Swim meet results – Week 5
October 3, 2017
Walterine Foret
October 4, 2017
Last week I wrote about a dear friend, the late Dudley Bernard, but neglected to add his picture. I hope to make up for it this week with pictures of him as a musician, a soldier and a friend.
During Christmas week, 1953, Mr. Ferd Block, a prominent Thibodaux businessman, met me at the Lafourche Assessors’ office. “Leroy, Mr. Art Bockman, the engineer of our new Radio Station KTIB needs help with programs. New Year’s Eve is tomorrow and the people he hired have not shown up. Maybe you can help him since you’re the only other person in town who knows anything about radio.”
I had worked in the Court House as Chief Deputy Assessor since early that year. I also had a band “The Southern Serenaders” and was living with and sponging off my parents, and I was willing to try something new, so I met Mr. Bockman on New Year’s Eve.
As I entered he said “Mr. Block told me about you. I’ve been here since 6 a.m. and ha ven’t had lunch yet so you can take the board until I get back. Here’s records you can play. This pot (dial) is for the right turntable and this one the other. That’d be the mike switch” and he was gone before I could say a word.
Big problem! Sure I had broadcast many times with my band from a studio but I knew nothing about the control room with dial, switches, tape machines and teletype, but he thought I did. I realized “Hey! I got a radio program, now I got to run it.” Radio still dominated, and television sets were too expensive for the average person, so it was mainly seen in bars and store windows and broadcast only at night so I put on a 78rpm record, switched on the mike and declared to the world, (well, the KTIB world anyway) “Hayeee! A great big howdy co mon sa va to all my cousans, couseens, unts and ancles (sic). This is Leroy Martin with Cajun and country music and here’s our own Vin Bruce with his Columbia Records hit, Dans La Louisiana.”
That went on for three hours before Mr. Bockman returned. I signed off by saying “That’s it for me, so long and save your Confederate money boys, the South’s gonna rise again. (Phrase borrowed from Andy Griffin, definitely not politically correct and very corny but that’s what I used for the next 30 years.)
Mr. Block and partners were successful business people who were about to enter a world they knew nothing about…. show business!
It might have been divine intervention that cause a young man named Hal Benson to apply for a job (his story next week) in January 1954. He had a resume that included experience in radio broadcasting, news, interviews, program, sales and management. He was hired and it was evident that he knew radio inside out and within two weeks Mr. Bockman was gone. Hal Benson became manager and KTIB was off and running.
The first thing he did was bring down from Memphis two crackerjack personalities who had worked with him, Jean Bettis, a writer and broadcaster, and Marie Servino, (later Bergeron, now departed) sales manager and program director. He also brought in experienced WDSU announcer Roy Hill. They revamped the programs, added talk shows, book and movie reviews, played contemporary music and began remote broadcasting high school sports. And then he called me to his office.
“Leroy, what am I going to do with you? Your Saturday program has no rules and boundaries, but the fans love you and so does Mr. Block, so I have to fire you or make you a star. Let’s go to Hosea Hill’s club, sip a quart bottle of beer and talk about it.”
And that’s how a program that lasted 30 years began along with a friendship that ended with his death at 29. I honored him by naming my first born Michael Hal Martin and Mike’s son, a NASCAR driver is named Hal Michael Martin. You’ll know how our friendship grew when I tell you his story next week. BYE NOW.
‘And that’s how a program that last 30 years began along with a friendship that ended with his death at 29. I honored him by naming my first born Michael Hal Martin and Mike’s son, a NASCAR driver, is named Hal Michael Martin.
In this week’s Cajun Stories column, Leroy Martin talks about his career as a radio man and some of the rich friendships he made along the way, including one with Hal Benson.
