That new restaurant you’ve been reading about on social media…the streaming series finale that you’ve followed faithfully for three seasons…the new album from that band you loved back in the day. How often does reality meet our expectations? Maybe half of the time, if you’re lucky. This week I traveled 2,700 miles (one way) to attend the 75th reunion of my college radio station. I’ve never attended a high school reunion, nor have I wanted to. A few of us did get together pretty casually 5 or 6 years ago in Washington, D.C., but this reunion was BIG. It was in the works for nearly a year. It was aimed at a wide audience, hyped and promoted. It seemed that a fair amount of folks were coming and that a large percentage were from “my” period at the station: the early-mid ’80s. I had high expectations… and they were exceeded.

WUVT is the student radio station at Virginia Tech. It’s more powerful than most student stations. It’s more autonomous than a lot of student radio stations. I’d like to think it’s more respected than a lot of student stations. It’s still actually transmitting wattage out of a transmitter and into an antenna, unlike a lot of student stations who’ve just decided to save on the power bill and go 100% streaming.

I joined up shortly after I arrived on campus in the fall of 1981. I started in news because the news department had the shortest line when I attended the organizational meeting. I began doing Virginia Tech baseball play by play because I loved it and one of the guys who was doing the announcing didn’t want anything to do with the actual setting up and tearing down of the equipment or the study and planning that went into a broadcast. I became the Chief Engineer in my second year because all the previous engineers moved on and I was an engineering student and because no one else wanted the job. That’s me in 1983.

Our reunion was so well attended. There were dozens of friends I had not seen for 35-40 years. I met some people who came along just before or just after I did and they were able to add a lot of context to those adjacent years. I’m amazed (yet not surprised) at the holes that have developed in my memory over the years, so for me the best thing of all was having folks fill me in on key events that I wasn’t remembering completely . For example, I was pretty sure that the new BE transmitter arrived in Spring of 1984.

I was also pretty sure that I had withdrawn from Tech that quarter and went home after my father had been given just a few months to live. When I read this note that I’d written to Dave Everett (he SAVED it!) it finally became clear. “I’ll be in my old room…” I must have returned to Tech during the week of the install and slept in my “vacated” dorm room. Not that there was much sleeping that week. Our radio generations are measured in transmitter lives. The transmitter I helped install in 1984 to replace the failing 1950’s-vintage RCA was failing by the aughts, and its replacement is beginning to fail today.

I left WUVT in 1985 and spent 31 of the following 38 years working in radio. I made lifelong friends at WUVT. It was there I learned how to work as a team. I learned how to respect and work with people who were different than me. I learned how to do more with less. I learned how to write proposals. I learned a lot about music and sportscasting and engineering. I learned a lot about radio. I learned a lot about me. My strengths and my weaknesses. And this weekend I learned all over again just how much it all meant to me.

Thanks WUVT, thanks Virginia Tech. You filled my cup. What a special place this is. It was great to see each and every one of you this weekend.