Larry's Sorta Fun Stories

A poem I wrote for my wife in 2017

We're heading east with sadness …  the vacation was over 

My wife was by my side but the mountains where in my rearview mirror, but the mountains were in my rearview mirror.
 My mind thinks of the times we had together

What were they like pondering a hiking trail or seeing deer in the meadow at Sunset? 

but the mountains were in my rearview mirror 

the mountains were in my rearview mirror 

It was the Traverse it felt like home with my wife by my side 

But heading east brough sadness because the mountains were in my rearview mirror 

She wanted to call Bozeman home, she hated to head east 

that meant the snowiest Peaks and the grandson were left behind
 and the mountains were in my rearview mirror 

Now that seat is empty now

The Traverse is gone how will it be looking at the snowiest pikes

To see the mountains in my rearview mirror 

Because the mountains are still in my rearview mirror

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We were able to get so great talent for KBHL 95.3 in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Scott Campbell came to little ol' Lincoln, Nebraska from a radio station in San Diego, California.  Hear how the station transitioned from The Sound of the New Life to NEW LIFE 95 KBHL.

Scot Campbell became KBHL’s Program Director, he spent a lot of time communicating with the listeners.  He heard them say they listened for entertainment and information even though they may be alone or in their car or at home they're only a click away from Christian Fellowship. 

As the station merged towards a more professional sound Larry King and Scott Campbell dreamed up a promotion to end of the branding of the station from The Sound of the New Life.  This was a way to introduce the new jingle package and brand the station as New Life 95.  Jerry Logan made this announcement, “Monday October 31st, 1977, in Lincoln 95.3 KBHL will no longer be The Sound of the New Life. But at 6 p.m. the staff and management of 95.3 KBHL invite you to listen at 6 p.m. tonight as ninety-five point three KBHL says farewell.  

Jim Hanemaayer did middays on New Life 95.  He was just out of college and Larry King gave him his first job. Scott Campbell was there to help develop his radio career. He enjoyed the fact that he was a part of a new and very exciting way the contemporary Christian music scene. He said, “It was in a time of explosive growth and change and we did a lot of things with artist interviews and features and community loved the music.”

Scott Campbell added a lot KBHL.  Scott ended his broadcast career when he went home to Bend Oregon. He passed away from a sudden heart attack. He was a terrific radio Pioneer in the format that is in many major markets today call THE FISH. 

The dream that started in 1973 for me (Larry King) came to an end in 1979 due to financial pressures.  I had to sell KBHL. I must confess I was very disappointed. 

Jim said, “Larry King was a man of vision as a Pioneer probably in a financial sense a little bit before it's time for the format because now across the country there are these FISH formats as they are called.  They do the same thing in a very big financial way that Larry King tried to do from a Ministry perspective back so many years ago, but Larry was a true Pioneer and contemporary Christian music I don't think would be where it is today if it weren't for guys like Larry King Scott Campbell. I really enjoyed being a part of New Life 95.” 

Larry King said, “I've accepted ted the responsibility for having to sell the station but it's as Jim said the vision lives on, so I'd like to close with this from one of the most requested songs written by Andrae Crouch on KBHL. ‘I've had many tears and Sorrows had questions for tomorrow there have been times I didn't know right from wrong but in every situation. Gave a blessed consolation that my Trials come to only make me strong through it all through it all I know that I am kept by His love.”

Be sure to listen to the entire podcast to hear the voices and know that you are Kept by His Love.

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The call letter had real meaning.  KBHL stood for Kept By His Love.
This is part 2 of a three part series.  

Finally on March 6th, 1975, at 6 p.m. in the middle of an ice storm KBHL goes on the air and Mike Wagner does the Sign-On, “This is KBHL FM stereo in Lincoln Nebraska, we now wish you God's blessings and begin broadcasting with inspirational music for your enjoyment.” 

March 6th at 6 p.m. you heard the Sound of the New Life KBHL Lincoln 95.3 and then we heard from listeners. We heard from the body God's people responding during the first hour of broadcasting. There were over fifty phone calls by midnight Mike Dwork and Tom Smith shared six hours of Contemporary Christian Music at the Sound of the New Life with Lincoln. The calls kept coming. 

The on-air-talent rivaled anyone in town with Bob Kellogg, Larry King, Rodger Roach, Lauren Lippincott, Tom Smith, Glenn Dean, Kay Linley, and J. Michael Dwork. 

Ways the station gamed grassroots listeners was with the distribution of bumper stickers. You could see them and all kinds of cars all over Lincoln and Omaha. To celebrate Easter, Miller and Payne sponsored the classical presentation of Handel's Messiah. The radio station promotion was done by a classical actor from Omaha Rudyard Norton. 

On May 15th, 1975, at 8 p.m. at the O'Donnell Music Hall on the Nebraska Wesleyan campus the Sound of the New Life concert number one. It was The Second Chapter of Acts and Barry McGuire. 

KBHL was committed to Ministry and the New Life Singers were formed. A radio promoting for the Nurse of the Week and Teacher Feature for more details at participating sponsors with production by Jerry Logan one of Nebraska's best producers. 

Bob Kellogg was KBHL’s first news director launching the news department for station gave him an opportunity to do two things that I have wanted to do since graduating from college a few years earlier. He wanted to be ab broadcast journalism but there is a lot more to it than that being a brand-new baby Christian for the first time I felt like I was a part of something bigger than myself I felt like I was a member of the Christian believer. Bob was exposed to wonderful learning opportunities through the teaching programs on the station. 

Great interviews from the musical artists from Kathy (you know her as Kathy Lee Gifford) & Meshi, Andre Crouch, and Evie said, “I just got to say this, this radio station is my kind of radio station and wow they play good music.”

Then Scott Campbell joined the staff …

End of Part 2 of the story of KBHL 95.3 FM, Lincoln, Nebraska. 

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in 1973 it was my vision to create the first Contemporary Christian Music Radio Station in the United States.  This is the back story of how it got started. This is the story of KBHL 95.3 in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

It’s just like it was yesterday Friday April 20th, 1973. My wife was driving that big white and red topped Buick and we were just east of Council Bluffs, Iowa on Interstate 80. We were headed to my parent’s home in Illinois for the Easter Weekend. I can still see the clouds in the sky inviting me to dream as we were heading east.

Always wanting to listen to the radio, I was playing with the radio searching for some music. We were driving away from the radio station signals that I was familiar with and my mind starting to drift to “what if?”

As I was dealing with the “what ifs,” we had lived in Lincoln, Nebraska for the last two years. KOLN/KGIN-TV Lincoln, Nebraska had hired me to be a TV-Director in 1969. By 1971 my wife and I had ingrained ourselves in the community and we created an Advertising Agency, and we were on our own.

So here we are driving in a void of radio signals, and I got to thinking … why isn’t there a Contemporary Christian Music Radio Station playing the music of the young artists that were expressing their faith in a medium I could identify with? That was the “what if”

As we kept heading east, the vision became clearer to me. I set out me on an adventure to create a Contemporary Christian Music Radio Station with a format like that of my idol radio station WLS the great 890 in Chicago for the next seven years. 

KBHL-FM 95.3 was granted the right to commence broadcasting by the FCC in Lincoln, Nebraska on March 5, 1975. 

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It was her hair.  She was slowly moving around the skating rink, but I kept seeing her long hair as she was trying to teach her young child to skate.  Oh yes, I noticed her long legs.  She had a pair of white slacks and those legs really stood out.  

You might have heard me mention this episode in another story.  I was managing a roller-skating rink on a Sunday afternoon in October of 1981, and I noticed that her young son fell on her skate, and he started to bleed.  Not wanting the blood to ruin those white slacks, I hustled them to the snack bar, stopped the bleeding and got a date.  Well, I just didn’t get a date, I got a wife and her young son in the package. 

We were married in a small church wedding on a Sunday afternoon as I took the day off from the skating rink and with a group of her friends and mine in the ceremony.  The ceremony was delayed by two events.  First, we originally set the wedding date for February 14, but she got cold feet at the last minute and we pushed it back a month to March 14.  Second on March 14 we had to wait for the church bishop to complete his visit with the minister and finally we were married. 

I had been working at the roller-skating rink because I was in-between as we say in the trade.  But my real passion was in radio and tv production.  So, I had a friend from Kansas City call me and said there was a production company in Cocoa, Florida that was looking for a producer/director/production manager and I was really made for the job.  I called the production facility and with the phone call got an invitation to go to Florida for an in-person interview.  Flying from Lincoln, Nebraska to Orlando, Florida wasn’t very easy in those days.  So, I had booked an early flight to get me to Orlando in good time.  

But here was one of the first issues that I should have noticed.  This beautiful woman with the long hair had no sense of timing.  And because she doodled so much, I missed the flight.  I was embarrassed and had to call my future employer and explain the situation.  Thankfully there was another flight about noon time, and I was able to get on that fight and make the connection. 

My new employer was kind enough to fly my new bride down for a weekend honeymoon on the beach in Cocoa.  Wow, I got a good look at those legs and of course her long flowing hair that danced with the waves on the ocean at sunset. 

Meg my wife had to finish grad school at the University of Nebraska while I was getting settled in the new job in Florida.  Finally, the semester was over, and she was ready to move to Florida to be with me.  I was going to fly home and pack up the moving van and we would head back to Florida in your VW Rabbit. (And that was another story)

The day came and I flew back to Lincoln and got off the plane and I could not find my new bride waiting for me at the airport.  I looked around and finally someone said my name and I recognized the voice, but I didn’t recognize the face.  Since she was moving to Florida, she thought it was a good idea to get her hair cut.  Her hair was so short, I did not recognize my new bride with short hair. 

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I don’t really call myself a cyclist or I haven’t gone all out to purchase all the fancy clothes to wear on my bike.  I guess I just like the feel of the wind on my face and remember as a kid how I used to ride my twenty-six-inch red Schwinn bike with the basket on the front around my hometown of Chillicothe, Illinois.

The thrill of riding my bike then was, I wasn’t confined to just my yard to play in.  I could ride down to the Illinois Riverbank and go fishing.  I was so hip I had a brand-new portable transistor radio in the basket on the front of the bike.  I had all of Elvis, Bobby Darin, and the Kingston Trio riding with me as I listened to the Great 89WLS from Chicago.  

I was so free I could head out west towards the Santa Fe Railroad and ride though the McGrath Gravel Pit which was one of the largest gravel pits in the country.  Riding past all those piles of different sizes of rocks waiting to be loaded onto freight cars on the Santa Fe Railroad or the fine sand was heading to Irons Concrete Company in Chillicothe to become cement to build the cement blocks that so many homes were built with.

Passing the piles of gravel, you would head north and glide down the rocky road to the Senachwine Creek bridge and explore the creek bed looking for Indian artifacts that were supposed to be there.  One of the stupid times was with my friend when we both rode to the creek bridge.  He was a hipper cooler friend.  His parents had purchased BB guns for the four boys in his family.  I didn’t have a BB gun.  Well, we took his BB guns with us.  We each got on a side of the creek and started shooting at each other!  We wanted to see if we could hit each other.  Remember the movie, THE CHRISTMAS STORY, the mother would say, “Don’t shoot your eye out?”  My friend ended up being a better shot and hit me with a couple of times.  All below the waist. 

How ridiculous was that?

Now driving seventeen miles to ride my bike with a friend, am I trying to reclaim some childhood memories?  The trail is twenty-nine miles long, flat, and straight from Polk City to Mabel.  A real rural trail that is a converted railroad bed the state of Florida acquired in 1990 

Driving seventeen miles to get to the trail, I drive west on Florida State Highway Fifty to Mabel, Florida to the head of General James A. Van Fleet State Trail.  General Van Fleet was called ‘America’s greatest general’ by President Harry Truman and the general called Polk City his hometown.  

Approaching the trailhead, the sign of Mabel appears on my right side, and I look to see where the town is and there is nothing there!

Mabel, Florida began in the late 1800’s and the town was named for the daughter of the founding postmaster J.P. Phelps.  Mabel had a sawmill that made wooden fruit baskets and a packing house.  The population was never higher than fifty residents.  Mabel was on a subdivision of the Seaboard Railroad running from Coleman to Miami, Florida running track through Polk City and Mabel, The Post Office closed in 1918 and nothing but a wooden barn remains of Mabel today.

I guess I still am like a kid.  I like to ride my bike and feel the wind on my face as I pedal along the trail, and I have answered my questions of how the trail got its name and what happened to Mabel, Florida 

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