Jones was great. Everything was contained in one building. All you had to do was roll out of bed, head down the hallway and pile into the elevator for the 2nd floor to class. If you were late, it was because too many students hit the elevators at the same time. Nobody did stairs. 

Now in Broadcasting 101 Class, Professor Kent Murray beat my New Jersey accent out of me and taught me how to announce in a Midwest tone, the preferred sound of the era. My take on that lesson was...accent? What accent? What are you tuoking abowt? He had me practice announcing while clenching a pencil with my teeth. The idea was to strengthen my mouth muscles while sounding understandable. It's not noose, it's neeeews. Kent had perfectly chiseled features including light brown, Aquanet TV hair and he exuded the confidence of a national news anchor. Mild mannored Professor Pete Trenkler showed me how to edit recording tape with a razor blade and the art of cueing a 45 rpm record on a big Garrard platter. Pete's easy going style was legendary at Jones and years of students learned volumes from a humble guy who always had time to listen and encourage everyone.

We studied about Lee DeForest, the father of the vacuum tube and Edward Armstrong, the inventor of FM. The beginning of KDKA, the first licensed station in America was included in the history lesson. My very first song on the air at WJCR, the low power AM campus radio station was Foreigner’s “Feels Like The First Time.” All the pieces fit. That summer I learned lots of things quickly, like the breaking news of Elvis Presley’s death after being handed Urgent AP News wire copy by one of the news guys while doing my afternoon show on JCR. Reading the news, I felt like a real broadcaster with something important to say.

I also learned to break concrete with a sledgehammer on a construction site in 97 degree heat as a part time summer job since my 600 bucks was spent. I made my share of 20 year old mistakes that first year, but the rewards were much greater and the dream a little closer.

1978 developed into another big spring. Next up on the Jones curriculum, was the campus FM station, WFAM, which had become renowned for its Jazz music programming. As part of the total broadcasting learning experience, I was now a news anchor doing twice hourly newscasts in the afternoon at Woofam, as we called it. I even covered a murderous shooting in the field, reporting at my own apartment complex where I had just moved. I remember asking a police officer if the man lying on the ground was dead. His response was "does he look like he's moving?" The sight of a dead guy laying in a pool of blood on the ground in a Florida afternoon summertime downpour was quite sobering to me. That's news. That's what they told me. Just report it. Accurately.

One afternoon, on a busy day as I found myself in a sea of news copy, getting ready for another newscast when there was a call for me. It was Butch Peiker (pro: piker) Program Director and Morning DJ at Rock 95 WJAX on the phone wanting to know if I wanted to come down and talk to him about a DJ job he was offering on one of the top Rock stations in town. I was stunned. I stammered through the rest of the phone call and accepted his invitation to meet him the next day.