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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