As I conclude the decade of the 80s, I’m about to celebrate my 38th birthday while just having started my career at WISH-TV in Indianapolis. The team of Bush and Quayle were running our country in 1989 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill took place while Theodore Bundy was executed in a Florida electric chair. The year ended with the premiere of The Simpsons on FOX. Up until that point, FOX Television was barely a competitive factor when I was preparing proposals for clients. Cable was also in its infant stages of development. Both of these factors would soon impact the advertising business.

When we first moved to Indianapolis in 1985, the three of us first lived in temporary housing at Pickwick Farms but soon moved to a house in  Castleton. After more than three years of sales work at WIBC radio, 1988 marked my move to LIN Television and WISH where I would stay in various positions for 13-years. The company promoted me to both Lafayette and eventually Decatur and sold the station I was running after twenty years of service. Moves to Austin and Portland with would follow as my wife’s career continued to blossom while I struggled into retirement. I had transitioned  from newspaper to radio to TV and then back to newspaper and finally radio. TV was the peak of my career, serving various management roles. 

I’m now enjoying my retirement from LIN on a generous pension. I got word this morning from a college fraternity brother in Tucson that he had met the guy who eventually replaced me in Decatur following the sale. He had come up through the ranks of Block Communications via their property in Boise who bought the station from LIN and must now be retired in Arizona. I knew him from corporate meetings prior to my termination but haven’t spoken since. The fact that these two long lost acquaintances of mine somehow coincidently met is just another example of how small a world it really is!