Re(10): Oh it wasn't about Jim and Me? Posted on January 11, 2026 at 07:46:50 AM by rman
Funny you should say that, Jim. Did you know that much of the RNC that WASN'T at Kemper was at the big KC Convention Center, the one north of what would become Bartle Hall, and the Convention Center which contained the Music Hall had that underground parking with what seemed like gardens surrounded by hotels like the Muehlbach and down on 12th, the new big tall one. The Cement colored Convention Center was on 13th, as was next door Kansas City Power&Light. On the 22nd floor of the P&L Building, once the tallest building in Missouri was WHB and I worked there that year. It was 1976; my son was born that year in Kansas City.
Do you think for an instant, an old reporter like me wouldn't walk next door to cover the RNC? I had to pitch a fit with our General Manager Jim Irwin to buy me a hundred dollar portable tape recorder to get interviews. Hard as it is to believe, but WHB News didn't have one because they were in the habit of rip and reading from the Star and the police teletype for PHil Jay and Johnny Dolan.
I wouldn't have it and it did indeed pitch a fit. Irwin actually let me go buy one, probably at Burstein- Applebees.
After I got the recorder, I couldn't talk Bob Mead into going over next door, to do some interviews with me at the ONLY story in town that week but I sure did, just like I'd done years before at two stations in doodah.
Not sure the dates between the convention and me quitting to take the ND's job back at KLEO in Wichita, but that was when I decided famous WHB really didn't do news...only pretend news. And worse, it was an AM in an FM radio world. All my year stint ripping and reading did for me at WHB was to boost my income leve--badly needed with a child on the way. When Joe Shurtz left the KLEO ND's job to sell time, I got the job to replace him. Wasn't long before I left the ND gig doing mornings at the AM rocker, that I went to KARD FM and then upstairs to the TV station doing field reporting. They wanted ME because I was fairly well known in Wichita and knew the players.
Noel Heckerson was a reader anchor and no doubt he rarely ventured KMBZ's building on Belinder. BZ only had one field reporter who drove KMBZ mobile 980 covering wrecks and an occasional murder trial in Olathe. And Charles Gray at 61 Country did also tear himself away from chasing fire trucks to cover the RNC. To his credit.
I keep telling you to quit talking out your ass Ulinek, but you seem to be a guy with a bad heart. Watch out, that might kill you when you're out shopping for groceries in Prairie Village. You've become a joke in here with you 'keeping things real' as Kansas City's Boogeyman!
I wasn't going to respond to you anymore but this one was just too tasty to pass up. Replies: