Honestly, I never considered myself a radio host. It came to me accidentally after an encounter with Doc the Salty Sea Dawg, who hosted “Veterans Hour” (Mondays noon to 1 p.m.) before my tenure. It seemed like a relatively short period of time before he passed the show on to me; I became the show’s full-time host, and Diesel Dee was born.
One of the most gratifying parts of working as a radio show host is the opportunity to meet so many people in the community who have absolutely nothing to do with veterans but are so interested in learning more about veteran issues and topics concerning military families. The number of people in the community who wanted to reach out and help amazed me, and the numbers continue to increase.
A challenge that I was not expecting with the radio now seems so very obvious to me: the radio never stops. There’s always a story to chase. There’s always information to gather and content to explore, people to reach out to and people to get back in touch with, deadlines to meet and programming to schedule. It never slows down.
When everyone else is watching stories and events from far away places, oftentimes we overlook the news right before us. The events that impact our community directly can be lost in the never-ending sea of news. The importance of community broadcasting never seemed more obvious than during the Covid pandemic and then again in the snowstorm of 2021. As the larger metropolitan areas were able to meet the needs of the city, smaller areas in the hill country, like Driftwood, Martindale and Wimberley were left struggling to find the resources they needed to recover from both events.
Those were the moments when I realized what I was doing at the station was important. As a native of San Marcos, it will always be a priority for me to keep my community together, healthy and happy. The station continues to be a pivotal part of that priority, reflecting the colorful tapestry of our beautiful and diverse community.
As a self supporting nonprofit organization, we are continuously looking for talent interested in creating content, mastering production, driving revenue, underwriting, copy editing and more. If anyone in the community is interested in participating, the station’s doors are always open. Feedback and show ideas are always welcome. I would hope to see y’all at the station.
