Every now and then, I think about the way that I am.
They say that children are a reflection of their parents. And I feel like I had a good place to start.
My mother, Barbara, has many admirable qualities.
I never thought my career would center around editorial work. But any writing skill I might have comes courtesy of mom.
She has five Storyworth books to her credit — one over 430 pages long — detailing her life experiences.
Mom also has taught Sunday school classes for 40 years, and she is still great at it, and that’s probably trickled down to me, as an adjunct instructor, too.
But I also think both my mom and dad, Robert, allowed me to pursue a passion, and also wait patiently — perhaps too much so — until I figured it out.
My mom spent nearly two decades as a tour docent — first as a volunteer, then employed within the Office of Legislative Services — as a guide for the New Jersey State Capitol building in Trenton.
But she loves the Garden State, and to end up guiding groups of visitors and school children on a daily basis was almost poetic for her.
For me, radio has been a constant. And for that, I can credit mom, too.
Jersey radio
Whether we were accompanying my father on a business trip or just taking a vacation as a family together, the radio was our car’s soundtrack.
I remember several times trying to locate a station playing our desired contemporary jazz music in an unfamiliar market. It was very much the inspiration for the project I was able to create late in life — the RadioLand app.
Now my dad was solely responsible for putting radios in my hands at an early age.
He had a collection of portable shortwave receivers, the Sony ICF-SW77 among them, that he let me use, perhaps against his better judgement. Numerous telescoping antennas met their demise in my hands.
Eventually, I found the FM aspect of those receivers more fascinating.
But mom, meanwhile, remembered many nights growing up in Roselle, N.J., using a transistor radio she received around age 12, in the early 1960s.
She later upgraded to a larger radio for her eighth-grade graduation, purchased with her mother’s S&H Green Stamps.
While mom spent most of her time listening to New York’s WABC and WMCA, she vividly recalled nights listening to WBZ in Boston, WWVA in Wheeling, WJR in Detroit and even WLS in Chicago.
She would stay up late, particularly in the summertime, when she did not have to worry about getting up early for school the next morning. I know that feeling well.
“It became so frequent, that I became an avid listener of their respective disc jockeys almost as much as I was of ‘Murray the K’ or ‘Cousin Brucie!’” mom remembered.
But her signal hunting slowed down once an important event took precedence: “Once the Beatles captured the airwaves,” mom told me.
She was the consummate Beatles’ superfan. Mom was one of the lucky fans at the Beatles’ 1965 Shea Stadium performance, an honor that led WCBS(TV) to interview her at our home in South Jersey last summer. As a result, her infatuation with “Musicradio 77” reached its height.
“WABC had a tremendous signal that always sounded so strong and clear,” mom recalled. “When their disc jockeys spoke, and you heard the music they were playing, it almost sounded like it was coming from the house next door!
“It was a great time for wonderful music, for the invention of the radio, and for the disc jockeys who entertained us while spinning those records,” she said.
Jazzing it up
Mom’s musical tastes changed as she got older. She was a big fan of the easy listening format WPAT used to play in the New York market and with its instrumental similarities to today’s smooth jazz, somewhere along the line — maybe it was WPIX(FM)’s “Pix Penthouse Party,” she started enjoying music from David Sanborn, Earl Klugh, George Benson and company, before my parents moved to the Cleveland area in 1984.
I was born just in time for the contemporary jazz format to start to gain popularity on the radio.
Growing up in northeastern Ohio, I remember so many times in my childhood, the early-to-mid 1990s, listening to WNWV(FM), then “The Wave,” playing smooth jazz.
It was perfect soundtrack for my parents back then, because my dad was big into the new age music phase at that time — Yanni, David Lanz, Suzanne Ciani and George Winston, among others, and up until about 1994, new age was a huge part of smooth jazz radio.
Early on, I think I just listened to “The Wave” to please them, then at some point, I started liking it genuinely, and do more so than ever these days.
Quick response
I can also directly attribute my affinity for police scanning to my mom.
She bought me a 16-channel Bearcat scanner from the Fingerhut catalog in 1993. I upgraded a bunch of times after that, and I can say that ever since my family moved from Ohio to New Jersey in 1996, I have had the Burlington County fire dispatch channel playing.
Mom’s high school friend, Gail Brummer, was an avid police scanning enthusiast.
Gail would set up a large, “clumsy” scanner with crystals for various departments and occasionally she and my mom would arrive at the calls before the patrol officers in Roselle, Roselle Park and other Union County municipalities did.
I think Gail had an ulterior motive.
“Did I mention that she loved the police!” my mom exclaimed.
Lucky together
Times of course, have changed.
My collection of portable radios has given way to sophisticated software-defined radios.
Those family trips faded as we got older, and we lost my dad in 2024.
But I still travel with my mom, who is 74 now, and I cherish every time I am able to do so.
Instead of smooth jazz on the FM dial — which unfortunately is hard to find these days — we listen to SiriusXM Watercolors, hearing many of the same songs we heard riding around Ohio 30 years ago.
I will never achieve perfection, but I am so grateful to have my mom as a model — the most kind, loving and supportive mother anyone could have.
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