From Your Flummoxed Publisher & Executive Editor:

Tomorrow, Craig County voters are being asked to determine the fate of a 17-year extension of the 3/4-cent county sales tax to fund a “community center” at the county fairgrounds. I hope turnout is massive, and I hope this ill-advised effort goes down hard. In flames. And explodes.

I first learned of this little project back in March, when Jeane and I attended our first Craig County Republican Party meeting. After a speech from Lt. Gov. candidate, John Wright, meeting attendees were subjected to a presentation by those proposing the “community center” project. The presentation lacked some very basic information, such as a precise total cost of the building and precise length of tax extension. After the spiel, a motion was made that the party go on record as supporting the project. The motion nearly died for lack of a second before county Republican party chairman, Jay Franklin, called on his wife to second the motion, which she did. Without debate or any explanation of who was eligible to vote, the motion was put to a vote and received a handful of “ayes” and no “noes.” Allowing the presentation is one thing, but I was appalled and amazed that the county Republican party would go on record as supporting a massive tax increase. It was my last Craig County Republican Party meeting.

To start, my default position on tax increases is “no.” Not just no, but heck no. We already pay too much in taxes. The government irresponsibly wastes the money it taxes from its citizens. Higher taxes stymie the economy. Bureaucrats and politicians ignore necessities (roads, bridges, etc.), while pursuing nonsensical and petty projects (case in point, Tulsa has a dandy new ballpark but you’ll need a new chassis for your car after driving there on their roads). In the case of sales taxes, they hit poorer, working-class families harder than others (This should not be confused with the Fair Tax, which I wholeheartedly support, so long as the income tax is repealed with it). In general, taxes need to be as low as humanly possible. That said, I do recognize that taxation is a necessary evil. However, there has to be some determination of what taxes are wise and which are not.

I wasn’t a resident of Craig County when the vote for the courthouse occurred, but in general, I tend to believe that it was probably time for a new county government facility. In the case of the county courthouse, I’ll grant that it was needed. I can get behind a project that really is a necessity for the orderly transaction of county business and law enforcement. But then, we have this atrocious “community center” project. It’s a very different animal.

I’m from Welch. We have a civic auditorium. Many years ago, the LIONS Club saw a need and worked hard to build a community gathering place. They have since maintained that facility, lately adding a natural gas generator so that it can be used for housing during emergency situations. In short, Welchkins don’t need a community center because we have one. Now, if Vinita needs a community center, I recommend the LIONs Club or some other group of community-minded citizens get to work and build one, but don’t come to your rural neighbors with your hands out asking us to help build and pay for it. Until 2040.

Further, the plan to build the “community center” is just downright bad planning. To fund this disaster, we’re being asked to extend a tax that’s not even set to expire until 2023. And the extension goes until 2040. And these people are bringing this to us with straight faces? The only thing crazier than this is all those credit cards Discover gives kids in college so they can be paying for tacos for 20 years. If the tax extension passes, they sell the bonds now, get the funding now, and build the facility now. Without paying a dime for it. And they won’t pay a dime until 2024. Seriously? Is it really good economics to borrow $2.8 million that we won’t even begin paying on for 14 years? Can you fathom what kind of interest $2.8 million accrues over 14 years? And it won’t be fully paid off until 2040.

And why are we extending the courthouse sales tax instead of a voting on a new tax? Because, as a county, we’re maxed out. We can’t vote  a new tax; we can only extend an existing tax. Sometimes, you just have to stop spending money and get caught up before you buy a luxury item, which this “community center” certainly is.

In this world, there are some people who have grand ideas for things they’d like, especially if they can be built with other people’s money. This is one such example. The Craig County Community Improvement Association (CCCIA) has dreamed this dream and has apparently tried to raise the funds to make it a reality for six years. Unable to raise the funds, they try the typical last resort of bad ideas, put it to a vote and let everyone pay for it. They argue that that the facility is sorely needed. Yet, in six year’s time, they have been able to secure a altogether embarrassing sum of $200,000. Here’s a tip: if it were all that great an idea and so very needed, people would be lining up to help fund it.

One other consideration: What if we, as a county, have some genuine need that arises. As noted above, we’re maxed out on bonds, so we can’t pass a new bond issue. I guess we’ll just have to extend the “community center” tax. Then we can be paying for actual needs starting in 2040. Sounds like government at its finest. The people who dreamed this up should go hide out of embarrassment. And the county commissioners who are supporting it, why don’t you all either focus on your jobs or move to Tulsa or Washington, where they could certainly use your prowess for spending other people’s money for pipe-dream projects while ignoring basic infrastructure.

The reality is that this “community center” is an abysmal idea that has been badly promoted and poorly executed, the result of which is now to toss it onto the voters’ plate, where they hope we’ll gobble it down because our eyes are too big for our stomachs. It’s a whole lot easier just not to put it in our mouths than it will be to stomach it later. Go vote, and vote no. If you think the “community center” is needed and a good idea, then—by all means, make your contribution to CCCIA—and built the thing privately. But, please, don’t expect us to pay for this disaster—starting 14 years from now. Gag!

Ed.

PS I also meant to mention that this is a special election, called only for the purposes of ramming this thing through. Are we supposed to believe that this “community center” is so urgent that it couldn’t possibly wait to be added to the November ballot (or earlier primary ballots)? Here’s an idea: The CCCIA ought to pay for the cost of this special election (anywhere from $5,000-$7,000 according to my recent call to the election board) out of that $200,000 they have raised over the past six years. Further, I’m also told that the $200,000 amount isn’t exactly precise, so I’ll be investigating.

“I love winners when they cry, losers when they try.”
—Tom T. Hall

From Your Reflective Publisher & Executive Editor:

As a community, we have just traversed over half the state to watch some guys play basketball. And they were good. Better, even, than their finish in the area tournament would have you believe. I’m not a huge sports fan (I never watch it on TV), but I have watched an awful lot of high school sports in my day. Being drum major of the Welch Wildcat Marching Band for several years, I led the pride of Welch High School on many a football field. That meant long bus trips; hot and cold rehearsals; hot, wet, and cold games; and teaching lots of seventh graders their left from their right. It also meant we learned the game. Teresa Kelley, our intrepid band teacher for many years, would assemble the band early in the season for a lecture not on music theory but on football. She felt it very important for us to understand the game and how it was played. Her worst fear was for the band to be doing an offensive cheer when our team was on defense. So we learned football, and I am glad we did.

I was never much of an athlete; that is to say I wasn’t an athlete at all. I’m of the mind that, if you play a sport, you need to pursue it with all you are. I was never gifted in sporting events, nor was I that interested in doing what it took to make me good, so I thought it better to pursue other things that I was willing to do relentlessly. I still think that was the best choice for me—and for the teams that would have been handicapped by my presence. And I think there’s a lesson there. If you’re going to participate, do it with every fiber of your being. If you can’t or won’t, it’s OK to take the sideline. Sometimes, in life, we can do more for our team as a fanatical and enthusiastic spectator than as a participant. But whichever you choose, do it, and go all out.

And much like as in my high school days, my recent courtside position with my Canon in my hand has taught me some things that I share with you here. Jeane and I have grown very fond of our Wildcat team in just a short while, so this is, in many ways, for them, but it applies to all of us in all areas of life.

• Never, never, never give up until after the clock has run out. You never know what opportunities will present themselves at the last moment.
• Do not waste time. There’s never so much time on the clock that you can stand to burn any up. It’s the same in life. You can never get time back after it’s expired, and no lead is enough to make you safe and no deficit is enough to keep you beat so long as the final buzzer hasn’t rang out.
• Capitalize on every opportunity, especially the routine, mundane ones. Every point counts, whether one-third of a trey or 100% of a free throw. Once they’re on the board, they stay there, and your opponent must answer them.
• The people who really care about you most will cheer as loud (or louder) when you’re down by 15 as they do when you’re up by 15.
• You will have off days. Learn to expect them and compensate for them.
• Some days, no matter how hard you try, nothing will seem to work right. Every shot you make will be short, long, or sloppy. Even the ones that feel good will bobble around the hoop and bounce out. That is no reason to stop shooting. The old saying is that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, and it’s true. Points win games, and you get points by shooting, so keep fighting to the bucket, especially when you’re down and they’re not falling.
• You can’t always pull it out, and your real fans know it. They will stand and applaud anyway if you play to the end with all you have.
• Eight short minutes can make all the difference in the world.
• Fans cheer for their team to do their best. Hoodlums cheer for their opponents to do badly. Be a fan.
• Sore winners are worse than sore losers.
• People hear what comes out of your mouth in the stands. God does, too.
• Sometimes officials will do badly—very badly. They won’t protect what they should. They won’t blow their whistles on your end of the court. They’ll do more harm than good. They’ll convince you that there is no minimum sight requirement for their position. They’re still the officials.
• Choosing to work as a team gives you more opportunities to excel as an individual.
• Character has more to do with what you do with the time on the clock than it does with the scores on the board.
• Enjoy youth, speed, and thin bodies. You will get older, fatter, and slower.
• A good start doesn’t guarantee a strong finish. A strong finish does.
• If a 32-minute game is worth that much time, effort, energy, practice, preparation, and sacrifice, how much more it the rest of your life worth?
• Some days you can’t miss; some days you can’t buy a bucket. You’re the same person on both those days.
• Public defeats are no fun, but public victories sure are worth it!
• It’s something special to be a Welch Wildcat, and that doesn’t end when you graduate.
• If you appreciate the opportunities you’ve had, make sure those who follow you have them, too.
• The best coaches make you and your teammates want to give your best.
• I’m not sure whether God cares who wins and loses games, but I am certain He cares about what the game teaches you about yourself and life.
• You should still pray—and work—to win.
• Never take your fans for granted. They sacrifice to watch you play.
• Never take your detractors too seriously. They’re probably not happy with anyone.
• Sometimes you’ll get beat by people who aren’t as good as you. You’re only inferior if you act that way.
• Fun is important. Not everything important is fun. Not everything fun is important.
• Sometimes you will travel long distances, try your hardest, and come up short. It’s still worth traveling long distances and trying your hardest.

And there you have it, nothing more than my own meandering thoughts, though I’m not trying to be the “Wear Sunscreen” guy. What lessons did you learn? Share them in the comments section below.

Ed.

From Your Reflective Publisher and Executive Editor:

I’ve been reflecting on the past lately. For certain reasons, I have been thinking back on a time in my life that was and remains the most hurtful experience I have ever gone through. It challenged my faith. It challenged my patience. It may have even challenged my sanity.

At the time, I am remembering, it was even worse because we felt so alone. Due to the circumstances of how it all went down, very few persons knew the private torture Jeane and I were enduring—and doing our best to so do with grace and patience. Suffering is a lonely room, and that solitude just compounded the misery. I am finding that now, as then, no one really gets the magnitude of our anguish, nor do they care to try—and then that hurts, too.

During that time I learned a few precious things that I took to remembering when it seemed to get harder than ever. For instance, before there was a country song about it, Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” I used to keep an Irish saying on my wall, which read, “I am wounded but I am not slain. I’ll lay me down to bleed a while and then I’ll rise to fight again.” Another very wise person clued me in on this gem: “Time heals all wounds—and time wounds all heels.”

And time really is a pretty good healer, but there are some things that stay back there that really do smart, often down to our core. There’s a scene in The Lion King that always struck me as particularly poignant. Rafiki, Simba’s monkey friend and teacher, takes Simba out and they have this exchange:

Simba: I know what I have to do. But going back will mean facing my past. I’ve been running from it for so long. [Rafiki hits Simba on the head with his stick]
Simba: Ow! Jeez, what was that for?
Rafiki: It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past. [laughs]
Simba: Yeah, but it still hurts.
Rafiki: Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or…learn from it.

Though time does soothe the pain of past hurts, it is always possible to dredge them back up again, and when one does—or has it done for him—he finds that they still hurt, though maybe not as acutely. And I’m no fan of pain.

But we’ve got these lives we live. And the pain of the past can often discourage us from attempting great things again. But, we need people to attempt great things. Your life is too precious to allow those who hurt you then, those who hurt you now, and those who would cultivate the anguish of days gone by to rob the joy of life.

So, if our options are to run from the past or learn from it, I say we learn. I know I have learned some lessons that serve me well to this day.

For one, both Jeane and I have a commitment that, whenever we see someone who suffers unjustly, we will do everything in our power to intercede. Never, we have determined, will we sit idly by and just let stuff happen. Unfortunately, that has made me a few enemies in life, but a pretty wise person once said that the man who has no enemies never stood for anything.

Another valuable lesson is that we cannot change who we are to please people. I’m in favor of personal growth, and I wager my eternity on the necessity of being transformed by Christ. However, that does not mean that we meld into some sort of non-personality, some religious robot who merely does what is programmed into us. If we’re all created by God, then He gave us our personalities, and we best be who we are, fixed by His grace.

I also learned that our failures, hurts, and defeats tend to whisper in our ear, “Remember how bad it hurt before? Don’t try again or it could be worse.” But, at some point, if wisdom is allowed to speak into our other ear, it says, “Yes, but if anything is of value, it’s worth suffering for. And, this time you just might succeed.” Past failures are doubly painful if they live in the present. The past is meant to be a cemetery for mistakes, errors, disappointments, and anguish. And everyone knows we go to grave yards only to visit. Only a masochist would live there.

Another lesson to remember: be very careful whose opinion you value. Everyone worries what others think of them. Don’t. I once heard that we’d spend less time worrying what others thought of us if we realized how seldom they do. That’s probably truer than we think. For the most part, we’re all more consumed with our own personal desires and concerns than we are about others. That’s just human nature, so we shouldn’t expect that others would be too drastically different. The long and short of it is that very few persons’ opinions really amount to a hill of beans. I hope God is able to regard me well. I want my wife to adore me. It’s nice if my family respects me. I’d like my banker to have some trust in me. Other than that it really makes very little difference in eternity what anyone thinks of me—though I would hope more than the aforementioned consider me somewhere better than a scoundrel. If you’re not careful, though, you can wander into the dangerous territory of being consumed by others’ opinions of you, and you’ll be no good to anyone. To live a genuine life, you risk being hated by some, who I have found are mostly driven by fear. Accept it.

Lastly, be very, very careful about who you allow to have authority over you. We live in a land of laws, and it’s only right to respect them. Most of us have bosses, and we all need to give them our best. Christ is our ultimate authority, and He deserves our best, worst, and everything in between so He can take it away and replace it with Him. Beyond that, most of us don’t have to submit to much that we don’t want. We get ourselves in deep water when we allow others to pass judgment on us and our abilities. When you must put yourself in that position, be certain that those who exercise that kind of authority are of the moral fiber to be trusted with such an important job.You’ll regret it—and the damage they do—if you don’t.

So long as we live, we’ll have things that don’t work out. We’ll make mistakes. Bad people will do bad things to us. We will be harmed, intentionally by malicious people and innocently by mistaken people. Let it smart for a moment, then get back up and go at it again. The laws of probability guarantee that you can’t lose every battle. And one of my personal axioms is that it’s not really a defeat if you don’t get buried there. The day belongs to those who endure.

Ed.

From Your Concerned Publisher & Executive Editor:

By now we’re all aware of the devastation that has been visited on Haiti. In comparison, our worst disasters have been only a drop in the bucket compared to the loss Haitians have suffered. If you’re like most, you want to help, but you’re not exactly sure how to best do it. And, if you give money, you want to be certain that it goes to help the Haitians who need it, not for salaries, administration, or outright fraud.

Let me commend Baptist Disaster Relief to you.

The North American Mission Board, along with state Baptist convention leaders, has taken the lead in organizing Southern Baptists to respond to disasters. They contribute manpower, ministry, and financial help during floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, earthquakes, and urban disasters. NAMB uses Disaster Relief donations for meeting human needs as a priority and of sharing the Gospel and/or starting churches as part of NAMB’s overall disaster relief ministry once these priorities are met.

Your donation will be used exclusively (100%) for direct disaster response expenses. Administrative and staff needs are covered by volunteers and Southern Baptist entities at the local, state and national levels.

The benefits of contributing through faith-based disaster relief efforts is that they are able to meet the spiritual needs of people in crisis, something secular relief organizations do not necessarily provide. You don’t have to be a Baptist to support Baptist Disaster Relief; you just have to want to help those in need and trust Baptist Disaster Relief to get the job done, which it has demonstrated numerous times before. Additionally, faith-based disaster relief organizations tend to arrive earlier and stay later than others.

Will you give? Click here to learn how you can contribute online, by phone, or by check in the mail.

Ed.

From Your Mourning Executive Editor & Publisher:

“The game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll someday lay
so this is all I have to say.”

You may know that the theme music to the television show, M*A*S*H, was entitled “Suicide is Painless.” You may not be aware, however, that the song, played only as an instrumental during M*A*S*H’s opening credits, has lyrics. The desperate verse above is a portion of the song. The chorus then goes like this:

“Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.”

And all I can say about the song is that it’s wrong. Suicide is not painless, no matter how it is accomplished—especially for those who remain. I choose to leave it, if I please.

This is scheduled to post at the precise time my family and I will be gathered in Tulsa for a small memorial service for my cousin who ended his own life last weekend. It was a difficult weekend, and the weekdays have been no easier. This is the closest suicide has ever come to me. I know those who have had it happen in their family, or to someone they know, but never has it visited so close to my own front door. It’s a terrible feeling to have it in such proximity.

As much as the debate rages over assisted suicides for the terminally ill, there is something inside all of us that intrinsically rebels at the notion of a seemingly healthy young person, full of life and potential, finding their situation so desperate that they can fathom no answer but the most final of decisions. In my cousin’s case, he had fought depression for fifteen years. And by fought, I don’t mean he had an occasional funk or blue day. I mean depression was his life at times. All the help money and doctors could offer him was never able to defeat his ever-present foe. Several things recently occurred to create what seems to have been an emotional perfect storm that drove him to perform an act that he had both contemplated and researched multiple times. In leaving he left the message that he had never really gotten better, he had simply gotten better at hiding it.

And it leads us to several realizations, some simple and some profound.

For one, it was heartbreaking to learn that there are websites devoted to the mechanics of how to do this deed, in great detail. Like money, the Internet is a tool that borrows its morality from how it is employed. Great good can be accomplished online. We’re able to communicate around the world instantly. It makes WelchOK.com possible. But we all know that there are dark corners in cyberspace that contain and celebrate the worst humans are capable of. Parents, just as you check to see that your kids aren’t into online filth, you also need to make sure they are not into online death.

This situation also causes one to look at his extended family and wonder why we’re not closer—and resolve that it will change.

It also makes you contemplate human nature. For one, there is something inside every person who, upon hearing the news, wants to know how the victim did it. At first I thought it was some gruesome part of our natures. But the more I think about it, I believe it’s rooted in the fact that the act itself is so terribly violent—after all, it’s murder of the self—that we hope it was accomplished peacefully and without disfiguration, especially for the survivors’ sakes. The question, then, is rooted not in the worst part of us but the best.

The other thing I marvel at, and I always have, is the way we feed grief. It takes but a few hours before 9×13-inch casserole pans start arriving at the bereaved family’s home. Friend after friend will pop in just for a minute to bring a plate full of sandwiches or a Gladware container full of Christmas candy. What I observed through this event, especially since I have been limiting my intake of late, is that it really isn’t about the food. When we see people suffer loss, we just want to go to them. And embrace them. And whisper in their ear, “I just couldn’t stay away any longer. I don’t even know what to say while you suffer such loss, but we love you. If there’s anything we can do, please let us know.” And people mean it when they say it. It’s just that the greatest need of the grievers—working through the sorrow surrounding loss—is something no one else can do for them. It’s a mournfully lonesome road. But because we care for those who suffer, we want to go to them, and we feel we cannot come with empty hands. So we grab some of what we have handy, make something to meet the most basic of human needs, and drop it off. But it’s about contact, the pop-in to give the hug, not the food. That human contact meets an even more basic human need than the food. It, also, is the best of human nature.

When I was a pastor, I used to prescribe something to survivors. I would tell them that after all the decisions were made and the funeral was over and the friends said goodbye, the family needed to pile up on the couch, fill up huge plates of all that food, and watch Elizabethtown. If you’ve not seen it—and it was not a critical success, but some of my favorite movies weren’t—it is a beautiful, touching movie about traveling the road of sorrow together as a family and a community—and by yourself, because at its core, loss is a deep, nagging personal matter. And Elizabethtown offers some beautiful things that stick with me in these times, such as the line, “May your loss be met with a hurricane of love.” But the one I always go back to in the midst of loss is this: “I want you to get into the deep beautiful melancholy of everything that’s happened.”

Deep. Beautiful. Melancholy. Yep, that’s it exactly.

Life does not stop these days, except for when life stops. We feel, in the wake of loss, we can legitimately say the office will be closed, I won’t be returning email, my cell phone will go unanswered, enjoy school without me. And as we make arrangements and look at others with wet eyes and stand in memorial services and make the long drive to the cemetery and the longer drive back, we are reminded in no tiny way exactly how small and mortal we are. Someday, we must all travel where the deceased has traveled, regardless of the means. It causes us to consider the connections between this life and that journey after death. It makes us consider the big questions of existence and faith.

I recently spoke with a buddy who lost a friend at a fairly young 51. In his bereavement, he wanted to die, and gladly would have given his life to bring his friend back. But as we talked, we worked out that what he saw as giving his life was, in fact, giving his death, and it had the power to do nothing. Only One death has ever made life possible. And, my friend and I concluded, it really is about giving our lives for our friends and family, and by that, I mean living each day as an investment in the lives of those we hold dear. And so, I hope for those of us who remain, we view this time of loss as a time to hear the charge to live and commit ourselves to doing it with relish. To live for all it’s worth. Attempting great things. Or small things in great ways.

No, suicide is not painless. No death is. But as Claire said in Elizabethtown, “We are intrepid. We carry on.”

Ed.

Approximate coverage area of radio station we applied for (click to expand). The red line is strong coverage, but the signal would extend possibly to the yellow line.

From Your Friendly Publisher & Executive Editor:

Well, it’s been quite a week. Actually, it’s been quite a year. At the beginning of 2009, I had no inkling that I would be living with my in-laws in my hometown running a (largely) one-man news and info site on December 11th of the same year. That’s not to say I don’t want to be here. Since I graduated high school (“The best class alive is the class of ’95!”), I’ve wanted to come back. Thanks to the Internet (go Rural iNet!), that is now possible. Jeane and I have been back since August, and we moved here for purely family reasons, which is as it should be. We’re thrilled to be back home, with our two sets of parents half a block apart, running our eight-year-old publicity business from Welch’s main street.

One of my previous schemes to get us back here had to do with radio. Some of you may have seen the public notice in the Vinita Daily Journal back in 2007. I’ve never had an opportunity to explain that publicly, so I’ll tell you a bit about it.

I fell in love with radio when I was 16 years old. Mike McClure, who never was my coach but was my drivers’ ed teacher, told me on one of our many jaunts to Miami—with a driving partner we both thought would kill us all, incidentally—that he thought I would be good in radio and asked if I was interested. I was, and long story short, Dave Boyd hired me to work at KITO in Vinita. (I kid you not, the very first question Dave Boyd asked me when I went to my interview was, “Can you read?” I replied, “Yes,” and Dave said, “Well, then, come on back.”) So, all of a sudden, I’m in radio. Live radio. Alone at the station for six hours at a stretch with no end to the disasters I could cause. I am still thankful I never initiated wide-spread panic and mayhem. But I was pretty awful when I started, but I guess everyone is in the beginning. I worked Sunday nights 6 p.m. to midnight until I graduated. And I got better as time went on. After graduation, they asked if I would like to cover the newly vacant midnight-6 a.m. over the summer until I left for OSU. I jumped at the chance, and it both allowed me to get pretty good at radio and screwed up my internal clock forever (which is why I am writing this at 1:12 a.m., though you won’t see it until 9 a.m.) In college, I worked for KOSU and, just for fun, I also did a nonsense cable radio show. I eventually ended up transitioning to Educational Television Services at OSU, then left to join Jeane full-time in Wynn-Wynn Media. But wherever I have been and whatever I have done, I have always maintained a love for the medium of radio, especially a type of radio that is rarely done these days: truly local radio that is not merely a relay of some satellite feed or a 24/7 computer automated jukebox designed to make you think there’s a real person on the air when the station house is empty as my plate after supper. And I love radio partly because of the experience I have had with it.

That summer at KITO was a blast. I got into radio just as CDs were beginning to revolutionize the industry, and I am glad I got there when I did because I have actually spun vinyl and cut and spliced tape manually, which no one does anymore. When I was at KITO, they still played original 45 rpm singles in main rotation (and they still had turntables with a 78 rpm setting—heck, I even found a couple old 78 records that I played a few times). And there were actual people on the radio. The program director never once gave me a list of the music I would play. I was put in a control room filled with music, given some basic rules, and allowed to be a disc jockey. Those days are gone. And that’s a shame.

And that leads me to my great radio pursuit. It is dang near impossible to get a new radio station licensed, especially close to large metro areas. And on top of that, you can’t even apply for a non-commercial station until the FCC opens a filing window. (If I ever have a station, it will have to be non-commercial because I’ll never be rich enough to buy an existing commercial station or have a new commercial frequency licensed). We lived in Claremore for several years, and I started pursuing radio opportunities there. Being that Claremore is about as close as you can get to a large metro, our opportunities were slim, but we still wanted to try. My radio consultants and engineers were confident that the FCC would soon be opening a filing window and determined that a non-commercial frequency was available if I licensed it for Pryor. It would have been a nice-sized station at 11,000 watts. So, we had them do all the engineering work and get our application ready for when the filing window came. And they were right, the FCC announced that a filing window would be opened for five days in October 2007. We were ahead of the game and had everything ready to go early. When the window was opened, all my consultants had to do was push “send,” and I had to write a few checks along the way.

Things were rosy until I got an email from my consultants about two weeks before the filing window was scheduled to open. Another radio station in Missouri had applied for a power increase. As an existing station, their application would be granted as a matter of course, and once granted, their expanded signal made all of our engineering work moot. My application turned into garbage in about 1.8 seconds. We were pretty crushed. My consultants looked for any other opportunities and said we just lived too close to Tulsa for anything to work. That’s when a light went off for me. I said I knew a place that wasn’t anywhere near a large metro area, my hometown. They started looking at the engineering data for Welch, Oklahoma, and said that it looked great. They even identified the cell tower that sits on Paula Goodwin’s property as ideal for our antenna. We had them work up the new application in record time, and what resulted was an even more powerful station, operating at 91.1 FM at 13,000 watts, centered in Welch, America. They were also fairly confident that, given our rural location, our application would be what is called a “singleton.” That simply means that once all the applications were received in the filing window, ours would have no competing applications. As a high schooler working at KITO, I had dreamed of having my own Welch radio station someday, and now it looked like it was a strong possibility.

Non-commercial radio stations must be owned by a non-profit organization, most of the members of which must reside in close proximity to the city of license, so I set about to retool the non-profit I had created to apply for the Pryor station to work for the Welch station. The primary need was for new board members fairly local to Welch. I’m thankful that Jana Chenoweth, Shelley Earp, Delbert Lovelace, and Jerry Spaulding agreed to serve on my board. One of the other FCC requirements is that public notice must be run in a county newspaper, and that was what some of you saw at the time.

We had to work quick, but we got everything done we had to do, and our application was duly filed within the filing window. Then, you wait. Had we been a singleton, the granting of a construction permit would have been automatic and relatively quick, and we then would have had three years to get the station operational.

A more technical coverage map (click to expand)

We were far from a singleton. In fact, we had 16 competing applications, which ranged from the Cherokee Nation, which applied for a 100,000-watt monster in Tahlequah to the Miami Indian Foundation, which applied for a 5,000-watt station between here and Miami to do Indian language programming, to the Knights of Columbus of Fort Scott, Kansas, which would have done mainly Catholic programming. The FCC places all competing applications in what they call “mutually exclusive groups” or “MX groups,” then they start looking at the engineering data to make the determination of which application will win, and they start with the smaller MX groups and work to the larger ones. There are all kinds of complicated data they consider and put into formulas to decide who will win. And there is only one winner. One application will be selected to receive the construction permit, and everyone else ties for last place. As part of a large, 16-member MX group, we knew it would be a while before the FCC reached a determination on us. But, my consultants were able to do the number crunching using the FCC’s formulas and determine who would end up winning in our MX group. I had them do the math, and they determined that we would not win our group. They estimated that the FCC would eventually select a monastery applying for a license for Oaks, Oklahoma, as our MX group’s winner. We were crushed again. There was nothing left to do but wait to get the official word and pay some more consulting bills.

Fast forward to just a couple months ago, and we got the official word from the FCC that the monastery in Oaks has been selected as the winner of our MX group, just as my consultants had predicted. And I do want to say that my consultants are awesome. They do phenomenal work, and they have a heart for the kind of radio I want to do. We were fortunate to have them working for us. But no matter how good they are, they cannot bend the laws of physics and make radio waves do what radio waves can’t do. And so, for now, we’ll have no radio station in Welch. But we do have a Web site for local news and info. I’ll do my best to make a go of it, and I hope you’ll help me. So far, we’ve been live for four days, and the response has been all positive. All I can ask is please read us, please tell your friends, and please send us news and info to share (and, if you have a product or service to share, you can always buy an ad!).

It ain’t radio, but it ain’t bad for now.

T. Wynn