By Michael Ryan
WINDHAM - The beginnings of WRIP in Windham are steeped in history as the small town radio station continues forming its legacy.
WRIP, located at 97.9 on the FM dial, is celebrating its 25th anniversary on August 5, 2024, a milestone the Community of Windham Foundation did not want to slip past unnoticed.
Four of the Foundation members, Annie Jakubowski, Denise Meehan, Jeri Miltenberger and Sharon Quinn, recently surprised station manager and chief executive office Jay Fink with a banner.
They wanted to do more, perhaps repeating the giant party staged five years ago on the 20th anniversary, but Fink asked to low key things.
“Jay never likes to bring attention to himself but we can’t let twenty-five years go by without some recognition,” Jakubowski says.
“Jay and [WRIP “Morning Man”] Joe Loverro mean everything to our community. They hold our community together,” Jakubowski says.
While Fink and Loverro are the most-known voices of WRIP, they would be silent without the entrepreneurial vision of Dennis Jackson.
Jackson is the man and the money behind the formation of WRIP, forging a partnership with the late Guy Patrick Garraghan to launch what many believed, at the time, might be a Don Quixote misadventure.
Instead, it became a reliable reality, being there through the toughest times in the town of Windham including the destructive flooding of Hurricane Irene in the summer of 2011 and the Covid pandemic.
Jackson stays in the background but fondly remembers the burgeoning of WRIP, saying, “it was the early 1990’s when a Yonkers resident with a summer home in Jewett hatched an idea to start a new radio station to serve the local Ukrainian population.
“He induced the FCC to allow an FM station on 97.9, but never got around to building it,” Jackson says, speaking in the third person.
“We suspect it was because he came to his senses and realized that at the time, the local economy was not large enough to support a station with a payroll of live personalities around the clock.
“Nowadays, computers do much of the work, freeing our small staff to be out in the community. In 1995, the FCC announced that it would accept new proposals to start the 97.9 FM station.
“I had learned the process by starting other stations over the previous decade, and decided to go for it.” Jackson says.
“Our legal notice in the Windham Journal [newspaper] attracted attention, and I was soon served with a registered letter.
“It came from a certain Guy Patrick Garraghan. My first thought was that somebody was already planning to sue me, but thankfully not!
“Guy simply wanted to be sure the person who was planning to start the local radio station received his letter.
“He told me of his tenure as Morning Host on WCKL radio, his involvement in producing music festivals at Hunter, his service in the US Air Force and his role as manager of the Wintergreen Club” at Windham Ski Center.
“I realized we had lucked into an ideal situation. I had no idea how to attract experienced, professional talent to a small radio station in such a rural area, beautiful as it is,” Jackson says.
“But “talent” was an understatement. Guy was a popular and well-loved native son with a big heart, a great radio voice and a wicked sense of humor. He seemed to know everyone.
“So we met at the Wintergreen Club and came up with a plan to ascertain whether the business community would invest sufficiently in advertising to support a slimmed down but efficient broadcast operation.
“We decided it had a chance, and took the plunge. [Local business owner] Don Murray was renovating the old bowling alley at the corner of South Street and Garraghan Lane.
“The site once served as home base for Guy’s father, John Garraghan, who barnstormed the mail into an airstrip that’s now the [Windham] golf course.
“We rented half of one of Don’s units from realtor Carol Shaw and built a studio from scratch. During construction, Jimmy and Mary O’Connor, at the Windham Mountain Inn across the street, generously kept us well fed.
“Dan Frank, then-manager of Windham Mountain, cut us a deal that we could afford in order to install the transmitter and antenna at the top of the Cave Mountain.
”Later, it would be Windham Mountain manager Chip Seamans who would help the station by allowing us to build a brand new studio in the Mountain’s historic Bentley House, which we’ve dubbed “Broadcast House.”
“For our grand opening on August 5, 1999, Guy arranged for the beloved Dr. Edwin Graham Mulbury, the area’s most senior citizen, to cut the ribbon.
“12-year-old Charlene Cross sang the national anthem live at noon before a small crowd, and WRIP was on the air!
“It’s hard to believe we’ve been broadcasting for a quarter century,” says Jackson. “People say having a local radio station available 24/7 has changed how it feels to be part of the mountaintop community.
“For the better. We feel gratified and proud of the role WRIP has been able to play in the life of the community, and at the same time, the people of the mountaintop have been generous in their support of the radio station.
“We cannot express enough our appreciation for the longtime support of the Community of Windham Foundation, the Windham Foundation, the Windham Chamber of Commerce and the Greene County Legislature.”
NEXT WEEK: A pictorial glance back at WRIP.
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