BUCYRUS – The voice of Bucyrus radio is still “tuned in” to his career both on and off the air.
Davey Jones, the familiar voice on WBCO and WQEL, celebrates his 51st year with the radio station. A lengthy career that started as a 21-year-old college student back in 1970 and an established career that has seen format changes and changes in the industry. His personal experience, and those of his fans, are both packed with memories through the years.
“I’m more known for the sports than anything else,” said Jones, 72, as he got ready to leave Saturday to call the play-by-play for the high school boys district baseball game featuring Colonel Crawford. “When I go out and about, people usually know me for that.”
Jones, since day one, has always been an account representative for the station, but he’s also been the on-air personality synonymous with the Friday evening Phoneboard program, a football talk show on WQEL, which was a project he and former station owner Tom Moore helped launch back in 1975.
And the list goes on.
He began co-hosting the ever-popular talk show, The Coaches’ Corner, in 1992. He created Tiger Talk, which started out at Pizza Hut in Galion but expanded to include student-athletes from all Crawford County schools, and then converted to The Coaches Corner. For nearly 30 years, Kaffee Klatch, a half-hour-long morning show on WBCO broadcast from Photorama Studios in uptown Galion is also a part of his extensive hosting experience.
Jones, who lives only a mile from the station on East Rensselaer St., has even spent the night there a time or two. During the blizzard of ‘78, he and a colleague got a ride to work from then Bucyrus Mayor Paul Outhwaite in a four-wheel-drive city truck. The two were on the air from 10 a.m. Thursday until 2 p.m. Saturday.
“Raymond Jay, the morning guy, and I took phone calls. It was kind of like a Phoneboard on the air,” Jones recalled of the blizzard, which wreaked havoc on North Central Ohio that winter. “Ray called it ‘Winter Watch,’ and that’s how we found out a man actually froze to death on a rural road on Route 4.”
During the lengthy broadcast, Jones said, he also took a phone call from a frantic pregnant woman in nearby Nevada who told listeners her water had broke, and she couldn’t get out of her snowed-in driveway. “A couple of nurses in the area were listening to our show and called her up and actually delivered the baby.”
Jones, who grew up in Toledo, attended the University of Toledo and then transferred to The Ohio State University and Columbus Tech, where he completed a co-op program. “It was really a great opportunity. I got to work at several radio stations. I really wanted to be a DJ, but they kept pushing me into the newsroom.”
On Memorial Day weekend in 1970, he got a call and subsequently a job offer from Moore, who was looking to hire a salesperson who also had on-air experience. Jones accepted the job, and soon Kaffee Klatch landed in his lap, along with a Saturday morning drive show he hosted for 14 years.
To this day, Jones is easily recognized by Crawford County residents who remember attending “Cruise Nites” in Bucyrus, which were held Saturday nights during the summer at the former Clancy’s restaurant. A night of rock-and-roll oldies from the ’50s and ’60s with dozens of promotional giveaways from the event’s sponsors and Jones was an active participant.
“We would fill that parking lot up and the parking lot across the street with up to 300 cars,” Jones recalled of the popular event he hosted with Hank Davis. “It was kind of like ‘Happy Days,’ like ‘American Graffiti.’ We made that thing sound like a 1965 radio show. It was a fun thing to do.”
Jones and his wife, Joan, a retired nurse, raised two sons, Mike and Matt. Although he had opportunities to move on to bigger markets, including a sales position with 1100 in Cleveland back in 1982, Jones said he’s happy he stayed put and with his Saga Communications family.
“They were the Cleveland Indians flagship station then. But when they made me an offer, we had just bought the house, and school for the boys was only a block and a half away,” Jones said. “Staying here in North Central Ohio was a no-brainer. It made a lot more sense, and the kids did well here.”
Jones “retired” after knee surgery in 2016 but agreed to return to the station part-time as long as he could still winter with “Jo” in Florida. This is just one example of how committed and “dialed in” this man is to a job, reinforcing how special to him and to the community he and his family have embraced for more than half a century.
“It’s been a great career. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve been fortunate,” he said. “I’m very blessed to have worked with the people I’ve worked with over the years and certainly the people I work with now.”