By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
KFEQ celebrates 100 years of broadcasting all this year and the impact of the station extends beyond St. Joseph and the Midland Empire.
Former Missouri Broadcasters Association Executive Director Don Hicks recalls the impact former KFEQ General Manager Ted Griffin had on Missouri broadcasters after Griffin left KFEQ to become the first executive director of the MBA in 1972.
“Ted came in on ground zero; just built it,” Hicks tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post in an interview. “He built the association.”
Hicks says Griffin and his wife, Dottie, inherited a bunch of boxes in a hallway of an office building in downtown Jefferson City. The MBA had lost its lease.
Hicks succeeded Griffin and credits Griffin with creating the structure the association enjoys today.
“They hired the right guy,” Hicks says. “Ted was highly regarded and well-respected by everyone who knew him. Everybody knew him to be what he was. He was a hardworking, honest guy.”
Former KFEQ General Manager Gene Millard worked under Griffin at KFEQ, then worked with his former boss at the MBA. Millard says you cannot talk about Ted without talking about his wife, Dottie.
“Well, when they got Ted, they got the package,” Millard tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “They got Ted and Dottie. Dottie did the book work and did the internal office communication, kept the files. They were just a great team. Planned great meetings and gathered a unity among Missouri broadcasters that we were on the same mission in many respects.”
Griffin would serve a lengthy term, leading the MBA, serving from 1972 until the end of 1993.
Ted Griffin died in 1995.
A former KFEQ Agriculture Director is making a national impact still.
Tom Brand directed KFEQ agriculture programming from 1996 until 2011, when he left to become National Association of Farm Broadcasters Executive Director.
Brand says his work with Millard influences him as he leads the NAFB.
“Gene was very hands-on when it came to programming and just what we were engaged in each day,” Brand tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post, “but, at the same time, he let me do my own thing.”
Brand says the first year he worked at KFEQ, he was trying to figure out how best to present commodity markets and cover farm news, the second year he attempted to make it his own, and the third year he began to feel the department actually was his own.
Brand says the advice and guidance Millard gave him was invaluable. Brand says his time at KFEQ influences him today, especially with the goals NAFB teaches its members: leave your mark on your community, your workplace, and your industry.
“We like that three-step process of, hey, don’t say I’m going to be involved with NAFB to begin with, say I’m going to get vested here, in my community,” Brand says. “I’m going to get vested here, in my workplace and because of the relationships and the investment that I’ve made in those two things, it’s just natural that I get involved in my industry and then feed back to the next generation how they can get involved in their community and their workplace, too.”