every community has certain founders as we refer to them as have made such a difference in their community but they have permanently impacted the lives of future generations often we only hear the names of these people we see them on plaques in statues as names on the side of buildings and company during the next hour you will have the rare opportunity to witness the story of an incredible person a person who has made west michigan what it is today welcome to west michigan biography today we will become better acquainted with a gentleman whose voice character has become a welcomed friend to the many homes of  michigan over the past year his many talents and experiences have been reflected in his military service but also his service to the community as a mayor as the president radio show of the politicians organization leaders and guest of the area rarely miss the opportunity to be on his program but it is the local residents who invite him in each morning to faithfully listen to and participate some say he should be named a national treasure others just enjoy  wealth of knowledge and companionship he says that if you enjoy what you're doing you never really were a day in your life we hope you will learn from and be inspired by this founder and a voice of west michigan mr julius then oss affectionately known as  aunt who was ill with cancer and while they were there i was born and at that time my father was working at holland furnished company as a draftsman and he worked there for a little while the draft went and then things got a little slack so he was put into the tin shop he felt that that was a little beneath him he wanted to stay in the white collar department so he quit and my early years shortly after the aunt died we moved to a house on fortieth street which i call the anchor home because we lived there for many years and where i grew up pretty much but a short time after we moved there my dad had an opportunity at a job of managing a farm for daniel's dolphin and this was on  about a half a mile from where we're living and right near him or what is now a lakeview school so i was going to a going to my school years there shortly and we moved over there in  twenty nine and lived there for three years the dolphins had bought the place to get their son out of chicago get him into the poultry business and he was staying with us unfortunately he was killed one night on a trip to sauga a convertible he rolled over and he was killed so that made the parents lose interest in the farm so my dad was out of a job they sold the farm and we moved back to the anchor home on fortieth street then my dad worked at various jobs we were in the thirty's times were tough people were making fifteen twenty cents an hour and my dad worked that way until hundred thirty nine when he took another job managing a farm this was into our jack sixty miles from home and well i had gone through lakeview school graduated from there in one nine hundred thirty seven started high school all in high school and the move meant i had to get out of holland high school after almost two twenty acres the manimal on the farm which was from chicago his name was e g swanson said well we're going to have seven sunday work since a farmer's much bigger require more work and my dad said well i don't think so and that ended th briefly my dad took a job with the premier furnace company into objects and i meanwhile got out of high school i was seventeen years of age couldn't easily find a job at seventeen since i was looking looking to work in a factory or something like that so we just kind of i kind of floundered around for a little bit there and then a friend of mine was going to high school with was at the end was a school that's national youth and ministration in rockford illinois and he said well why don't you come over here and learn a trade and i thought that sounded pretty good so i traveled to rockford illinois and went to the machine shop unfortunately the machine shop had about six machines and about twelve students c's in fact a lot of the guys from c c c when the m to n y afterward were there and you made twelve dollars a month and you got your room and board but if you were absent from work for a day on excuse you lost a dollar which inspired you to go to work every day or to school every day and then it was time for me to come back to do i jack i think and at that point a lot of family changes came about i had one job while i was in anyway school and a job for a week at something called the architectural iron works and i had been working in tin shop and the boss of well we we need a layout man and i assume they meant somebody to lay out work on the sheet metal he meant taking the sheet metal out of the truck and laying it on the floor so i didn't like it and i quit after a week and that was my experience there and then when i got back to watch it my dad was working at the furnace company and he got me in there and i was working in the warehouse and it was a pretty good job until we decided to move to holland and that was that was it when i got back to holland we moved back here holland at that time had a vocational school in the felt building and i went to that location school and there i did take some machine shop for several weeks and from there i got a job at the bus machine works and supposedly i hired in as a lathe operator i didn't operate a la and after two weeks one monday morning i came in and the boss says i don't think we've got anything for you to do today says that mean i'm fired he said yes so i left there and i went over to dun manufacturing company over in twenty four street and done hired me in and they did give me a job operating a lathe and the lathe fascinated me as well making think we made things for the m four tank sherman tank and i worked on the gun bracket in the front of the tank where the fifty caliber machine gun goes to the front of the tank and that's what i worked on at dunn's and i enjoyed working there very much they were good people to work for  just an introduction to your army career only lasted a few days and then we transferred to south to north carolina greensboro north carolina which was a basic training camp for the air force and the thing about the basic training in the air force you didn't get a gun until you went up to the rifle range and actually fired a gun instead they would take you off or close order drill and that sort of thing go on short hikes and then we had to go through the guard duty routine and course it's a farce really the guard duty when you're in basic training and we were guarding the perimeter of the camp supposedly from predators i guess and there were guards about every twenty thirty feet and i was walking my post and it was two hours on four hours off and the old general order goes walk your post in the military manner and so on and he out the next guy down the road and this was in the dark there was a guy trying to sneak back into camp apparently it sneaked out without a pass or something like that and the guy says halt well the man didn't want to get caught so he did not hold and he says halt during the time we were at basic training at greensborough which was about eight weeks that took a group of us into some sort of hall and said you're going to take a test i had no idea what it was a bo so i took this test which was basically an intelligence test and then they told us at the end that it was for the a s t p which was the army specialized training program at some point in time someone in the or department had decided we needed people who were educated in certain lines of work to go into a country that we had taken over and start you might say from scratch so they told us when they gave us a test that we could take medicine language psychology or engineering if they sent us to school well at the end of our basic training we were sent to north carolina state college which was our the unit where we were to be classified about a week or so there we were told that all that was open any any more was engine earing so if we wanted to be an engineering fine otherwise we could go back to our unit i thought engineering was better than nothing and if you're going to send me to college fine so i said ok i'll take engineering but we're shipped from there to the university of illinois at champaign illinois and we were there for a total of about seven months and the first term was four months long at the end of the first term some guys that illinois were lucky enough to be transferred to hope college in holland in a s t p unit they had started here did not happen to me but anyhow i took the first year of engineering and there it was a a real pressure course it was physics math engineering english history everything plus military and and visit when we're the beginning of the second term i would be about five and a half months into our college we were standing in the child line one morning and there was this article in the chicago tribune a s t proof program to be abandoned well that was a shock here we were but we were on our way to a good career in the army and the whole thing was being thrown out so a lot of us just say well who needs to study anymore we just stayed till the end of the term and they said goodbye but i did get a few college credits while i was there any ol from the university of illinois they said well you're going back to the air force ok so the shipment to jefferson barracks missouri where again we had to take  mini basic which included a twenty five mile hike rifle range all that sort of thing but the number issued a bright would get to us again didn't trust us with one yet at that time i guess we  got to the end of that and then we were to be sent someplace where we'd be permanently stationed i was shipped to barksdale feel louisiana which we call the r i was there for a couple weeks from there they said well we're going to ship you to lake charles louisiana ok got to lake charles louisiana which is for the south and barksdale right near the coast and lake charles is was a place where air crews got together to fly b twenty six's this is where the air crews got together and practiced together before their trip overseas and i enjoyed being airplanes i liked the sound of airplanes in the morning and then i went on to tech supply which is where they check out the tools to the flight crews in the parachutes and that sort of thing that was great really like that and even met some guys from holland there or working on the line the job went along fine for a while and this was in the summer hundred forty four i always for some reason or other managed to go south in the summer and north in the winter so my first summer i was south carolina and i went to illinois in the winter and south again in the summer while in fall came i thought we can't keep him here it's winter is coming and i said we're going to send you to radio school in sioux falls south dakota what better place to spend the winter so i went to radio school and i took thirteen weeks out of the eighteen week course morning code learning to be a radio mechanic that sort of thing and then the battle of the bulge was taking place in december one thousand nine hundred four and suddenly they needed a lot of people in the infantry and they cranked their finger up to me and said we want you to transfer to the infantry they didn't say it like i had a choice so down to camp livingston louisiana six weeks of basic in the infantry including the various and then they got to gave me a gun a real gun and then one rifle and my first time i had a gun in basic training and we took hikes we learned to read compass maps that sort of thing and went through the infiltration course with a fire machine guns over your head and at the end of that they said well you're done with basic training and you're ready to go into combat so we're going to ship you the fort meade maryland so they gave me a delay in route so i got to go home and i went on to fort meade maryland and i was there for about four or five days and the war ended in europe well there we were with clothing f europe and everything so they change our clothing and sent us all the way across the country to camp stillman california where we got on the boat and they transported stone through city they gave me a chance to see some of the destruction that had been taking place in the philippine islands got to talk some of the philippine people who were very badly treated by the japanese had been occupying them and of course we know the americans had been terribly treated on the bataan death march and they even pointed out some of the camps to us that americans had been kept captive in there we were assigned to a unit and i was assigned to f company sixty third infantry sixth division and they h us up to where our company was in a rear area and we were just ahead of the artillery and up the hill behind us the artillery was encamped and they are shooting over our heads to hit the enemy and so i got up to where my company was which was just kind of a hill and the first sergeant said welcome me and let's find a hole any place you can well this is pretty rocky so i just kind of found a hole right could get the bottom part of me as low as possible we stayed around there for a little while and the japanese at that time had no more aircraft about all they had with mortars and we of course had everything on our side the company went on up we moved on up a little ways and then  the company was relieved got back over your area said well wreck here we have to train to land in japan and we were going to land on honshu island the japanese and not given up so we were training for that in the rear area there was not much rest but then we went back into combat again and this is one fourth of july i will remember we were up there and we could see that hilltop where they were dug in and the air force came in with p thirty eight c and c put napalm all over that hillside it was just all aflame and there was a lot of fireworks that day and i meant remember that was the fourth of july probably the best fireworks i ever saw and we were standing up there cheering him on go get him tiger our final mission was up on a hill in a little place called antipolo where they had a school house that was a main part of the village a school house and some small pots built around it it was seven miles from the highway and we had walked in on trails rice paddies and we slept one night in the rice paddy when we set up to for the night it wasn't raining it  during the night we were flooded out of the rice paddy when we got this village we were there just a few days and an artillery officer came up and he told us the war was going to end real soon he says we have this new bomb called an atomic bomb he said we dropped that he says in the japs won't last long so we've come on giving us a story but of course it was true i think the next day they were flying food into us on c forty seven say kick it out of the door into the rice paddies down below and on the one of the boxes they had written the war is over and that's how we got word that world war two was at an end was very short so i didn't get the norm very well when i got home and she was ready to get married and i really wasn't ready to get married but we did get married and they say married in haste repent leisure but we did get married and were married for three years and at that time i did work up in grand haven at the evan products company and then we moved back to holland i worked briefly at well a nursery well i think that was about three years i worked at were nurseries and then we got a divorce but we had had a son during that time  named brian and then we divorced in one nine hundred forty nine after three years and that was the first marriage pretty much i think i wasn't ready to get married when i got back from the army unfortunately i wasn't sure what i wanted to do and consequently i was at sea they talked today about finding themselves w a find myself i had been so use the military and so marriage did not really agree with me and i'd say i was to blame at least seventy five percent of the problem i was that much of the problem because of it i was married to my second wife for forty seven years and most of them were happy years i'd say and we had planned on she was working at the pie company in saugatuck and we were planning on retiring and travelling that sort of thing and party that ever took place because at fifty six years of age you diagnose parkinson's disease and so from there on life was a little tougher for her though we did travel some after that with the aid of drugs pretty much kept it under control and tell about the last five years when she was pretty much wheelchair boned and  after twelve years and my caring for her at home she died on september first one thousand nine hundred seven and that was probably one of the most dreadful things that i've ever gone through is to watch someone you love dying and you just absolutely cannot do anything about it i told her and her voice was getting softer and softer and i found it difficult to talk to her sometimes because she couldn't get words out i told her that some time i might have to put her in the nursing home she wouldn't say anything i know she didn't want that and thank god i could keep her at home until she died and there sure through it and the one that was probably the most help to me during that time with my daughter julie who would come in frequently and wash your hair care for and all their ways and i could always count on you'll eat say duley i'm going to do this can you come over and take care of mom for a while and she would usually be able to do that the last six months of real life were on hospice and then of course i had a lot of help with hospice aggressed great organization terrific organization though is when i went out i thought well we're not going to really need hospice because hospice a six months in all but it was almost six months to the day that she passed away after we signed up with hospice and that was quite a frightening experience for me to lose someone like that you just feel like half your heart is torn out shortly after i i lost my wife in november following that i took a trip to arizona to see some relatives on there and press kit and i on the way down to arizona i said myself i'm gonna buy a computer because that has to take up some of my time to learn something new and so i got back from my trip and i did went down bought a computer he wanted to email started emailing friends and i've enjoyed the computer ever since it was a learning process and sometimes a very frustrating learning process and computers are still frustrating but it's a it's a learning process and it's a good thing i did because the radio station changed over to computer programming and consequently i had some insight as to what they were doing and how was going to work after i was into online you might say with a computer i remembered i had a son i knew all the time i had a son but my first wife husband had adopted him and i knew that his name was hooker brian hooker so i thought no one search form sometime so i put his name in right hook or went on search and i received back a list of about eleven names eleven but hookers different locations all around the country well i'm going to keep them and write to everyone and maybe i'll find  well a couple days later i was playing around with a computer i thought i had put my name in i'll put my name on search what book then austin and i got a return that included metal sculpture so i clicked on that and that address was the same as one of the addresses i had gotten the day before to couple days before on ryan hooker and i said bingo i found it i wrote him a letter he wrote me right back right away i went out to see him shortly after that been out see him a couple more times we have a good relationship we call back and forth right back and forth he that he was in hysteria california at that time he has since moved to kingman arizona and we've had a real good relationship after forty five years of not seeing him so it was rather interesting to be able to find him again it's like a miracle i have three other children i have  one child was blair has been working for the city of saugatuck for over thirty years jim works and is an artist he went to kendall he took up art work and  sentinel now is working at the placers in allegan julia chose to my daughter julie chose to get married and pretty much spends time with her family and i was fortunate she was available when her mother was ill well they're all in this area all of it in the new richmond area so i can go visit them quickly in a few hours and that's a real going to nice sometimes i go up there on a sunday morning and visit with them with it all of them i have four grandchildren there all the youngest grandchild is eighteen and two of my grandchildren work for the kalamazoo lake water and sewer department two grandsons and one granddaughter works at holland hospital and another granddaughter is going to school and i have four great grandchildren also and they're not and she continued to work at the center for women in transition until she could no longer work she was had to quit because of the parkinson's disease but after she died i had a norm at the mailbox one day and i said about going out to lunch sometime which we did and had more lunches and after a while i said well when you think about getting married she said well she was living in a mobile home two hundred twenty steps away from mine she says if someone came to my door and said we want to buy your mobile home i look upon that as a sign from happen that it was meant to be it just won't happen that way and so as a result that we got married in the spring of one nine hundred ninety nine and we lived there for about another year and then we moved into central village condominiums which is about a mile away from where i was every weekday morning here on holland hometown station this morning to get suggest what the interest to me about the radio business was i was listening to a man in chicago named paul gibson who did a talk show in the morning and he just sounded so relaxed he talking right into a commercial you were listening to it before you knew you were listening to a commercial and i thought boy i'd like to do a job like that and here i am doing it and it it's fascinated me ever since and the other jobs well i just couldn't compare this with what i wanted to do  this was talking to people and the fact that people listen makes it even more enjoyable when i was working at the nursery i was in the office and i was a nice job i enjoyed the job didn't pay much but it was a nice white collar job didn't get my hands too dirty and i kind of enjoyed it working with flowers and still do for that matter the  i couldn't see a lot of future there because it was a family owned business and so i started taking radio course that time i guess it was hearkening back to the first radio and then my radio experience in the service and took a correspondence course in radio and i continued to take that course takes a little time to get through a correspondence course until i was into my second marriage and at that point there was a point in the radio course where yes they said you're ready to go for this second class examination at the federal communications commission which i did and i took the second class passed meanwhile i had married to my second wife janet and actually the radio thing started with  radio course they offer in holland for amateur radio operators and chuck rich did that and i took that and i got my amateur radio license but then i got that i thought well i might as well be doing this commercially and that got me interested in a commercial license well one day i saw this ad in the paper where w h t c needed a first class engine ear i didn't have a first class license but i thought i'll go see him anyhow i did and the manager was sandy meek at that time said to me well how soon can you get a first class license said well i don't know so we'll get your book a study study answers questions ok i crammed for a week and went to chicago and sandy had called i had told him i was coming i crammed for a week my wife asked me questions all the way to chicago we took the examination one morning and the man from the f c c says why don't you come back about two o'clock seven and we'll tell you how you did ok i came back at two o'clock and he handed me a license go back to holland went over to the manager's house and said i got my license she said when can you go to work as well i should give my present employer a fair warning that i'm going to quit which i did but i worked at weller's during the morning and during the evening i worked at w h c c and that's how i started in and that was my first job in radio and still the same job today still there that was one nine hundred fifty one or engineering you're there in the first one of the morning early you turn the transmitter on all that sort of thing get the logs ready and what have you and the announcer should be coming in at six o'clock at that time and he should be ready to go on the air at six  you put him on the air and one morning the announcer was not there on time i said well what am i going to do i am i going to start reading the news and announce or what do i do and i said well go with it so i did i started announcing and it wasn't too long after that that that announcer quit and so i said if you want me to do the first hour in the morning  announcing in engineering i'll do it so they agreed to that after all save the money so that's how i started announcing when the announcer was late i went to work  and then i gradually got into more and more announcing so and less and less in the technical end of it and that's how it came about and i didn't know i was ever going to be an announcer when i started i always say you know if my speech teacher could see me in the job i'm doing today she would just say i can't believe it because it's when i was in speech class i certainly were never cut out to be public speaker of any kind i was announcing a pretty regular basis at that time and for quite a while then the manager sent to meet retired and build again i was put in as the manager bill at that time were doing the talk of the town program and it was a i believe a half hour long and then it went to an an hour and then it went to two and a half hours and when he got to be manager he came to me and said would you like to do a part of the program i said sure i'll do it so he did the beginning hour i did the next hour and a half of the talk of the town and that's how i got into that sickly program and kind of grew with it when hundred eighty when the station was sold a bill no longer had a job the new management didn't want him in the organization apparently and i had nothing to say about it so the new manager said you're going to do the talk of the town so i did along with some other duties had i had there and then i did that until i went on social security at age sixty two and then said to him well i'll keep on working if you want if the  is right and i said i'll here's how much social security will allow me to earn i said sounds good to us all i stayed on and i've been there ever since of the same conditions two hours a day and a great place to retire great place to retire and well i'm not really retired yet someday i may i don't know i'm not old enough yet or maybe too old talk of the town is a program that is popular i think because we give people an opportunity to speak their piece is kind of like a back fence people speaking over the back fence to each other and to other people maybe they don't see the people but they still are talking to them and i pretty much figure i'm just a referee and they can say just about whatever they want to within reason and i will inject maybe an idea here and there but i'm there principally for the listeners to say what they want and i think that's why it's popular i don't harangue about anything i don't get on my horse and talk about something that has a pet peeve to me so i think that's the reason it's popular and despite what radio is going to and many things today we have satellite radio and all that sort of thing and many stations are changing formats every few months in order to get a little higher in the book and talk of the town is there because it's local and it's instantaneous we did try delaying the program for a short time didn't work very good because people in turn the radio down so they were hearing their echo and so we just gave it up most of the people respect that most people are aware of that in that we've had a few little incidents where kids would call in and try to shock people  but people are very sympathetic with that as far as i'm concerned and i just don't work so it works best the way this we're instantaneous we're extemporaneous and we can talk about most anything when i'm on the program i have a couple of files that i have handy card files and some of the things i just have on notes and i have this pile of paper at my right hand that i can reach for and some of them i have on notes but if i can't find them the girls can help me find it sometimes i need a phone number and i don't have it at hand maybe they have it and they'll run it into me i have t stalwarts are part of my work family patti then and bert and marjorie bormann who are both work with me for twenty five years so the combined but across the state i think jude more or less means just the foundation of this community he's been here for so long he's seen so much he was mayor of saugatuck at one time and just he's so part of this community anywhere everywhere i go everywhere i go when i talk about where i work to put you race to see right away they talk about you and it's just it's just you just so part of the community is that it's i have a hard time wherever i go to speak everyone wants to hear the pool bread story which i'm now become noted for i guess the put bread story was a happened one morning when a lady called in and as i said we do were all things to all people so she wanted to know where she could to get her pet poodle bred looking for mail service for her pet poodle and so it's ok so i probably took down a number i don't recall but it just a few minutes later where some lady apparently wasn't listening altogether and she said would you give me the recipe for that putting bread and that was a laugh for many a year many here and stillest people when i tell it they haven't heard before and consequently when i did eventually put out a cookbook i called it put a bread another interesting recipes because that was the story and we tell the story in the book as well a couple of other things that took place on the program as i recall one lady called in one morning and there'd been a recipe on call for tepid water and she wanted to know where she could buy that and i explained to her that it was a matter of temperature availability and we also have incidents were kids will call in and then they will call in repeatedly and some not so much anymore but at one time they really grind you down and i recall one day i flipped off the mike switch and i stayed on the phone and i said get off the line or i'll come over there and strangle you  here that nobody on the air heard it so i don't know if i guess that's kind of a cute story that happens occasionally and these are the kids can really get to you but i understand that  but it's enjoyable for go i enjoy every morning because it's different i meet new people whether it's guests or on the air and that's what still makes it of interest to me talk to all the politicians that we have i think i'm on a first name basis with most of them and when i call and say hey this is you calling they know who i am and i don't ever harangue them about any project that or anything i don't do that if i have something like that i write them a letter and that's what the program continues to be that extemporaneous local and people love it when i get a call and if the caller is questionable or sometimes the caller has a an agenda and i'll listen and i usually don't have to say much i usually say well let's see what other folks have to say about that that's my answer because other folks will put them down if they don't like what they said or they'll get on the same side of the fence with them but i don't really who say say much of anything i'm the referee and it's their show and they can do whatever they want to with it listening to him as the interviewer and dealing with some of the questions that we get on air because we're live when he does the b h t see a lot of people forget that but you guys on air live and he does have a lot of patience in dealing with people i think it's great that we can maintain our listenership a lot of people tell me no matter where i am i always have talk of the town man came to me not too long ago and said i go out to my shop in the morning out rogers retired and turn on the radio so i can listen to you i says our house if you come on all got to be quiet we've got to listen to this and so we have a pretty good group of listeners and they're all ages i've had a young lady with two children came up in the grocery store one time she says aren't you juke and i said yes i am so high listen to you every day and probably in early twenties and always kind of surprised me because some people say well it's just so the hope that people listen to you but younger people listen as well and they listen to it because it kind of have the pulse of the community on talk of the town we've tried to a state with and i think we've kept pretty much on top of keeping people informed over the years well well truly that's been the remarkable service that the station has provided to keep people informed in tough times in emergency times in the good times and  also provided a forum for this community to talk together and to share i came to think it's important to get involved in the community to live in and when i lived in the the carrier lived on a farm near the red barn and were insulted excluded strict and i had written a letter to the superintendent about using the wrong radio station for as winter snow warnings and soul he called me up and says why don't you run for the school board so i did the next election i ran for the school board and i got on the school board  and as a result of that i did serve her about nine and a half years on the school board meanwhile moved into the village of saugatuck and someone says wanted to run for the village council well sure circulator petitioned for me and i got on the village council after the first your first year i didn't make it the second year i did make a shirt on the village council and i think it was in one thousand nine hundred seventy one i was voted in as a mayor believe president and served three years in that capacity i also served on the chamber of commerce as president i was involved in the lions club the american legion and then came a time in life where i just said i'm just tired of going to meetings it's time for somebody else to pick up the torch well i recall when juke was president of the village the village of saugatuck was going through a lot of difficult challenging times the pressures were beginning to come in fact i remember the editor of the local commercial record writing an editorial saying we should be making decisions now about sewer and water those kinds of things that are really important infrastructure issues that are important to a potentially growing community and the editors would voice was we should be thinking about those things now before the pressures are literally coming inside the door and that was the way juke responded to i believe felt the same way he wanted to be proactive as president of the village council and make sure that the planning had been done and that the various issues had been looked at one of the concerns at that time was how much building should be allowed on the river front and would there be more and how much open space along the river front and he had he had to wrestle as well as leave the wrestling lead the decision making for the village council as president and he i thought he did a good job he worked very hard he tried to be inclusive he always listened to everyone i don't ever remember i attended the village councils council meeting occasionally  don't ever remember him shouting anyone down or making them feel that their opinion wasn't welcomed by everyone there i always said that you should get involved because i hear a lot of people were unhappy with their community they carp about what the city council is doing or what the school board is doing in my head once had a little fling i had pain on the wall don't sit on the curb and bitch get in the parade and that's been my theory that they should get with it doesn't take much to run for office a petition you have you know it requires a few signatures get in the office maybe don't make it the first time that you will next time get involved and it's different when you get on the other side well i think if you can as given a lot of leadership skills to the area communities saugatuck douglas  holland and the outlying areas by first of all by his community involvement whether it was the village council in saugatuck whether it was hospice i know he's been involved in some other non profits in the area and he has a great deal of leadership skills who first of all help those organizations but secondly to mentor emerging leaders that's one of our jobs as people when we find ourselves in leadership positions is to help mentor emerging leaders who will follow behind us and you could have done that very well as the the the man we think of him is the man and of age t c he's done a great deal i think to educate the people of the community juke i have prepared for my office a resolution that i would like to take this opportunity to read and all right this resolution from the mayor's office says that whereas being informed of community state national and international events is of utmost importance to our citizens and where as more people derive information from radio than any other media medium and whereas local radio has great relevancy to tens of thousands of holland area residents and whereas for fifty years holland's own w h t c fourteen fifty am has broadcast a wonderful blend of news weather sports and music as well as been a community forum on a wide range of issues now there for the it resolved that i albert h mcginn mayor the city of following on behalf of the city council to applaud and congratulate this radio station and its staff a long time ago i learned this little model and i don't even know where i got it and they flee but i have had a round for about sixty years i guess and it goes like this three simple things no more no less combine to make man's happiness someone to love something to do and something always to look forward to as long as you can do all of those things i when i was growing up in howell michigan and to this day i believe this that the radio you have done there and continue to do is as good as any place else in the nation and certainly as good as anything we have here in chicago probably better but it's good to hear that there's only a few guys they do what you do on the radio i mean you're a you you're in a community i mean you're an icon well i appreciate your saying well thank you who else knows everything that you know i mean i what i can say amazed by it every time i come into town and i dial up fourteen fifty and i can show people can call in a variety of subjects shoot this morning they're probably talking about george bush's speech last night in the next hour my two might wonder how to get raspberries on t carpet i only know one guy that can cover that range well it's good to hear from you well i also i you probably don't remember this but i did a couple interviews with you when i was living in grand rapids i used to come down and  you that was a great hangout for nelson oh yeah hanson back but you got a great station there and i love that station i'm so proud that it's still still a big part of holland and i think it's a great station and you are the guy there  well i tell you going to most guys learn more you know you forgot more about radio most of these other guys can teach so yeah ok continued success and i hope you're there another fifty years thank you