WJPZ at 50

Julie Bruno, '85. on Reconnecting as an Alum

Episode Notes

A few days before Banquet 2023, Jag sat down with fellow Massachusetts Native Julie Bruno from the Class of 1985.   Julie's from the small town of Mansfield, and was the first in her family to go to college, and quickly went from being a big fish in a small pond to the opposite.

She met people from the far away lands of Long Island and New Jersey, and learned that she (gasp) had a wicked accent.   But she had the good fortune of being friends with the coolest girl on her floor - Merry Mary Mancini.  It was easy to follow her over to WJPZ.

To use Julie's own words, she was a "tertiary player" at WJPZ, but when she returned from a semester in Italy and the station went on FM, she saw just how popular WJPZ was getting.   She looks back at what that group accomplished, getting the station on FM, and can't believe what that team pulled off.

Following graduation, Julie worked briefly at WXXX in Burlington, Vermont before deciding the on-air route was not for herShe went home and worked at her home town's new outdoor concert venue, Great Woods.  From there she got connected to media sales where she sold television and then radio in Boston, culminating as national sales manager for legendary rocker WBCN.

Julie spends some time talking about how unique and special the WJPZ bond is.  The Banquet has reconnected her with so many classmates and helped her form relationships with folks who came up through the station after her.

The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.

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Episode Transcription

JAG: Welcome to WJ PZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. I'm gonna try not to slip into my Boston accent in this episode because I'm talking to a fellow Bostonian from the class of 1985. Julie Bruno, welcome to the podcast.

Julie: Hi, JAG. How are you? 

JAG: I'm great. You're supposed to say howaya! 

Julie: It's funny. When I went to Syracuse, I didn't even know I had a Boston accent, until everyone on the floor at school was like laughing at me.

And I had a roommate whose name was Jane Bocker, B-O-C-K-E-R. And one of my other, floormates thought I was saying Barker, b a r k e r, with a Boston accent. So anyway, I had no idea I had an accent until I get up there and I actually have gotten rid of it. 

JAG: I have too. People are, oh, you're from Boston? You don't have the accent. I'm like I was mercilessly taunted by my floormates in Sadler freshman year. People think I'm kidding when I say. So the thing in your bedroom that you put your clothes in, in, in the dresser, The things you pull out of the dresser. I literally thought the first 17 years of my life, it was spelled draw.

Draw on a piece of paper, like you put your clothes over there in the draw. Draw. And I didn't realize there was an ER on the end of that word until I got to Syracuse. 

Julie: Yeah, I had no idea either. And it was something that people made fun of me for because there weren't a lot of, there were a fair amount of Massachusetts kids at Syracuse, but back then it was a lot of New Jersey, a lot of New York.

And I was more amazed by the New York accent. The Long Island accent. And yeah, but I did get rid of it. But of course, if I get tired or if , I've had a few, the accent comes out. And I actually hear it when it comes out. I'm like, oh my God, that was so bad.

JAG: If I don't hear it, my wife will.. She'll look at me and she'll say, you're tired. Yeah. And I'm like, what do you mean? She's you just dropped every R in that entire sentence. 

Julie: Oh yeah, I guess I, but I also realize I add Rs. I didn't, I don't say pizza. I say pizzar. You wanna get some pizzar and beer? 

JAG: How does a Boston girl decide to go to Syracuse, Julie? 

Julie: I really am not from Boston. I grew up in Mansfield, Mass, which was small town down near Foxborough, where the Patriots play. 

JAG: Great Woods! 

Julie: Great Woods. We'll talk about that.

JAG: The Comcast Center, the Tweeter Center, whatever brand owns it now.

Julie: Yeah. It'll always be Great Woods to me. Listen, it was 1980. I lived in a small town. I was the oldest of five kids. I knew I was going to college, but there were no college counselors and a lot of kids in my class weren't even going to college. So I don't even know how I came up with Syracuse.

My neighbor went there and I had a cousin that went there. Okay. And I just was like, I'm gonna go to Syracuse. It's in New York. I thought it was Manhattan. I was so dumb. Listen, you have to remember it's the eighties small town. Just a lot of ignorance, a lot of ignorance. So I applied early decision.

I got in and I just applied early decision. I didn't know I was supposed to apply to Newhouse. There was nobody guiding me. So I applied, I got in and then I realized, oh, I'm not in the communications school. And everyone said you can just, transfer in. So that was my plan.

And I got up there. I was lost. I was, from a small town. I was a big fish. Everyone knew my family, everyone knew my brothers and sisters, everyone knew my parents, everyone knew my cousins. It was one of those kind of towns, very Italian and in that way. And I got to Syracuse and nobody knew who I was.

And I'm like, it's me, Julie, Bruno. And I remember the first day a girl on my floor introduced herself and she told me she was from New Jersey. And I was like, I felt bad for her. Who's from New Jersey? 

JAG: What exit? 

Julie: And she seemed very normal to me. And I don't know I don't even know what I thought. I didn't really know anything. I didn't know about Long Island. I really was very naive. So I got up there and I was very lost. It just so happens that girl named Mary Mancini lived on my floor. And I was drawn to her because she was Italian too. 

JAG: Sometimes you just need that one thing and come with somebody to make that connection. 

Julie: Yeah. But Mary was really cool, or at least I thought she was. 

JAG: You don't have to tell anybody listening to this podcast that Mary Mancini is cool, we all know. 

Julie: But she was really cool. Like she had like spiky black hair and she had Black ankle boots. And there I was with my LL Bean moccasins on and my cable knit sweater from Massachusetts. My LL Bean jacket.

And this girl was like from Long Island and she was, seemed super confident and she was super confident and somehow along the line she told me about this radio station she was gonna work at. That's how I think I came to work at JPZ or go over there or something. Cuz I was just looking for something to do.

But I don't really remember, there's a lot I don't remember. But I do remember Mary, she looked like Joan Jett, in a good way, or Pat Benatar. And I said if Mary's working at this radio station, I'll go work at this radio station. 

JAG: This is 81. When you're arriving on campus, the station is am carrier current can anybody hear it at this point? We've talked about this in the podcast. 

Julie: It's in the Spectrum building. Nobody's listening to it. It's going out to nobody. That's my understanding at least. 

JAG: So what did you do when you got there? 

Julie: Not much. I had no idea what I was doing. I do remember like showing up at like really late at night.

I had no idea how to run the board. I had no idea what to say even though no one was listening. I was completely self-conscious. I was able to tell people at home, oh, I'm working at a radio station, but I really wasn't working at the radio station. You understand? That was like freshman year, sophomore year.

I goobered around with it a little bit all the while I never transferred into Newhouse because I think you needed a really high GPA and I think you had to fill out the application and that was just too much for me. So that was not gonna happen, and I just plowed along. Freshman year realized I wanted to study abroad in Italy because this professor came and talked to us about it, and I'm like, that for sure, I knew I wanted to do. I just chose my courses and what I was doing based on going to Italy my junior year. But junior year, the first semester of junior year, I meet Mike Nelson, who was another DJ at the station and. We become friendly and then I take off to Italy second semester, junior year, and when I come back senior year, there's all this, excitement because the station is now gonna go FM. And Mike asked me to host a show with him.

I really need to emphasize, I was very much a tertiary player here. I was not even a secondary player. I was a tertiary player. Meanwhile, Mary Mancini and Mark Humble, and Dave Levin and Phil LoCascio and Steve Simpson, Eric Fitch, you know they're actually getting a radio station on the air. Now I'm like, oh my G-d, what were these people doing?

This is incredible. But somehow Mike asked me to host this Sunday night. Better Hit Music Survey was the name of the show with him. Okay. I'm like, sure, I'll glom onto that because I had no idea what I was doing. He and Bungo put it together. Bungo was a producer, Chris Bungo, who really was a genius. A genius. I don't know how he knew how to do any of the stuff he was doing, but he was doing incredible stuff production-wise. 

JAG: His production skills have been well documented in the podcast so far. Everybody talks about how he was way ahead of his time when it came to that stuff. 

Julie: I don't know how was it, how, where was he learning this? I don't know. I don't know. I just did what they told me and I was so bad, I was like, thanks, Mike. I just had no confidence that, no idea what I was doing. But they seemed to have some confidence in me, or they, I was like the female sidekick, and Mike really knew music, Mike knew everything about music.

I knew very little, I knew about Pat Benatar, Foreigner, Journey, all the stuff that I was listening to as a kid in Massachusetts from, KISS 108, Dale Dorman, Sonny, Joe White, that kind of stuff. But I really didn't know anything about music. And Mike knew everything about music. But there were so many characters. There was, there's this one guy I always wonder about him, and no one ever brings it up. And he's never come for a reunion. His name was Bill Fox. And Bill, I believe, had cerebral palsy, I'm not sure. But he got around Syracuse with a wheelchair. He was so awesome.

I just I can't believe the courage it took him, moreover, his parents to be in a wheelchair. He could walk, but to be on this campus like Syracuse, which is on a hill, in the snow. And he would push that wheelchair with his books in it up to Watson. When we moved up to Watson, I think he did sports or news.

He was very much a real character of that time. But there were so many people, like I wrote down names, I'm trying to think. E Double R? Ever hear of E Double R?

Eric Renner? 

JAG: Yep. And he's come up in many podcasts. Gonna try to get him on an episode.

Julie: An incredible character. He was younger than me, but when I came back that senior year and the station went on the FM dial, it was spring of my senior year.

Humble and Dave Levin and Chris Mossman. Chris Mossman was younger than me and he was running the station. Again, I don't know how any of these people knew what they were doing, but they seemed to know what they were doing very well. And then you had the Carl Weinsteins. The Larry Barrons, they were under us, grade-wise. 

It was just an exciting time. It was second semester, senior year. I'm on this show. People do seem to be listening to it on campus and now you're on FM. People can hear you. But that is not processing for me, it just seemed like it was a real place and it was exciting. And there was always people at Watson and the lights were on and the it was a real studio and it was fun. I remember once, one night, they had me host a show by myself and I was super relaxed. For some reason I wasn't uptight and I had so much fun, and this really popular girl who was in my class came up to me on campus. She's, "Ooh I heard you on the radio last night."

It was so great. And I was like, what? Like I just couldn't believe that she had heard it. She seemed impressed by this. And then, Bungo would have me doing like drop-ins and stuff, like I'd have to do like sexy voice and "WJPZ", and then he'd put a lot of reverb on it. 

JAG: You can still do it! 

Julie: I sounded so sexy, but he was just like moving around the thing and moving the levers around and he really knew what he was doing and he was doing all those like Z 100 drop-ins, live from the top of Mount Olympus. And it was fun. But you could see that there was a real situation going on for these younger kids who were really learning about radio and real radio. I was just along for the ride, but ironically, I ended up working in my professional career in radio.

JAG: I was gonna ask you about that, Julie, because you're, this whole time you've been very self-deprecating and saying, you were just there and hanging out and whatever, but you made a really successful career in media. Tell me what was for, what happened to you after Syracuse? 

Julie: So then I was like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm try to become a DJ somewhere. Okay. I don't know why. Bungo helped me put a tape together and I sent a tape up to a station in Burlington, Vermont. There was a Syracuse grad, not a JPZ guy, but a new house guy who, his name was Rob Poulin. He was a program director at this station, W XXX, which you know about. 

JAG: 95 Triple X, which I ended up working at.

Julie: Yeah. Which is so crazy. So he hires me as a weekend jock. So I piled up my parents' station wagon. I moved up to Vermont. Again, no idea what I'm doing. And I think Rob Poulin thought I knew what I was doing and I didn't. I was so bad at the board. Technically I'm really not good. And but I did go up there and did weekends, Julie B! And I did time in weather, Champlain Valley weather.

I was miserable, I was like, I don't know anybody here. I worked at a restaurant, I had no confidence to begin with, and I lost whatever drop I had. And I'm like, I am not a talent for radio, on air at least. But I could see that there were salespeople working there. 

And I thought, if these guys can do that, I can do this. So anyway, I come back home to Mansfield, I have no job. And the phone rang at my house and it was this man, his first name was Kurt. I can't remember his last name, but he told me he had got my name from somebody to this day. I have no idea who it was.

He said they were opening a new performing arts center in Mansfield called Great Woods, and would I wanna come work in the box office? I said, okay. Oh, I got a job. . So I worked at Great Woods the first year It opened. In the box office. And of course, they had positioned this to the town of Mansfield as a forming arts center and the home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

So they were trying to position it as like a Tanglewood kind of summer. 

JAG: Yeah. Every market has that like outdoor concert venue for the summer. This was the one for Boston out in the suburbs. 

Julie: . But what it really was it was a venue for big concerts. And so it was super exciting. All these acts were coming in like Bon Jovi and Neil Diamond and Heart and big acts were coming there and I had a ball. And by the end of the summer, I think all my siblings were working there except my youngest sibling cuz she was still in high school. I got my brother, they're my two brothers, and I got a neighbor and we had a lot of fun.

But during that time I kept meeting people at the will call window who were from radio stations, salespeople from radio stations. 

So this is putting a thing in my mind about getting into sales. But after that first season, I ran into somebody in Boston and they told me about a job at Fidelity.

And so next thing I'm working at Fidelity Investments, 86/87. I continue to work the following summer at Great Woods again. So I was working two jobs because it was just so fun. And at some point I started working also at the Orpheum on weekends. 

JAG: That's the club in Boston. 

Julie: Yeah. The Orpheum Theater in Boston's a famous, it's a place where a lot of big acts play.

I'd go in on a Saturday, I'd be the only one there. Me and the rats, like literal rats. I would open the door. Yeah, and you could see them running. So I was in that music venue mode. And then at some point in 87, the stock market crash and many of us were let go. So I was gone from Fidelity. 

So now I'm like, I wanna work in radio, I wanna be in sales. So I start hitting the pavement, nothing's working. And then all things, somebody who I knew, somebody and I got a job as a salesperson at WBOS, which was going to be a brand new station in Boston, radio Station. Ackerly communications out of Seattle, they owned it, brand new station. They had tons of money. They were sinking tons of money into this beautiful new space. 

It was an adult contemporary station, but it was like a little bit fresher, like Sean Colvin was being played and it wasn't old folk. It was like new adult contemporary. Because it was so new and because there was such turnover, by the end of my first year, I'm carrying like a major list in Boston. I'm calling on the biggest agencies around. 

JAG: Great. Okay. 

Julie: Within a year or so, another radio station poached me. Because they offered me moreI'm like, oh my G-d, more money. I'm gonna go. And I worked for A WS SH and then I got poached out of there to work in TV sales. And so I did that for a long time. And 

JAG: what station in Boston were you at? 

Julie: WSBK. Do you remember that? 

JAG: TV 38 

Julie: 3 Stooges. 

JAG: That's what I know that TV station for. Because aside from Red Sox games, Every New Year's Eve because it's hereditary where fathers passed it down into their sons. My dad, my brother and I would watch the Three Stooges Marathon every New Year's Eve growing up as kids. 

Julie: Yeah, I sold that. Embarrassingly enough. But I was the first ever female sales manager at WSBK.

After I worked at the TV station. I was a little bit older, I was late thirties. I was having a difficult time getting pregnant. I left that job. And I said, I can't travel anymore.

I was traveling all over the country and nine months went by, ironically, and I still didn't get pregnant. And there was a job that opened at WBCN, which WBCN was an absolutely iconic radio station in Boston. And it was a national sales manager's job. I made a phone call. Next thing you know, I'm the National Sales Manager at WBCN.

We have Howard Stern in the morning. It's the dotcom boom. It was a lot of fun and BCN was not known as a fun place to work, but I enjoyed those two years. I was there for two years worked with Oedipus, like he's a legend. 

JAG: What years were you at BCN, Julie? 

Julie: 99 through 2001. So we had Howard in the morning, I went to Howard's birthday party at Roseland Ballroom and there was some real fun things that went on there. Opie and Anthony in the afternoon. 

JAG: Was Nik Carter there at that time too? 

Julie: Yes. He did Middays then, and then I think he went to PM Drive. 

JAG: I know Nick. Good dude. 

Julie: Yeah. Yeah. He was there. But when I was working there, this girl shows up one day. She's a new, like new business development person. And her name was Kelly Sutton, and we go out to lunch the first day and she went to Syracuse and she worked at WJPZ, which just is the first time in all my years in the business that I encountered except Eric Fitch, somebody from JPZ, And she was the first female general manager at WJPZ. So I think she was really like taken aback that I knew JPZ, that I worked there cause I was much older than her. But we are lifelong friends too, and I'm hoping she's coming up to the reunion this week, weekend. I'm hoping to see her. 

JAG: So you're at BCN 99, 2000. Turn of the century. What's after that for you?

Julie: So then 9/11 happened, right? 9/11 happened and that American Airlines flight that came out of Boston. That would've been very typical of me to have been on that particular flight, to go out to LA. 

JAG: Wow. 

Julie: And business had just started to turn a little bit. Like the dot com business was so huge.

It's now September of 2001. Things are slowing down. So I didn't plan a fall trip, but in my mind, I could have been on that flight. . And I said, here I am. I'm like 38. I can't get pregnant. I can't do this anymore. But the business was also changing. You could see that. There were five CBS stations in the market.

There were four national sales managers, and now I could see that they wanted there to be one. They wanted one to do all five stations, and I was stuck. If I was the person who got let go, I was stuck. If I was the person, they kept, I have no idea what their plan was, but either way, it wasn't gonna work for me, and so I just left the business altogether.

I worked outta my house for a magazine, and then I got pregnant and I just stopped. I stayed home with my daughter, which was great for several years. I probably should have tried to go back to work at some point, but I didn't. And so now, I'm close to 60. I could never handle radio or TV sales.

Now I just, I don't have the physical energy, I don't think, for that kind of thing. But let me tell you, the business was very good to me and was very good to my husband. He's in TV. My daughter's always like, why do you not pay for Spotify so we don't have to listen to the commercials? I say, commercials built this house. I'm not gonna pay to not listen to commercials because commercials is how I made my living. 

JAG: Let me ask you this, Julie. So you know, you talked about the industry really changing around 2001. That was of course after the Telecom Act of 96 passed, and that was kinda the beginning of a massive sea change in the industry.

Here we are 20 years out, we're 20 more two years out from then. Do you still follow the industry and trends at all? Do you still keep your eye on what's going on or are you? 

Julie: No, I don't. In fact, every time I talk to Kelly Sutton, I'm like, who do you work for now? What station is that? I don't know what happened in Boston Radio, but it blew up.

JAG: Yeah, there's a massive ownership change in exchange of stations a couple years ago and everything changed. 

Julie: Yeah, it's weird because I listen to Sirius all the time. You should see me negotiating with Sirius. Every year they send me the increase. Oh my G-d. I'm like the most nightmare media buyer.

I'm like, why would I pay you a hundred percent increase this year? Just cancel me please. And the next thing they're giving it to me for $2 more than last year. I love to negotiate with Sirius.

JAG: You know what? It's funny because we do have several alumni, of course, that work for Sirius.

Julie: Oh. 

JAG: She just winced. No, it's fine. But there's always this game of oh, you got the new car and then it's in your car for six months or a year, and then like usually you can haggle them down. And I'm paying full price now, only because I was too lazy to pick up the phone and be like, hey, knock my rate down.

Julie: I worked from Mel Karmazan for two years, and Mel would never pay an a hundred percent increase on anything when he was running it. 

JAG: CBS radio. 

Julie: Yeah, that guy would never pay. So I used to always say to them, Mel Karmazan wouldn't pay a hundred percent increase, so I'm not paying a hundred percent.

Now, listen, every year they bump me up a little bit, but I'm not paying double. And you should never ever take their increases without a fight. My husband, I think, pays full price because he gets Howard and there's a premium, but I just get the basics. So my personal experience is that I'm always listening to either my playlist on Apple CarPlay. Or I'm listening to Sirius. 

So I. I just, I never listened to regular radio anymore. They've really gotten socked with COVID and drive times. People aren't commuting to offices like they were. I think it's very difficult right now, I think, unless you're in sports radio, which I think is still bonkers.

JAG: Yeah, the talk formats, news talk and sports are still doing really well and music is really having to reinvent itself as we've talked to on several guests at this podcast.

Julie: Because here's the thing that I always wanna say to the kids who are at JPZ. This is a great classroom and you can learn a lot of things. But the bottom line is when you get out there, it's about two things. Really, it's about one thing, but two things. Ratings and revenue. And it's really about revenue. It's really only about revenue. I love the kids who are excited about it and wanna do it, but boy, I don't know if I had a daughter who was interested in it, if I'd wanna push her down that alley. 

On one hand, it's a dying business, but on the other hand, it's always gonna be there. It's never gonna not be there. Someone still has to advertise on it, reach people, but I think the expansion of it is gone now. It's a different animal. You can't keep growing a 20% a year. 

JAG: Exactly.

Julie: And that was the edict at CBS. 20% growth a year. That is unsustainable. 

JAG: That sounds like forever ago. Julie, what other memories come to mind for you from JPZ? 

Julie: Let's talk about the better Hit Music survey. Mike wanted to do a top 100 or something like that. Greatest hits of all time. And it was supposed to be a survey where he asked listeners what are the greatest songs of all time? But really it was Mike picking out the Top songs. 

JAG: Okay. Something's never change.

Julie: Yeah. Okay. And again, I wanna just go back to the music back then that first year. Mary Mancini was the music director, I believe. And the stuff that she was playing with, stuff I had never heard before. Depeche Mode, New Order, Bronsky Beat, all this kind of English, electronic stuff, new wave kind of stuff.

And it was so cool. And I love that music. So we're doing this survey show. It's a big Sunday night. It's gonna be like several hours. It's gonna be like five hours. We're gonna count down a hundred songs or something. Bungo's a producer. I'm just nodding and going, yeah, Mike. Yeah. Ooh, the number one is, whatever.

I have no idea how this list came together and then we get to the number one song and Mike has chosen Purple Rain by Prince. And people went bananas. They were so mad. The phone lines opened up. People were, are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. I was like, oh my G-d. And today I feel like, oh, if that happened today, we would've been like canceled.

You know, Twitter woulda went bananas. 

JAG: Purple Rain's a great song. People just thought it wasn't good? What was the problem? 

Julie: It wasn't number one of a hundred, people thought. People didn't think it was number one. Mike was such a great guy. He ended up very shortly after we graduated, he passed away from Leukemia and it was just, So sad.

I just still think about him. He was just a fun, great guy. He ended up working at the New York Post after college and again, without the phones, you start getting into your own career. You get married, you lose touch with people. So I really did lose touch with everyone for a very long time until I think it was the 25th JPZ reunion.

So those were good times. But when we go back to these reunions, I'm just so stunned at the kids, Marty, Peterman, Deaf, Geoff Scott MacFarlane, these guys are all really inspirational to me. They're funny or they've done amazing things, and these are all kids. 10 to 15 years younger than me, I think. That has been great about JPZ too, going back and meeting the younger crew and how connected everybody is, and I feel it's connected to those kids. As I do. Like Peterman. I just think he's hysterical. 

JAG: He is. I have the good fortune of being classmates with him. And you won't find a funnier guy than Peterman.

Julie: The guy should be on tv, to be honest, and it's funny because I've had some dealings with this guy over the years. He works at this decorative hardware stories that does like really big architectural projects where the, where the hardware alone in a house is costing like a quarter of a million dollars.

Not my house, but others. And it turns out he's Peterman's cousin. How weird is that? For me, JPZ was the one thing that has brought me back to Syracuse over the years. I have a whole group of friends from the days I went to Italy and from my freshman year, but JPZ is the only reason I've ever gone back, ever.

None of my friends go back and I've become closer to these JPZ people now, than I ever was back then. Like Godsick is classic. I remember that kid coming in. He was like a freshman when I was a senior, and he was like so cocky, so New York, so handsome. He looked like a young Marlon Brando.

And he, unbeknownst to me, had worked at Z100. So he was like a professional jock practically. And I was like, how do these people know this stuff? But he's somebody who's always stayed in touch. And I still am in touch with him to this day. Mary, same thing. And we have a little group on our cell phone called Old JPZers, and it's like Bob Flint, mark Humble. Dave Levin, Mary. It's just weird. 

JAG: It's not strange because I've talked to alumni from the nineties that have group texts with people from the nineties. I'm the class of oh two. I have a group text with four of my classmates from 02. Even if the technology wasn't there when you were a student, it's there now.

And we still used to stay in touch with each other. And same thing for me, I don't, I think I went back to a homecoming once or twice after I graduated, but after that, only reason I come back is for the JPZ people. So these stories just mirror each other throughout 50 years, whether you graduated in 85, 02, 72, or 22.

Julie: Again, it was a tertiary thing for me at school, but it's become a primary thing for me as an adult. 

JAG: Absolutely. Julie Bruno, thank you so much for some time today. Any closing thoughts as we wrap this up? 

Julie: Just wanna say that I'm really feel fortunate to, and I didn't realize this till many years later, to have had that experience at Syracuse. And to have those connections that I've made it through the radio station, both then and through the banquets, through the years. God love Rocco. He really put this whole thing together with the banquets. There's so many great characters I've met along the way and. I'm very proud to be a part of that.

It's one of the only things I've ever given money to at Syracuse was that JPZ and the study abroad program. That's it. That's why I go back. That's what I've given my donations to and I think it's great you're doing these podcasts. It's so fun and thank you, and I'll see you at the banquet. 

JAG: Sounds good.