Dave Montgomery recently stated to me that Tom Rusk "cast the life preserver" when things ran amock at the transmitter site and was Felix McDonald's long-time assistant. as per dave's words:
"Tom Rusk was for a long time Felix's assistant at the transmitter, and he frequently cast the life preserver when one of the wheels ran off the road. Tom deserves high recognition for his work in maintaining the transmitter alongside Felix."
We've made reference to Tom Rusk a time or two on the blog and I never realized his importance to the engineering team at KAAY! I have to apologize, folks, sometimes you have to hit me with a hammer to get my circuits aligned, I don't make the connection at times....
Does anyone know where Tom Rusk is nowadays? The last I'd heard, he owned a station or two? Please help, as I'd like to get in touch with him and, hopefully, get some of his comments here.
Thank you! And thanks to Dave M.!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
As recently as 2007, Tom was Chief Engineer at Clear Channel in Little Rock. May still be. Wow, I made it three whole sentences without a reference to the Evil Empire.
ReplyDeletedbt
In the mid-1980s, Tom and Mary bought KITA-1440 (the historic KOKY, now KTUV). It was a daytimer and Tom added a second tower for night operation. The Rusks sold KITA several years ago.
ReplyDeleteTom (as Tom Roberts) took over Beaker Street when Clyde Clifford left for KLAZ.
Tom was Chief Operator at KAAY during my tenure and was servicing half of the radio stations in Little Rock. He was a pleasure to work with and an utterly reliable engineer.
Tom also serves as our engineer these days at KUAR and KLRE in Little Rock. In fact, when someone set fire to the KUAR transmitter in April, it was Tom who discovered the fire when he went to the tower to find out why we went off the air. I did a segment on the air with Tom as the ATF was investigating at the tower. You can hear that on this MP3, with Tom's interview beginning at 2:46.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hibblenradio.com/2011-04-04-KUAR-Fire.mp3
He is always a very busy guy!