Hall of Famer Bill Bleyle is liking a name you know as synonymous with the founding of WJPZ in 1972-1973. Today he's joined by another trailblazer, his classmate Carol Mason, to take us back to the very beginning of WJPZ.
A Buffalo native, Bill grew up fascinated by the technology of radio, picking up stations from Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles at night. By the time he got to SU, he'd already collected a number of spare parts.
Carol, a native New Yorker, grew up idolizing former New York Yankees shortstop and then-announcer Phil Rizzuto. She wanted to be his broadcast partner. She worked at WAER, where classmate Bob Costas told her she'd have to lose her New York accent. There, a mutual friend told Carol about another radio station that Bill and Craig Fox were starting, WJPZ.
Bill tells us how they cobbled his stash of equipment, gear leftover from the WAER upgrade, and inexpensive Radio Shack turntables to start WJPZ. For 50 years, the station has been a place where you can make mistakes and learn from them - that included when Carol played Billy Joel's new song "Piano Man" at the wrong speed on that turntable.
Both of today's guests credit WJPZ's first program director, Brian Miller, for running a tight ship and getting the attention of Syracuse's WNDR. And Bill's recollection of that FCC visit differs slightly from the story we've all heard Dr. Wright tell.
Bill refers to Rick as a "match made in heaven" for the radio station. Most Newhouse professors at the time were academics - Professor Wright had the real world radio experience to help the radio station flourish. They were on the air, growing their listeners, and selling ads.
There weren't many women in radio in the 1970's - in music, sports, or otherwise. But Carol quickly made a name for herself - landing gigs in Buffalo, Chicago, and New York. And while she never worked with Phil Rizzuto, she and Scooter did get to meet. Now she's working for the University of Maryland.
Bill went into local radio after graduation, but soon reconnected with his passion for public service, working his way up through the police department, "retiring" as a Captain in the Manlius Police Department. But he never stopped working - as both an engineer at the local ClearChannel/iHeart stations, and in law enforcement. He's ran the county 911 operations center and jail, before actually retiring at the end of 2022.
Bill and Carol reflect on their time at WJPZ, and what they've seen the station do over 50 years. In fact Bill, never one to brag, enjoyed watching his kids love Z89. And it wasn't until the 40-year anniversary documentary came out that they even learned Dad helped start this whole thing.
Join Us in Syracuse for Banquet on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag gay. We have a real treat for you. We have two members of the class of 1976 on with us. They were there in the very beginning when this whole thing started. Down to the University of Maryland down at College Park. We've got Carol Mason, and we have from the Onondaga County Sheriff's Office.
Mr. Bill Bleyle. Welcome to you both. Bill, let me start with you. We've heard Dr. Wright tell the story about the knock at the door and these years later. Tell me from your perspective what it was like when you had the idea to start WJPZ.
Bill: WJPZ came out of. I know when I came to Syracuse University, radio was already in my blood.
I spent a lot of time as a kid listening to all distant radio stations in bed at night, and I just had a great love for radio and I enjoyed the curriculum in radio and television at Syracuse University. I learned a lot about the law and a number of other things, but I just felt like it wasn't the radio I knew.
Immediately I'm coming on campus. I went to work at WAER, got involved, lot of really great people. Bob Costas, I did engineering for the Leeds brothers, Harvey and Steve, just amazing people. It was Progressive Radio at the time. It wasn't what I've considered to be the kind of radio that I was interested in long term and.
Came upon a, and I'm not gonna tell you who was running it, but it, it was a bootleg station operating outta Lawrinson. And it was an FM station at the time. And I thought if they can do it, why can't we? And we found a bunch of people who felt the same way. The first person I came upon was Craig Fox, and we decided to try something that would keep our interest going. It would fuel, it would be a great compliment to what we were learning at the university.
JAG: At what point, Carol, did you get involved? Did you find out about what these guys are doing?
Carol: I don't know, Bill, if you remember his last name? Somebody Paul. He had blond hair.
And so all I remember I was at WAER too, but I never knew Bill there, but Bob Costas, I met him. I had this desire to be Phil Rizzuto's broadcasting partner. Phil Rizzuto. For those that don't know who he was the scooter. Played the New York Yankees. And I'm only 29 years old, so I don't wanna give him away my age here.
JAG: Of course.
Bill: I think we did with the year of graduation. .
Carol: Yeah. And Phil Rizzuto was a hero to me, so I got in at WAER learning how to write sports, trying to get rid of my York accent that Bob Costas said should not apply. And then there was a guy, Paul, who. It'll come to us, but I just can't remember his last name offhand.
And he goes, oh, there's a new radio station, WJPZ, and they need somebody to work noon to three. Are you available? I said, yes. I was gonna make room. And I said, sure. I figured, okay, this is my chance. I might not get on the sports page right away, but I could try this. So the first song I played was Billy Joel's Piano Man.
And it was doing records. You're turning a record so people are wondering what that is. Piece of vinyl. You can look it up online. They're called 45's and it was a Billy Joel's song and it started at the wrong speed.
JAG: Oh no.
Carol: Oh yes.
And Bill had said, this was funny. "Who the heck is that over here?
I can't remember your exact words Bill, but it was so funny, and I said, I think there goes my career, but somehow they had the patience to nurse me through it and I learned how to make my mistakes and be on the air at WJPZ, and I'm forever grateful to everybody there. Bill and Craig Fox was starting. The station up against impossible odds and wasn't there.
Brian Miller? There were other people there. I'm trying to remember.
Bill: Brian Miller was first program director.
Carol: Yeah. And Bill and Craig deserve most of this. And Greg Hernandez who it was wonderful to hear from him, but they deserve the credit because it was a hodgepodge of old equipment, but this took commitment.
You think today everything is much easier. You had to have element nine if you were using equipment on the air just in local radio. And it was wonderful for people like me because I was able to experience actually being on the air, not playing three hours of Laidback Lenny kind of music and go, oh yeah, you just heard this was a real radio station.
You learned we had to sell time. We went to Plaza 81 Pharmacy. This is what I'm thinking. And I was able to help Bill and Craig build it, pretty much get it known and different people, Mike Roberts came and all these other folks, Chris Tyler. It was very exciting. I think we knew we were in trouble when a couple of the local Syracuse stations, was it WNDR, Bill? I'm trying to remember.
Bill: WNDR.
Carol: Yelled, and then we weren't broadcasting more than two feet.
JAG: You were a threat. And that's something that we've seen as a theme that's cropped back up in this podcast over 50 years is the station does so well the big boys in town are like, hey, what is this thing going on at campus? They're taking food off our table here.
Bill, I wanna come back to what Carol mentioned about the equipment. Take me through, the way we've heard it from other people, but I want to ask from you, since you had the first hand experience. That essentially AER was getting rid of all this equipment that was old in the early seventies there.
And you're what, ticking through it? Take me through this.
Bill: It was a combination of a lot of different equipment. I had in high school I was a member of, I don't know if what in scouting explorer posts are, but okay. I had an explorer post. We were trying to get a radio station going and some equipment donated from group W at the time that were, they were getting rid of some cart machines. And other things they had sent us. And the station never got off the ground. So we were able to use some of that equipment. We did get a lot of equipment from WAER.
Old board, the turntables were all, thank God for Radio Shack because at the time, we did a lot of replacement of turntables, for very inexpensive, you could buy very cheap turntables. Pretty much it was beg, borrow, and steal wherever we could. And I'm sure it's not that way today.
At the time, that's what we had available. I know, we all had limited income. We were going to Syracuse University, we were students. I was working a number of part-time jobs, so I had some money to spare. We did have advertisers and Carol, I'm still having flashbacks. You mentioned Plaza 81 Pharmacy and I'm having flashbacks of Acropolis Pizza.
Carol: Oh my gosh. Oh yes.
Bill: They finally went out of business.
JAG: And worth mentioning, a lot of our listeners are gonna picture the Acropolis that just closed on Marshall Street, but it was originally not on Marshall Street.
Bill: It was on Westcott. I think they were long longtime advertisers on WJPZ. They were important to give us that money to, to buy the little bit of things that we had to buy for our turntables and things. But we did do the battle. You mentioned WNDR. We had a lot of very talented people. It lit a fire in a lot of people and, it was the, you talked about the little engine that could. It was basically, we had a tower on top of Day Hall.
It was basically what you call a top loaded pole antenna with on a Coke bottle to keep it up. And, it was at times, it went up, it was a hundred milliwatts is what you could do. And that wouldn't even get us into the rooms at Day Hall. But we did have a highly compressed signal, which got us out a little ways from the University campus and, had to have listeners building up.
And I think the radio stations at the time, it was very competitive. I had worked at WOLF on the weekends. And I know that WOLF wasn't so much concerned, but WNDR on the other hand was fighting a battle against WOLF and there was another battle because, formatted wise, we weren't too far from WOLF. It was a hard fought program at the time in competitive, and Brian Miller was the program director and Brian was a programming genius in my opinion. I know, I don't know what he's doing today, but he really was able to, run a tight ship and that, I think, scared some of the local radio stations and brought the FCC upon us .
Carol: And I don't know how Rick Wrights involvement came and I guess still can elaborate on that.
But the point is, you, Bill and Craig have changed so many lives, more than you'll ever know because I'm hearing who's the man at CBS that you said made a video?
JAG: Scott McFarlane.
Carol: These are people who, if you guys didn't play around with this equipment, wouldn't be where they are today.
So I truly believe Bill and Craig are heroes for what they've done. Because people at the University, corporate wasn't gonna do it. And we know that you are either in the trenches or you're in the suits, and we were in the trenches. And I think that's what made WJPZ extremely successful. Because WAER was considered Syracuse's own station like they were the favorite son.
So I think a lot of credit goes to those first few years. and taking a chance on people like me and others that never were on the air before, because you never know where life is gonna take you. It was such an exciting four years .
Bill: Yeah. I don't like to take credit, I had a hunger, and Craig had a hunger and, we just happened to have the parts to put together and the idea to put things together.
But really what it boils down to is all the people that were a part of WJPZ, we had a very difficult signal. It was a very limited signal. It's you really had to have a love for what you were doing and the people that came to WJPZ and stayed with WJPZ, every one of 'em had a desire, to move forward.
And over the years, the station moved forward. Getting onto cable channel. And eventually getting licensed on FM and that really had to do with every single person, whoever participated at WJPZ. We very rarely had somebody come and go. Yeah, they had a true love for radio. They came in their freshman year or sophomore year, and they stayed with us the whole time.
And it was because they had that dedication and love and no two people could have done it without every single person along the way. It was a family of people that had a real deep feeling for radio and many of them went on to be successful. Anne McDermott. Remember her, Carol?
Carol: Oh, wow. Yeah. She went to CNN. Was it CNN?
Bill: She went to CNN.
JAG: What you just said, Bill, I think, speaks volumes about the culture at the radio station, and this is something we've heard in so many episodes of the podcast about that culture and that family. It starts when the two of you were there. It starts. You hear so many people say, I found my tribe when I got to Syracuse.
I know me personally, I got to Syracuse in the fall of 1998. I was from Boston, five hours from home. I was homesick. I didn't really know anybody, and I walked into the station and next thing you know, these guys are standing up in my wedding. It was just this atmosphere of folks that, and it started with the culture that you established in the seventies. So 72 or 73, the station went on?
Bill: I wanna say late 72.
JAG: At what point does Rick Wright get involved? I want to hear the story from the student perspective?
Bill: Basically we were an unofficial Syracuse University organization. We stayed with Spectrum Records, Campus Conveniences in their buildings.
They were one of our advertisers. We traded off. rent When the FCC came and no, they didn't put a lock on the door. That's not a true story. They came and actually, I think they were very impressed by the operation that, the students were doing what they did.
JAG: We don't have to rename the scholarship now, do we?
Bill: No, I think it perpetuates a myth. I like it. Okay. That's okay. I don't mind that The FCC were very good, very cooperative. But they did write a letter to the University and that that stirred some waves. No university chancellor wants to get a letter from the FCC saying you're operating a pirate radio station and you need to, come into compliance with the proper laws regarding low power operation.
JAG: Let me follow up on that actually. Bill, what did the FCC want? Did they want it shut down? What was the FCC looking for when they complained to the university?
Bill: Compliance. Like I said, I think they were impressed. We lowered the power to where we should be and the University, as a part of getting that letter, wanted us to become an organization. Wanted us to have a faculty advisor. Rick Wright was suggested, and boy, what a pot of gold he turned out to be. I remember going to his office to meet him, and there is a man that, that I had felt a largely academic presence at Newhouse until I ran into Rick Wright
And Rick. Rick was, and I don't mean that in a negative way. No, not at all. Rick knew radio. He knew the same radio that we loved and he loved that same radio. So it was a match made in heaven moving forward with him.
JAG: So the university needed you to have an advisor to be an official organization. Is that part of the story accurate?
Bill: Yes.
Carol: Also, I just wanna stress it was treated like a real radio station. You couldn't be late to your shift and we're having Brian Miller on top of that was fantastic and you had to learn from your mistakes and you had to be tight, you had to sell it. We had to have a group of people that went and sold the time we were surviving.
Yes, we became a student organization with Rick Wright, but we were surviving by all of us working together very hard, and no question in my mind after we graduated this continued with other people going to the FM band. I don't know that history as well, but I can tell you. If it weren't for the commitment of every single person involved, it wouldn't have lasted, but it did.
I think it really made a huge impact in the radio industry because we were actually doing top 40 format and as such, becoming very creative and learning how to do everything so that people that graduated that maybe not necessarily went on the air, did other things. Production, sales, marketing, so many things that we did for it to survive.
And to this day, I'm forever grateful for the radio station and the people that started it.
JAG: Are there any funny stories? I'll ask this to either one of you, whoever wants to take it first. Funny stories you can think of back in those days that you still look back and laugh on?
Carol: I can tell you one, I sometimes get very clumsy. It's an attribute, but it's also a curse sometimes. And we were all joking around, and I don't know if it was you Bill, but somebody slammed the door and hit my head and all of a sudden it was bleeding.
JAG: Oh my God.
Bill: I do remember that.
Carol: And I went to the emergency room in a hospital and it was Bill's aunt, was it your aunt that was there?
I'm trying to remember. Like, what happened? You see we were at a radio station. Yeah. Uhhuh. Sure you were. But it was one of those miracle things. Yes. It was sad, but you had to laugh. It was just one of these crazy. Who gets hit with a door? Never mind, starts to bleed at a radio station and winds up in an emergency room?
And the guy that gives me the ride, it's his aunt. That was like, really? You used to do late shows, Bill. You were hilarious on the air at night. You had this high energy. It just was fun. It was a wonderful four years. Like I said, I'm forever grateful. I tell people that I run into, still to this day, about the radio station.
I said to you, if you're serious about radio, that's where you go. Of course I whisper it around here .
JAG: Yeah. You don't wanna offend any of the Terps around you down there. I understand.
Carol: No. But it was a wonderful experience. Oh, you know what was funny? We had a bunch of radio people from WJPZ that went to Abe's Donuts. Do you remember that? We all dressed up.
Bill: Oh. Abe's Donuts used to be on Erie Boulevard and the hot donuts came out around midnight.
Carol: And one night we just all dressed up to go to this greasy spoon. That's what it was. It was like, not. And it, it was so funny. I guess it was just one of these, let's celebrate the radio station by going to Abes Donuts.
JAG: Fraternities and sororities had their formals. You just dressed up to go to the donut shop.
Carol: And they were good, weren't they? They were delicious.
Bill: Oh, they were great. Especially when they were hot.
JAG: Bill, any stories from back in the day stick out to you, that you look back on fondly?
Bill: People always have asked me where did the call letters come from? How did you come up with WJPZ? I remember I was working, I worked through the entire four years at WAER. I was an engineer and, they always paid somebody to, to be the engineer. And Craig Fox and I think it was a holiday when we were planning this. And we were both staying in Syracuse and keeping WAER on the air over the holiday.
And we were in the back room and we were coming up with call letters, wanting to come up with call letters for our radio station. And basically we put a bunch of letters in a hat, and drew them. We knew we had to start with a W. But we drew the letters out of a hat and as we drew the letters, we checked the we had a broadcast yearbook at the time. And checked to make sure that it was a call that wasn't already taken. So that's how we did it.
JAG: You Bill, you are putting to bed. So many myths that have been perpetuated over the years. Cuz I was always told that JPZ was picked because it sounded like ABC. You're telling me that's just one of those stories that took on its own life?
Carol: Yes. I just wanna know how these stories got started, . When did this happen?
Bill: Everybody likes to tell a story, it's that, that's how I remember it anyways. It has been 50 years. There's a lot of things that have gone out of my brain.
Carol: I can't believe it's really 50 years. My goodness.
What a miracle it is. And it's still there, and it's. It's still doing very well. I love hearing that, to know that you guys started something and we were all part of the first years of something. It's like we were pioneers and didn't realize it.
JAG: And that's been what's been so rewarding about doing this podcast is I'm speaking to you guys who are class of 76.
I spoke to Kyle, left the general manager who graduated in 22 that helped get the station through Covid. Wow. We have such a wide swath of folks on this podcast. I wanna ask you both about what you've been up to in the time since, Carol, if you could briefly take me through your through your career since graduation.
Carol: Yeah. It's funny, every phase of your life, I can roll with the flow. There's a great song Charlie Rich Rolling With the Flow. It's an old song. You can look it up on the internet today, and the words are just basically I keep on rolling with the flow. I wound up in New York. I went to Indianapolis and from there, Chicago, four months later and I wound up doing radio in New York, was top 40 pop music.
Adult contemporary, I guess we'd call it today. Adult Contemporary WYNY. It was a lot of fun. Then every program director does things differently, but the funniest story I can tell you in my radio career, which was hilarious, I was working in for about two and a half, three years, at WJEZ, not WJPZ.
And it was a Country FM and. We're at Comiskey Park with the White Sox. See now I'm dating myself again. Comiskey Park with the White Sox.
JAG: I think they still call it Comiskey. Most of the locals. You're fine.
Carol: I hope so, cuz it was its history, and I even seeing the Cubbies win was exciting. But anyway.
So we're at Comiskey Park and we're doing Yankees are playing the White Sox. I said, oh my goodness, Phil Rizzuto, I really, I have to meet my hero. He's like my favorite baseball broadcaster because he's a true Yankee fan. Sure. And one of the news people there said to Phil, Carol Mason, one of our DJs wants to meet you.
So I went up there, I met him. This was so exciting. I told him, oh, I love your job the way you work. And I was like a schoolgirl. I was so excited to see this is the hero my father always watched on TV or relatives. What a pleasure that was. Okay. Fast forward a couple of years. I'm in New York at WYNY.
Now WYNY was the NBC owned and operated. FM station. Why am I saying that? Because the Yankees were broadcasted on WABC, which was the ABC owned and operated, our big competition. So the engineers loved to talk. They talked to each other, and at the time, the engineers were running our boards.
We didn't run our own board. It was a Union, and this was in New York. So one of my friends from Chicago calls to tell me, Hey I told Phil Rizzuto that you're working in New York, on the TV side and on the radio side, he mentioned, he goes, oh, Carol Mason, very good friend of mine in New York.
She works at WYNY. She said hi to me. And I didn't know this was going on at the time I'm on the air. They went crazy at WABC because.
JAG: He shouted out the competition!
Carol: It was a competition. And then my father heard the same thing at WPIX TV 11. He had mentioned it there and my father like, is this true?
Did he mention you? Or, I'm just imagining it. It was so funny. But what, to me, that was the most exciting day. that words I said, oh my gosh. He mentioned me because someone said, Carol Mason says, hi. He goes I remember her! She was here.
JAG: They always say, don't meet your heroes, but sometimes you meet your heroes and they live up to it. So that's really cool.
Carol: It was my favorite night in radio. Thanks to WJPZ, I had a great career in New York and then we moved to Maryland and I decided to keep my foot in the door by working part-time on the weekends. It's funny, I get to do other things, have a family, and at the same time keep my foot in the door.
But finally, In 2011, I decided it was time because working seven days a week just didn't cut it. But I still am in touch with people. It was such a great experience. That's why I think JPZ I believe in it so strongly. It's such a great radio station for anybody that's interested in any aspect of the broadcasting. And that's, thanks to you guys for starting it.
JAG: Bill, take me through your career arc since graduation.
Bill: First I just wanna jump on something that Carol brought back some memories for me when she talked about everybody there and I mentioned that everybody you just had to have a love and taking people back that are in radio today, you listen and you hear females are very commonplace on the air.
They weren't back then. Especially, Carol talks about wanting to do sports but even DJs, I can't remember any female DJs other than one part-time one of the local radio stations. It was very rare. You just didn't see females on the air in radio in top 40, and Carol amazed a lot of people.
She really developed talent quickly and to the point, and I still remember this, that. Sandy Beach, from WKBW, in Buffalo was, driving on the thruway and was able to came up, he had heard about WJPZ, the student run station, and Carol happened to be on the air at the time.
And next thing you know, Sandy Beach is, which is my radio station of my life, when I was young. Calling her, asking her if she wanted to come to work at WKBQ . And for a station like that, which I, and having a program director like him, recognizing that talent when you can go from WJPZ to Chicago and then New York. That says a lot about the individual.
Carol: And you and you for starting it.
Bill: You know, a lot of talents and a lot of females, Anne McDermott, got their start in, in a career that otherwise was closed, to female talent at the time.
Carol: Thank you. None of this would've happened if you and Craig Fox and started it the way you did.
And that's why I said a lot of people, I mean. You never know what your calling is gonna be in life, but think about what you've accomplished, how can you help but be happy with that kind of track record? It's amazing. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful for every. Every time we walked into campus. Conveniences building every walk to Plaza 81 Pharmacy.
And yes, I think if I recall, didn't we all eat Acropolis Pizza a couple of times?
Bill: Once never again.
JAG: Bill, take me through your career since Syracuse.
Bill: When I left, I started at WHEN Radio. I was interested in management and decided that I, the way to get there was sales. And, at the time, big corporate was taking over the company that bought just before I joined WHEN. Really was the let's draw as much money out of it.
They didn't have the love for broadcasting. So that kind of soured my thoughts. During the summers when I, and I lived in Buffalo. I had a job that I worked for the immigration and naturalization service, and I developed an interest in law enforcement and took some civil service tests and got into the police department and worked my way up 32 years to captain and retired.
At the same time, I was able to apply a lot of the technical knowledge. I loved the engineering of radio. I was always fascinated. Here I am, in, in a suburb of Buffalo listening to radio stations in New York City. Yeah. And Chicago. And, even KFI in Los Angeles, the technology amazed me.
So I always had an interest in that. And that interest grew over the years. I got a job in engineering with, It wasn't ClearChannel at the time, but they owned WSYR and Y 94 and WBBS at the time and grew into six or seven stations while I was there. And stayed with that for probably on a part-time basis for probably close to 22, 23 years.
But I retired the technical knowledge after I retired to immediately take a job. I was offered. Because I had been involved in getting a county radio system going and because of that involvement in management and public safety I was offered a job to run the County 911 Center. So I ran Onondaga County's 911 Center for nine years. Retired from there.
And as I was announcing my retirement, the sheriff invited me to lunch. He asked me if I wanted to come over to the sheriff's office and until the end of his term, and I did that and ran a jail. And now I'm at the headquarters running personnel and administration. So now I'm gonna retire.
JAG: Depending on when this airs, that'll either be before or after Bill officially retires on what is it, December 31st, you said?
Bill: Yes, sir.
JAG: What has been your perspective being in Syracuse and in Onondaga County, being within shouting distance of the radio station and how you've watched it evolve over all this time?
Bill: I listened to it evolve, I, Rick Wright and I keep promising each other that we're gonna get together and definitely gonna do that once I retire and have the time to do it.
But the interesting perspective for me was my kids grew up listening to it. Wow. And they didn't know my attachment to. Until one day when Scott did his thing and produced that poster, and I came home and my kids were just absolutely blown away by that.
JAG: You just kept this secret that you were one of the guys that built it when it first started.
Bill: Yeah. They were really surprised. So it was interesting to, to see, they still listened to it. They love it.
Carol: That's great when your kids can see something like that and be so proud. Yeah. And would love to be a fly on the wall, seeing that one. It's such a joy. And I'm sitting here and forgive me, pinch me, but I think we're so lucky that we're around to see this 50 years later.
Think of how lucky we are that I hear such wonderful stories about people that have succeeded in the broadcasting industry and you have your cynics that say things. I think it's a joy that you can go to Syracuse University, be a part of this radio station, give your heart and soul to it, and then really find a place in an industry that wants you the kind of talent you develop at a place like WJPZ.
So to me, I think this is a wonderful story that's probably gonna keep on going. I would love to see it 50 years from now, for the hundred year anniversary, I'm sure there'll be a lot more stories that you'll come up with.
JAG: I'm sure there will be over the next 50. And on behalf of all of us, I wanna thank the two of you for your contributions in those early days, getting this thing off the ground. It's paid dividends over, half a century now at this point.
Bill Bleyle and Carol Mason, from the class of 1976, thank you both so much for your time today.
Bill: Thank you
Carol:. Thanks for having us.