flare. But he did. Very classy ; very professional ; very *good* manager-ish.
So I stayed here and made my home Pennsylvania instead, and built my house here on a cabbie's salary instead of a radio salary. I stuccoed the front to make it look like the Florida.
I will always remember that phone call. Jim Nettleton called my FOLKS home, not mine, and gave a callback number. So we talked, and I didn't move to Florida.
Yet.
We'll be visiting my Folks in Florida in a week or two, and will bring up that story again, about that 'Jim Nettleton guy' who phoned them back around 1990. Almost twenty years ago.
God Bless, Diamond Jim. Check in every now and then via a student or intern and let a few of us know a bit more about availabilities in the Afterlife ..... : -)