End of an Era
Tom Clark Retired
on April 30
Tom Clark
Over the years Tom
interviewed more politicians, historians, activists, authors,
environmentalists, candidates, pundits, and professors than he
can remember. “By welcoming grass roots citizen groups on
the air, and by giving voice to those ignored by mainstream
media, Tom has done what few others can claim. He has kept
their hopes alive,” said Ed Garvey, former Democratic
candidate for governor and now a partner at a Madison law firm.
“We will miss him.”
Greg Schnirring,
director of Wisconsin Public Radio, described Tom as “the
heart and soul of the Ideas Network. His commitment to
issue-oriented talk programming was heard in each and every
program that he hosted. Tom had the ability to get guests and
callers to focus their thinking…his questions were often
pointed, but he was always fair.”
“I don’t
want this to be a sad time,” Tom told his audience back
in February. “While I’ll be leaving at the end of
April, the program, I trust, will thrive and listeners will
continue to tune in.” Later he added in his humble,
self-deprecating way, “Audiences are fickle. I think two
weeks after I’m gone nobody’s going to remember
me.” Long-time friend and radio co-host Dr.
Zorba Paster laughed. “Tom is a curmudgeon par
excellence. But in fact, when one knows the real Tom, you
realize his heart is a heart of gold.”
What’s Tom up
to now? He said he had no grand plans. “I haven’t
given it much thought yet. I hope to be doing some
volunteering,” he said. “I’ll do some
traveling, get on my motorcycle. We’ll see.”
Tom then summed it up
perfectly: “It was a nice run. Now it’s
over.”
Say it ain’t so!
After nearly 28 years on Wisconsin Public
Radio, Tom Clark retired on April 30.
His distinctive
voice, startling laugh, and razor-sharp questions earned him
the admiration of thousands of guests over the years (more than
21,000 guests, in fact). “As a conservative, I always
felt Tom to be quite fair,” said John McAdams, associate
professor of political science at Marquette University.
“I enjoyed being on Tom’s show. His intelligence
and perceptiveness created one of the very few class acts in
talk radio.”
Tom, now 66, first
joined Wisconsin Public Radio as a part-time student announcer
and assistant program director in 1963. He left Madison in 1966
to work at other stations in Wisconsin and Illinois, then
returned to Wisconsin Public Radio in the mid-1970s to do
interviews and news during the afternoons. Tom then became news
director, program director, Morning
Edition host, and a
mid-morning call-in host. When the Ideas Network schedule was
created, Tom was tapped to host the all-important morning block
from 6:00 – 9:00 a.m. That was 12-1/2 years ago.
It was a gamble back
then to replace National Public Radio’s popular morning
newsmagazine with live call-ins. “I was optimistic about
the new format,” said Tom. “In my mind, I thought
there was a public radio audience out there, an educated public
radio audience interested in listener involvement and
interviews early in the day. We managed to sustain over time
and we found an audience.”
