Jim Thompson

 

(John Iannuzzi photo)

WGCH's signal is a little weaker tonight.

Jim Thompson has died.

Oh, there will be an obituary and others who can speak more eloquently about him.

I just have memories.

I came to WGCH with the help of friends in 1997. Jim was among those I met in my first few visits to 1490 Dayton Ave.

Only Jim Thompson, in 1997, could show up to host a show called "Mario Lanza and Friends." Yes, only Jim.

He loved Lanza.

He loved news.

He loved radio.

He loved community radio.

He loved WGCH.

He told me stories of Bob Steele and WTIC "back in the day."

Jim Thompson, Dima Joseph, John Iannuzzi (John Iannuzzi photo)

I was with him on Sept 11, 2001, bursting through the door to tell him and Dima Joseph things I was hearing on other radio stations. They appreciated the effort but they already knew what I was telling them.

They were news people. They upheld the standard that they set on that horrible morning and calmly guided WGCH through those early hours until we switched to network coverage at 10 a.m. 

Jim was WGCH royalty. Hell, he was Greenwich royalty. And, somehow, he liked me. Or tolerated me.

Oh, I could drive him nuts. I'd hear about not leaving the chairs in a certain way or, worse, the board and studio the way he wanted to find it after doing a sports show the night before. He'd tell me I was a "pain in the ass" but he'd also laugh boisterously. Love/hate? Nah. Tough love.

But, you know what? He also trusted me. He trusted me, and encouraged me, to be a reporter on election night. Here I am, nearly 25 years later, still doing that.

He asked me to be his backup on the NewsCenter. Understand that it was a big deal and I was, of course, nervous. Maybe I was only doing it for days when the audience might not be that big but you just never knew. 

And when he found out I was going to be a father, that had to be worked into the radio station. So it was that I appeared on the air from Sean's hospital room 48 hours after he was born. 

He cared about the station and about radio. It needed to sound right. It needed to sound tight. If you know radio, you know what I mean. No dead air. No repeating spots. Tight stop sets of commercials and other items.

Always be professional.

Sure, we could laugh and have fun on the air, and I certainly did, but a level of decorum must be maintained.

To me, Jim was a link to the past. Sometimes that meant adhering to the mores of another time. But it also meant a standard that I appreciated.

He could be tough. You knew how highly he (and his beloved Dima, for that matter) stood in the station hierarchy. 

Eventually, ownership and times changed. Jim departed around 2005 and was replaced by Tony Savino, who has become a close friend. Dima left a few years later.

We moved on.

Yet I always felt like part of Jim was missing without WGCH and the news and a Mario Lanza show.

I did a poor job of staying in touch with him after he left.

But I'll never forget learning from him. Anyone who worked at WGCH during his time there did. Me, John Iannuzzi, Sean Kilkelly, and so many others.

And, now, I sit here, having learned of his passing at the beginning of "Doubleheader" today. The only thing I could think of was abandoning the show and just talking. Just do radio. So there was very little sports talk. I talked about Jim. I played the sound of the time he called in to report on the departure of the Greenwich police chief. As he waited, there was dead air between the end of a commercial and the sounder for breaking news.

Jim, ever the stickler, muttered, "Oh, come on!" Only problem? His phone line was live. All of us found it hysterical, in part because that was Jim. I included that audio in today's "Doubleheader" which became a tribute to Jim.

So dedicated to the craft.

Such a radio voice.

Such a radio man.

Heaven's radio station, WHVN, has a new anchor tonight.