The Night John Lennon Died — my recollections
In May 1980 I graduated from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove PA. A few months later I turned 22 and landed my first full-time job as a radio station DJ ("disc jockey"), writing and voicing radio commercials, and delivering weather, news, and farm reports. I worked for a very small country music radio station in Mifflinburg PA called WWMC-FM.
I worked six nights a week, the overnight shift (from 11:30 PM to 7:30 AM) for $140 a week and no benefits. That doesn't sound like a lot of money. Believe me, it wasn't. Not even in 1980. But it was a start.
Late in the evening of December 8, 1980, I'm driving to work in my red Mercury Comet (about a 30 minute commute from Selinsgrove to Mifflinburg) listening to AM radio station WQKX out of Sunbury PA. They were playing the new song "Just Like Starting Over" by John Lennon. It was a Monday night. I remember thinking how perfectly the title fit — he'd been quiet for years and had finally come back with new music and a new album.
The radio station where I worked was on the 3rd floor of the "borough building" in downtown Mifflinburg. It occupied two rooms, a closet, and a toilet. When I walked up the steps and into the tiny "office," at about 11:30 PM, a co-worker on the previous shift asked, "Have you heard the news?"
In those days, the AP (Associated Press) delivered news to radio stations via a "teletype" machine — aka the "ticker" — in ALL CAPS, on rolls of cheap paper. The machine was constantly clacking with news stories from the AP. Part of my job was to edit and read the news live, on-air.
At 11:24 PM a bulletin arrived saying "THERE'S A REPORT THAT JOHN LENNON HAS BEEN SHOT..." I saved it...
19 minutes later, at 11:43 PM, a 4-word bulletin arrived that stopped everything: "JOHN LENNON SHOT DEAD."
My coworker and I looked at each other, stunned. Then he went home, as his shift had just ended. And I had the sad task of speaking those unbelievable words into the microphone.
In those days, Larry King had a daily 5-hour overnight radio broadcast, beginning at midnight. Our station carried his show. It was on the Mutual Broadcasting System, an American commercial radio network that operated from 1934 to 1999.
Alone that night, while doing my job — writing commercial ads, and giving the weather/news/farm reports every 30 minutes — I listened to dozens of stunned fans calling the Larry King Show... all in shock, expressing both their sorrow at the tragic news and their love for John Lennon and his artistry. Everybody was struggling to process what had happened, including me, as more details trickled in overnight.
For this Beatles fan and musician, it was a very long, cold, lonely December night. And for my generation, that was a "day the music died."
I got married the very next day — an anniversary I never forget, because I never forgot the night the music died.
1974 Mercury Comet.
Just an AM radio and no power steering.
TeleType machine. Big & noisy.
I saved the first 50 AP bulletins that night.
On his overnight show Larry King would take calls from all over the USA. And begin every call with "Hello, Minneapolis..."