Club member Brad Thorp posed a number of open-ended questions to our club member Jim Briggs to illicit information about his past so members can get to know him better.

The "Legendary Jim Briggs," known as "The Voice of Dayton," in his radio broadcasting days, said he was born in Columbia City, Indiana, a town on US 30. He spent his first 11 years living on his dad's farm and then when his dad became a mail carrier and moved to town, the family made the town their home. He said he got a rare scholarship, the Rector Scholarship, to DePaul University. "You had to keep your grades up, and I didn't keep them up, so it went away," he said.

Jim said his brother Don, born three years later than him, got his pilot's license and pharmacy degree and flew all over the world on active duty with Wright-Patterson Air Force, flying transport aircraft. He also flew with Northwest Airlines. He died from a rare form of cancer in 1998, he said. Jim said he (Jim) had always been interested in flying and radio broadcasting, listening to such things as The Long Ranger as a kid, and chose the U.S. Army enlistment after college because he could learn and work in broadcasting. 

After college, he got his first job in Goshen, Ind., but ended up enlisting in the U.S. Army and spending 1961 to 1963 stationed in Korea, after a year in Massachusetts. He was in Korea during a military coup, he said. He liked the work ethic of the Koreans, he said, and now drives a Korean car. When he came back to the states there was a little radio station in Indiana to work at, but he applied to other stations and got no answer until Jan. 1963 when he got a call from Winston Hayner at WONE, where he stayed for two years. When the station was sold he went to WING, where he stayed for 18 years. 

 

As for hobbies, Jim said he liked aviation and took lessons and got his pilot's license and flew and gave traffic reports from the air. When that became too much of a job, working split shifts, he gave that up. 

He likes golf, but tells people he has a handicap of 13: "When I've lost 13 balls, l'm going home."

He said one of the most interesting things most people don't know about him, is his granddaughter, who is going to be six in March. His one (of two) son lives in Vancouver. His granddaughter reads some and can mulltiply, having gone to three pre-schools. 

 

After leaving the radio station, Jim said he wrote scripts for audio presentations for a year and then worked with an ad agency for two years. He ushered at church, worked with the neighborhood priority board in Dayton and did volunteer work for 15 years as a Centerville Planning Commission member.

Bob Smith, a member of his church, told him one day that the director of the Dayton Area Cancer Agency and Heart Association would be leaving and that they needed a replacement. "It was 38 percent more money than I had ever made," Jim said. "I was there 16 years." 

 

Jim had been a member of the Dayton Rotary, but "after I retired, I decided I don't need to go downtown," so he joined the Centerville Rotary Club, he said. 

Note: Jim's great command of the spoken word was heard by all attending club member Hans Berkel's funeral, as Jim spoke and read a family member's letter about Hans, that was all the more poignant by his memorable reading.