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#4
- Floyd Brown
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| On
July 4th, 1999, Floyd Brown delivered his last show
for WGN Radio. Floyd announced his retirement with
his family joining him for one last entertaining show
to culminate a long and remarkable career. |
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from
Floyd's 1999 wgnradio.com Bio
When you think of high visibility
in the Chicago media, you must be thinking of Floyd Brown. On
both WGN Radio and WGN-TV, Floyd has served in numerous on-air
capacities.
On WGN Radio, "The Floyd Brown
Show" features an entertaining variety of music, special events
and interviews with interesting, provocative guests. The program
focuses on investments and entrepreneurship from 11:00pm to
midnight each Sunday, followed by two hours of America's "great
jazz music."
Beginning his career as an
engineer at WRMN in Elgin, Floyd has occupied almost every position
in broadcasting. He has served as a chief engineer, program
manager, newscaster and associate news editor, as well as program
host for a variety of radio and television formats. Aside from
his work with the WGN organizations, Floyd has seen plenty of
broadcast action at WMAQ-Channel 5, WYNR, WNUS and NBC.
Floyd's activities off the
air are just as impressive. Throughout Illinois, he is in high
demand as a public speaker and a Master of Ceremonies. Along
with being an active member of the first Congregational Church
of Elgin, Floyd is a television host with the Chicago Sunday
Evening Club, and is active in Rotary International, the American
Heart Association, is a board member of the Salvation Army and
is involved with countless other civic organizations and charities.
In fact, the entire Brown family
is a visible part of the Chicagoland area. Betty, Floyd's wife,
is well-known as a civic leader, successful business woman and
patron of the arts. His son, Keith, is a judge in the 16th Judicial
Circuit, while their daughter, Dianne, is also successful in
the business world, as an officer with one of the nation's largest
corporations.
TOP
from
the Courier-News 7/4/1999
By Kathaleen Roberts STAFF
WRITER
When Floyd Brown
launched his broadcasting career at WRMN, the owners tried to
muzzle him because he was black.
By 1965, the
Elgin resident had signed with NBC and landed on the cover of
a national magazine next to Bill Cosby.
Brown shattered
the color barrier with his trademark dose of gentlemanly grace,
fueled by a veiled undercurrent of rage. The WGN radio announcer
and former sports anchor retires today after 28 years at the
station.
Armed with a
baritone as smooth and rich as molasses, Brown invented a career
spanning the Big Band era, the Beatles and the Bears. Relentlessly
self-critical, he barely can stand to listen to his own show.
But he possesses a disarming honesty that never tilts into boastfulness.
"It's hard to
dislike me," he said quietly.
Brown was born
in Texas, the son of a divorced mother who worked in a dress
shop. His grandmother picked cotton and served as a domestic.
"The earliest
memory I have of Metro Street in Dallas is seeing people sitting
on a porch," he said. "There had just been a hanging in the
neighborhood. They said he had raped a white woman.
"You couldn't
eat in a restaurant," he continued. "You had to go to 'colored
only' washrooms. The first time I was in an integrated school
was at Northwestern (University). I was an oddity there. I'd
walk through a room and people would stop talking."
The family moved
to Washington, D.C., where he says his mother "cried me through
high school." Street toughs frequently lured him away from the
school grounds. But he graduated at 16, then headed to college
in 1947, where he became interested in radio. He wanted to study
engineering, but his advisers told him to open a radio shop
instead. He decided to take accounting because of the number
of black-owned businesses springing up in Chicago.
To support himself,
Brown worked as a porter at the Drake Hotel, scribbling his
homework in linen closets. He often passed the Radio Institute
of Chicago during his commute, and he decided to follow his
first love. In 1951, he signed up for engineering and announcing
classes and came to Elgin and WRMN, then owned by Joe McNoughton.
Hired as an engineer,
Brown worked at the station's transmitter site, then located
on Illinois 58, far from WRMN's downtown newsroom. But he edged
onto the airwaves when the usual announcer was late for work.
"He found out
the world didn't explode when I came on the air," he said. "I
started getting more mail than anybody else."
Elgin's worst moments
Longtime friend
Fern Risley, who started her career at WRMN with Brown, remembers
going into the city to listen to jazz. Risley now works in the
tourist information center of the Grand Victoria Casino.
"We couldn't
take him anywhere in Elgin," she said. "He had to go to Chicago
to get his hair cut. My husband tried to make a (golf) date
for him at a local course and they wouldn't let him."
If life is marked
by turning points or personal epiphanies, Brown's came in Elgin.
He still calls it "the worst day of my life." He was earning
$70 a week, and his wife Betty was pregnant.
The station's
general manager appointed him chief engineer.
"I said, 'That
means a raise, doesn't it?' He said, 'No, we don't have the
money.' I was furious enough to strike out in anger," Brown
said, his warm eyes still narrowing into slits. "He did that
because he knew I couldn't go anywhere because I was black.
I got a lump in my throat so big I could hardly swallow. I went
out because the tears were coming out. I sat there and I labored
with it and I thought, 'I'll show those sons of bitches.'"
Years later,
at the height of Brown's success, that same manager would claim
to have been the best man at his wedding.
On his own
Brown left WRMN
to help start up WYNR, a Chicago rock station owned by the Dallas-based
McLendon Corp. He doubled his salary and stepped into the volatile
world of rock 'n' roll "culture shock."
"I used to get
a headache listening to it," he acknowledged. "Motown had just
come into its own. We were one of the first to play Beatles'
music in the U.S.
"We brought in
Cassius Clay who later became Muhammad Ali," he added. "We put
him on with our morning man and we called it the battle of the
lip."
Three years later,
he left the station for NBC's WMAQ, becoming the first black
to be hired by a national network. Parent company Chairman David
Sarnoff put Brown on the cover of RCA's company magazine next
to Cosby, then starring in the TV series I Spy.
Brown worked
as a DJ and as an announcer for WMAQ's radio show during the
height of the '60s anti-war violence.
"There was so
much turbulence," he said. "Our newsmen would come in bleeding
and wearing helmets."
The more experienced
NBC announcers wouldn't talk to him until he had worked for
every program and proved he was more than just a token.
Sunday jazz
Then WGN called,
made Brown an announcer, and gave him his own Sunday jazz show
at the request of listeners who bombarded the station with calls
and letters. There he interviewed jazz royalty: Duke Ellington,
Lionel Hampton and Ella Fitzgerald. The station also named him
the WGN-TV sports anchor, a slot he filled for "10 or 12 years."
Ward Quall, retired
WGN president and chief executive officer, hired Brown on the
recommendation of his staff.
"You can find
some people who can do sports, but nothing else," he said. "You
can find people to do news but nothing else. He could adjust
himself to any need."
At one point,
Brown was working 15 hours a day, six days a week.
"Whenever they
needed a body, I was the guy," he said. "I used to start my
day at noon up at the Bears' camp and I'd wind up doing the
midnight news."
He had also started
his own marketing firm after being approached by friends for
advice. Always a familiar face at community fund-raisers, he
was the director of a mutual fund group and served on the board
of a local savings and loan. He set "ridiculous" fees to discourage
speaker requests, but still they came.
Changing life
The pressures
mounted, then exploded in 1978 when Brown landed in the hospital
with open heart surgery for angina. It proved to be a wake-up
call. He stopped pushing so hard, and gave up his anchor position.
"Nobody in the
hospital ever says 'I didn't spend enough time at the office,'"
he said. "I never had the ego problem of 'I have to be on the
air; I have to be on stage.' I just enjoyed it."
He's spent the
last few years anchoring a Sunday night radio program centering
on his two greatest interests: finance and jazz.
He'll close tonight's
final show accompanied by his family, including his daughter
Diane, the owner of an interior design firm, and his son Keith,
a 16th judicial circuit judge. After some rest, he'll take computer
classes, work on his golf game, travel and focus more closely
on his investments.
Influencing millions
If America's
racial chasm plunged Brown into his deepest point of despair,
it also raised him. During the height of the nation's civil
rights unrest, Brown was struggling mightily with the urge to
head south and join Martin Luther King when the vice president
of Montgomery Ward approached him in a restaurant.
"When we get
into a group and people are making derogatory remarks (about
blacks), we don't know how to answer," Brown quoted the man
as saying. "Now I can say that's not true, I know Floyd Brown
and his family and they're not like that."
"A light bulb
went on in my head," Brown said. "I used to talk to the Lord
a lot in my car. I said, 'Lord, if you'll just get me through
this, I will live a life that stresses that being a Christian
and being a good man is a positive way of life.' With that approach
in mind, I think I've influenced millions of people."
TOP
Listen
to Floyd' last show via RealAudio:
First
Hour (:56.44)
Second and Third
Hours (1:56.30)
TOP
