Dayhoff Soundtrack: Ron Smith, the “Voice of Reason” on WBAL radio, dead at 70

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Ron Smith, the “Voice of Reason” on WBAL radio, dead at 70

http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2011/12/ron-smith-voice-of-reason-on-wbal-radio.html

http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2011/12/kevin-dayhoff-ron-smith-voice-of-reason.html

http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=4813

See also on www.thetentacle.com [http://www.thetentacle.com/author.cfm?MyAuthor=41]: December 21, 2011

“The Voice of Reason” Silenced by Kevin E. Dayhoff -

On Monday night, the venerable longstanding, highly rated, and critically acclaimed 1090 AM WBAL talk radio host, Ron Smith, died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Shrewsbury, PA… http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=4813

Labels: Dayhoff writing essays, Dayhoff writing essays people, History, Journalists Smith Ron, People Tributes

By Kevin Dayhoff,

December 21, 2011

Ron Smith, 70,the highly celebrated radio talk show host on 1090 AM WBAL talk radio for 26 years, died of pancreatic cancer last Monday night at his home in Shrewsbury, Pa.

Generations of Carroll countians have grown-up listening to Smith – and 1090 WBAL radio, long before he joined the station in the fall of 1984.

David Zurawik, The Baltimore Sun’s media critic since 1989, noted late Monday night that “Mr. Smith spent more than 26 years on WBAL's airwaves, most of it in the afternoon drive-time period until a move to mornings last year, passionately talking politics from a conservative point of view.”

Zurawik explains the ‘Voice of Reason’ title came from a listener, according to Smith’s wife, June; “A caller, responding to one of Ron’s rants on the constant struggle between various theories and the hard, cold, facts of reality, said, ‘You are The Voice of Reason.’ ” The term stuck.

Zurawik wrote the thoughts of many. “But it is not his politics for which he will likely be remembered as much as the informed conversation he helped create on Baltimore radio — and the way he publicly shared his final days with listeners of WBAL and readers of The Baltimore Sun.”

Smith was born in 1941 in upstate New York, the son of an assistant school superintendent, according to Zurawik, who helped fill us in on Smith’s early years before his legendary success in Baltimore… http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2011/12/ron-smith-voice-of-reason-on-wbal-radio.html or http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2011/12/kevin-dayhoff-ron-smith-voice-of-reason.html or http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=4813

Although he is reported to have been well-read and highly educated, many will be surprised to know that Smith “dropped out of high school at age 17 and joined the Marines,” according to Zurawik. “He was in the Marines from 1959 to 1962, his last duty serving at a Navy submarine base in New London, Conn…

“After the Marines, Mr. Smith started working in community theater in Albany, N.Y., near his hometown of Troy, while he ‘tried to figure out’ what he wanted to do…

“Mr. Smith's first broadcasting job was as a disc jockey in Haverhill, MA. He didn't like the station, but he liked being on the air. He returned to Albany and eventually landed a radio and TV reporting job at WTEN. He was at that station five years…”

Before his longstanding stint with WBAL radio, Carroll countians first got to know Smith when he first arrived in Baltimore on TV – on Channel 11’s “Action News,” in 1973. He was on the air as a reporter and then its weekend anchor until 1980, when “he was unceremoniously dumped in an anchor desk shuffle…,” according to Zurawik.

According to his official biography, “Ron was a TV anchor and reporter for WBAL-TV until 1980, when new management decided to make a change in his department by getting rid of him.

“They parted by ‘mutual consent,’ which is when your bosses decided you’ve got to go and you agree there’s nothing much you can do about it.”

In 1980 “Mr. Smith went to work full time as a stockbroker,” explained The Baltimore Sun article. “But he never lost the desire to be on air. And while he claimed to enjoy working in the financial world, it was all prelude for the passion he found as a talk-show host starting part-time in 1984 and full time a year later on WBAL radio...”

The rest is history… However, the history of WBAL and Carroll County can arguably go back as far as when it first went on the air in 1925. It was started as a subsidiary of the old Consolidated Gas Electric Light and Power Company, now known as Baltimore Gas Electric – Constellation Energy.

That was eight years before The Consolidated Public Utilities Company of Westminster merged with the Consolidated Gas Electric Light and Power Company, in 1933. The Westminster power company can trace its roots back to 1867, when it first formed as the Westminster Gas Light Co.

One of the first mentions of WBAL radio in Carroll County is brought to our attention as a result of research by the Historical Society of Carroll County. On June 8, 1945, the now out-of-print Westminster newspaper, the Democratic Advocate reported, “Sykesville high school students will broadcast over station WBAL, Baltimore, on Saturday, June 9, at 4 p.m. The skit which they will dramatize is called ‘After the War —then What?’”

The same newspaper reported on February 1, 1946, “The Baltimore Radio Broadcasting Station, WBAL, will bring the well known program "Junior Town Meeting of the Air" to Westminster in a broadcast at Westminster High School on Tuesday, February 5th, from 1:30 to 2 p.m. The subject to be discussed will be "Is American Family Life Deteriorating"? Local students will present their views direct from the school to your home.”

On February 8, 1947, the newspaper reported, “Westminster and the surrounding community was very much interested in the Junior Town Meeting broadcasted over Station WBAL on Tuesday afternoon… In summing up the half-hour discussion, Mr. (Mike) Eaton said that he felt the main point had been brought out by Thomas Holmes, Jr., when he said, ‘These things we have said put forth a challenge, a challenge to us; the teen agers of today, who will in the near future have families of their own, and also should strive to rebuild and protect our American Family Life.’ ”

Several decades later, Smith brought back the conversation about protecting “our American Family Life,” to the radio in our homes, offices, and automobiles.

Zurawik noted in the Baltimore Sun, “According to Ed Kiernan, longtime general manager of WBAL, ‘a voracious reader, Ron Smith arrived at his opinions after careful thought and research. He arrived early to work always prepared and excited to get behind the microphone.’ ”

Smith, “died at his home … surrounded by his wife, June, and the rest of his family,” according to a report by WBAL-TV. “Funeral services will be private. A public memorial service will be scheduled at a later date.”

Smith’s passing leaves a lot of “dead air” in an intelligent, uncomplicated, “everyman” approach to the news and events of the day. He will be missed. Semper Fi.

*****