Taylor

ELKINS — After more than 40 years on the air, a local Elkins radio host is “hangin’ up the headphones” to focus on his health, but is looking back fondly on the past four decades.

Roger Taylor, 64, is retiring after 46 years on the radio at WDNE 98.9 FM. Taylor was the host of the daily 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. block. Saturday will be his last day with the station.

WDNE will be hosting a retirement party for Taylor on Saturday at Rotary Amphitheatre, in the Elkins Town Square behind the Elkins Depot Welcome Center. The event will run from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m and will feature nonprofit vendors, giveaways and live local entertainment, including the Roger Taylor Tribute Band.

“I’m hoping that people I’ve met over the years will come,” Taylor said. “I’ve been asking on the air, I said, ‘Just come and tell me a story. Tell me something you remember,’ you know? If we interacted over the years or something you heard on the radio you thought was funny because somebody messed it up. I hope people will come up and chat.”

“When I finally made the decision of when I was going to go, I said, ‘I’ll go till the end of June,’ because my birthday is on the second of July. I’m gonna be 65,” Taylor told The Inter-Mountain. “It just seemed like a good time. Especially with the (health) issues I’m having, I need a break.”

Taylor announced his retirement on WDNE’s Facebook back in February. In his post Taylor said, “…I have decided it is time to hang up the headphones. As I have said at the end of many a shift, ‘It’s been fun, but I’m done’.”

Taylor, an Elkins local, graduated from Elkins High School in 1977 and began attending Fairmont State College a year later.

During his time at the college, Taylor took a radio and television communications course.

“And I just thought ‘That sounds like fun, I think I’d like that,'” Taylor said. “I’d always had an interest in music. I don’t play it. I’m not musically inclined, other than being in the high school band. I just thought it would be an interesting thing to study, which I did, and then just happened into a job here at the radio station.”

A neighbor of Taylor’s, who worked in the advertising department of WDNE, advised him to apply for a part-time job at the station. At the time WDNE-FM was WDNE-AM and was the only radio station in Elkins. Taylor began working at the station on the weekends and whenever he would be home from college. Eventually Taylor realized he could either pay to go to college and study radio, or he could learn on the job and get paid to be on the radio. He chose the latter.

“Radio’s always looking for part-timers, believe me,” Taylor said. “Eventually I just decided to stay with it. I never wanted to go anywhere else. A lot of people move around a lot in radio, but I had family here and I just love a small town.”

Working in a small town was one of his favorite parts of working in radio, Taylor said. He enjoyed getting to meet listeners and knowing them on a first-name basis.

“We have listeners who are very loyal to us,” Taylor said. “We know them, we know their names. They’ll call the radio station or they come out to almost every remote event. They come by, they say hi. You can actually get to know some of your listeners on a personal basis, and that’s a lot of fun. I’ve run into people from Elkins at Virginia Beach and they immediately knew me.”

When asked what he remembers best from his 46 years on the air, Taylor said it’s the times of tragedy and difficulty that stick out the most in his mind, including the death of John Lennon on Dec. 9, 1980. Taylor was the one who had to announce it on air locally.

“It seemed like I was just always here when things happened,” Taylor said. “I remember when John Lennon got shot. In those moments, back then, you’re the guy. You announce those things. There was no satellite news network to cover it. It was shocking to me. One of the Beatles was gone. So I announced it, and then I played “Imagine,” his hit. And it wasn’t too long after that that Ronald Reagan got shot, so that’s another one I was here for.”

Of course, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. His happiest memories are working at the station and with the community, including the times when he would introduce the music acts at the Forest Festival every year.

“I tried to do it with flair. I’d do some research. Some of them were pretty impressed,” Taylor said. “One band, I can’t remember which one, told me to wing it when introducing them. So I went out and rattled off all these statistics from their career, and when they all started coming out, every one of them gave me a high-five. They said, ‘That was incredible!’ and I said ‘I try, I try!'”

Taylor admitted there will be a lot he is going to miss about the station and being on the air after he retires, but what he will miss the most is the people he worked with.

“You get to be a family,” Taylor said.

Although Taylor is retiring, he admitted that he may not be off the air forever. He says he may come back every once and while and fill in whenever WDNE needs him.

“I can’t imagine another job that I would have wanted to do, let alone for four decades,” Taylor said. “Not many people stick with a job that long. So, you really gotta love what you do to stay with something that long.”