For episode 89 of this podcast, we wanted to pay tribute to a man who sits on the Mount Rushmore of WJPZ History, Hall of Famer Larry Barron, from the Class of 1987. As we celebrate his life, career, and mentorship, we are joined by several guests. Pete Bowers was Larry's high school radio station teacher and advisor, and the man who his partly reponsible for the long list of Michiganders in the WJPZ family. Danny Corsun ('87) and Scotty Bergstein ('89) were classmates and also roommates with Larry in Los Angeles. Classmate and frien Carl Weinstein ('88) was instrumental in setting up the Larry Barron Fund for Mentorship (more on the LBFM later), and Scott Meach ('90) has been described as Larry's "favorite mentee."
We start before Syracuse, with Pete's description of Larry in high school -an overachiever who quickly ascended the station ranks and got stuff done. Naturally, he frequently spoke to Pete's future students, telling his story from Michigan to Syracuse to Los Angeles. When Pete was researching the best communications schools in the country, he found SU and Newhouse.
We've heard previously in this podcast about the pressure on WJPZ to be a block formatted radio station, but we haven't heard the shrewd move that Larry, a former GM and then-broadcast consultant, pulled to save the station's format and educational mission. Danny and Carl tell us how Larry pulled a procedural maneuverwith the Student Government Association meeting to delay a vote on forcing WJPZ to go block format. Before the vote could be rescheduled, the station severed ties. It remained independent of University funding until 2002.
A couple years after graduation, Larry and his longtime co-host Cousin Danny returned to do a Crazy Morning Crew episode as alumni. You'll hear the audio of their "burn your buns" bit - which involves Larry conning a sorority girl into auditioning to sing the Star Spangled Banner at a nationally televised basketball game.
Next are a couple clips from Chris Godsick's episode of the pod - the time Larry swore on the air, but more importantly the time he secured the rights to be the exclusive announcement for basketball tickets going on sale.
Carl Weinstein tells us about Larry the person and the mentor - leading the way for both he and his son Cole, three decades later. This story is backed up by Shruti Marahte, Class of 2019, who Larry took under his wing as she headed out to LA.
Scott briefly tells us about Larry's career - from CNN to entertainment tonight to producing a number of reality TV shows. But for as much professional success as Larry had, today's panel wanted to spend more time about Larry the person - even his penchant for eating cereal out of a giant bowl.
When Carl and Scott put together two memorials for Larry (Zoom couldn't handle just one), even then, Larry was connecting people. Everyone had something to say, and the memorials morphed into reunions. From here, the Larry Barron Fund for Mentorship was born, thanks to Carl, Scott, Larry's parents, and so many others.
Because Larry was such a connector - seemingly meeting people for way more than 3 meals a day, the LBFM endowment, starting in Fall of 2023, will select two SU students to spend their spring break in Los Angeles. It will be all-expenses paid, and include meetings with folks in their desired career fields. And of the two students chosen each year, one must be an active WJPZ staff member.
Scott E. Meach joins us for the final part of our conversation, and he shares how Larry mentored him from high school, through college, and beyond - and what an incredible friendship they shared.
More on the Larry Barron Fund for Mentorship, including the application, can be found here:
https://la.syr.edu/giving/barron-scholarship.html
Full Larry Barron Highlight Reel Dropbox Link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j432lxlnpkfh34iime2z7/WJPZ-Larry-Barron-Highlight-Reel.mp3?rlkey=uat9o3g5u53wwvbt37gzyqvao&dl=0
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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JAG: Welcome into episode 89 of the WJPZ at 50 podcast. I am Jon Jag Gay, your host. And with this being episode 89, a number that is so special to all of us, we really wanted to do something special with this episode. And who better to pay tribute to than somebody who really is on the Mount Rushmore of WJPZ history? That would be the late great Larry Barron. We have a lot of folks here to share some memories and some stories, and to tell you about Larry, whether you knew him or you didn't. So I'm gonna go around the horn and start off look at my screen and I'll start with Danny.
Danny: Danny Corsun, class of 87, I've had a good amount of time with Larry on the air at JPZ and then as roommates for let's see, 87 to 88, no, 90 to 95. That makes sense. Something like that.
Scott: Until he went off on his own and kicked us out.
Danny: That's right. That's right. He's done with us.
JAG: You're teeing up Scotty to go next. Hotshot, go for it.
Scott: Scotty Bergstein, roommates. There. How was that? Larry and I were friends and had worked together a lot on the air. And then I sat and tried to corral Danny and Larry as roommates.
Carl: I'm Carl Weinstein, class of 88. Larry was a dear friend of mine, a mentor. A fraternity brother, a business partner, and I can't think of a better subject to have for the 89th episode in this series, Jag, than one about Larry Barron.
JAG: But before Larry's Syracuse story starts, it starts in my neck of the woods, Metro Detroit, and that would be... Our final guest, a new guest of the podcast, not technically a JPZer, but the man who is the responsible for the Michigan pipeline of JPZers, from Larry Barron to Scott Meach to Matt Friedman to Kevin Rich and on down the line, Pete Bowers. Welcome to the podcast.
Pete: It's a pleasure to be here.
JAG: So tell us a little bit about the radio station and paint the picture here. It was almost like JPZ West in the high school level before we got to Syracuse, right?
Pete: That's right. When we think back to Larry and remembering Larry, everything was big with Larry.
He had that big smile, big hair, big personality, big high school career. I was there where the big started, and that's when he was a sophomore in high school, and the high school he went to was Bloomfield Hills Lahser High School. And he enrolled in an intro to radio class that I taught. It was called Fundamentals of Radio Broadcasting.
And again, he was a sophomore. Obviously, he aced that course, and he would move on to my advanced course, which was called WBFH Staff. And WBFH was a 10 watt educational, non commercial FM radio station located at 88.1 on the FM dial. We had only gone on the air in 1976. And I started the station from scratch and went 41 years there.
But it was what I call a launching pad for students that might get the broadcasting bug. And when he was on my radio staff, he co hosted his own weekly radio show and he did play by play of Lahser football and basketball games. And he moved up the management ladder quickly, no surprise. He was promotions director his junior year and then he was operations manager his senior year.
And the OM is the top student manager at the station. And of course, Larry took that responsibility very seriously. As soon as Larry would enter the station, it was, What needs to be done? And let's get it done. He then moved on to where am I going to go to college? And I do remember researching that.
And that Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse got some good press. To put it bluntly, he would be my first student that would attend Newhouse. I had 15 other students, some of those you mentioned already, that would go on and attend the Newhouse School at Syracuse. But he would make friendships at my station, WBFH, that would last 37 years after high school.
Of course, he had proud biological parents, but I would be called his radio dad.
JAG: Love it!
Pete: A position I hold dearly with all my students. In fact, one of my former students said that the best thing I created was a feeling of family among WBFH staff members. And what a great compliment, and something I treasure. I brag about all my students, but Larry made it easy, okay? Larry's a producer and executive producer of reality and game shows out in LA. He has his own company, Larry Barron Entertainment. I would tell my students, here, let me show you a photo of Larry with the girl group TLC. And the last, time we got to be in touch, he called me and we talked for quite a bit and of course he wanted to know how I was doing in retirement.
I retired in 2017 after 41 years, like I said, and we decided let's get together a zoom call of him, Rick Blackwell, Rob Simpson, Larry and myself. So the four of us did a zoom call and it was just, yeah. But little did we know that would be the last time we would talk to him. And when Scott Meach informed me about Larry's death, obviously I took it really hard.
And I'm still coping with Larry's death. It is hard, but what a tribute that Syracuse has done with memorializing Larry. And of course, all of you who have contributed to the remembering of Larry Barron. I have told some great stories and I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of them here today too.
But anyway, I'm the guy that I guess you could blame for Larry being in the media. I guess he might've got there some other way, but to start out at a high school radio station when you're only a sophomore in high school, like I said, I've called it a launching pad. And we have about 90 students that have gone through my program that have gone into some kind of media.
And of those 90, Some of them are, were in Detroit, like Heather Cataldo is still at Channel 7 in Detroit. . Joanne Purtan was on Channel 7 for many years, and now she's gone to radio. She's on WOMC radio in Detroit. And Matt Friedman where hasn't Matt been? He's on radio, he's on tV, he's in the newspaper he's...everywhere.
So I'm so proud of my former students. Yep, I'm the guy that was there when it all started. And like I said, we had 15 of my students end up going to Syracuse. It's the place to go. There's no doubt about it.
JAG: I want to follow up on that piece of it, Pete. And I'm so glad you could join us tonight to paint the picture of Larry before he got to SU.
Everybody talks about what a great mentor Larry was. I'd imagine there were a lot of times that he came and talked to students at WBFH when he was either at Syracuse or after, talking to them about what to do, career advice, going out to Syracuse. I'd imagine he was never shy to give advice to them, right?
Pete: When he had breaks and he'd be in town, he would stop by and with the advanced class I had, the WBFH staff class, he obviously would come on in and One of the questions that a lot of my students have had for me over the years is, okay, I've got the broadcasting bug. Where should I go to college?
And, obviously, 15 of them have decided on Syracuse. He was definitely someone who would come in and give his thoughts on if you want to continue studying communications you might want to consider Syracuse.
JAG: For sure. Absolutely. That thought is echoed amongst this group wholeheartedly. Pete, I want to thank you for coming on and hang out with us, and feel free to chime in as you hear some stories from Larry from Syracuse and LA and beyond. We'd love to have you stick around here for a few minutes.
Scott: Hold on, Jag. What, seriously, what was Larry like in high school? Was he a good kid? Was he a smartass? Did he push the limits? Did he follow the rules?
Pete: Oh, I think he was an overachiever, is what he was. Not many high schools have a radio station, and when he decided to take it as a sophomore, I think he got the bug after probably two days.
I'm sure he said to himself, I'm going to run this place before I leave high school, and he did. He ended up being, like I said, the operations manager. And that's a position that I, like I also said earlier, he took very seriously. So anything I needed to get done, just give it to Larry. Cause it'll get done that way. Know what I mean?
Scott: So basically, he conned you into letting him out of the radio station. I get it.
Danny: Hey Pete, can I get the keys to the car?
JAG: I think they're looking for some dirt from you, Pete. I think they want to know some behind the scenes stuff.
Pete: Yeah, I don't think you're gonna get much. Not that I can remember, because he was so excited to be actually running the station that he was, if anything, the rule enforcer. He was the guy that had to crack the whip.
Scott: Of course he was.
JAG: Okay, so Larry goes on to Syracuse, as we all know, and one of the stories, when I was recording the podcast with Cousin Danny, he was telling me offline about many of the things that Larry did for the radio station and at one point may have actually saved the radio station.
Danny and maybe with some help from Carl here, let's let's hear about this story about what exactly happened when the radio station was in danger with the format and all that. We've talked in previous podcasts about the pressure from student government to make it a block formatted radio station and resisting that and keeping it a traditional top 40 CHR style radio station as a classroom. But there's another layer to the story that Larry figures pretty prominently in.
Danny: Yeah, and Carl and I talked about this and this actually took place. Correct me if I'm wrong, Carl. After Larry was already the GM. He had already been GM.
Carl: Correct.
Danny: And this was when he was the broadcast consultant for the radio station. So he had pulled back. At the time, Mark Bokoff was the GM and Rusty Berrell was the station manager. And Larry had just transitioned to doing the mornings with me and helping out every other facet of the radio station that he could, and there were a lot of organizations that wanted the radio station to go to a block format because they wanted to hear the music they wanted to hear.
And a lot of people were hopping on that bandwagon and the SGA was at the time funding WJPZ. And so technically we were under their thumb. And so there was going to be a vote that was going to be taken, I believe, by the finance committee. As Mark Bokoff told me, as I confirmed the story with him, that they were going to mandate that the radio station had to have some sort of block format, which would run counter to, as you just said, Jag, the CHR path that the station was going to take, and the media classroom. It turned out to be Larry knew this vote was going to take place and rather than allow the vote to take place, he orchestrated somehow that at that meeting, knowing that if he left that meeting with one other person, that was loyal to the cause, that they would no longer have a quorum to take the vote that would essentially make it so JPZ had to go with that format.
And when they left, they couldn't take the vote. And before they could hold another meeting. JPZ let the powers that be know at SGA that they were severing ties and going independent and becoming financially independent of the university.
And that was the first domino that fell in JPZ being, yes, student owned and operated, but really financially independent. And at 20 years old, that's pretty remarkable.
Carl: Pretty savvy move for A 20 year old who had yet to have real business experience, but showed all the potential of it.
Danny: Yeah. And Mark Bokoff, who in his own right is a pretty smart guy, said to me, that wasn't me. That was Larry who knew that.
And that's just one small example of what he brought to the table and really and truly, set the tone and the path for the station that, we're seeing today.
JAG: It really is saying something. That he knew that there was going to be a problem forcing the station to change format. So he found a procedural loophole to avoid the vote and then bought them enough time to say, sorry SGA, we're going independent and where they stayed for 25 some odd years until about 2002 when they went back on student government funding. Carl, anything you want to add to that story?
Carl: No, I think that says it all right there. Those were interesting times for the station and leadership came from a lot of different places and Larry, who had already stepped aside to let other people take the reins came in this very. Ninja like way with some precision made his move and stepped back out again.
JAG: So obviously we talked about his time in high school and his leadership at the radio station. Of course, as Danny alluded to earlier, they spent a lot of time together on the Crazy Morning Crew, Danny and Larry. Danny actually sent me a bit that I'm going to play here, a small piece of it for you.
This technically wasn't when they were students. They came back for a reunion and I want to say, was it 91, Danny?
Danny: I think it was. Yeah, it was, it was 91. And Larry and I were still trying to put together a tape to get morning work somewhere. And so we used the opportunity to put together some bits and Chris Bungo was our production guy and we had a lot of fun ultimately.
It was just great to get back in the saddle with him because. We were both really most comfortable in that studio.
JAG: The whole clip is like 15 minutes, and I'm gonna put a Dropbox link in the show notes for anybody who wants to hear the whole thing. I'm just gonna play you about a minute or two of it.
Danny, you wanna set it up as far as the prank call that you were executing that morning?
Danny: Sure. So Larry had, from a radio station that he had heard a bit called Burn Your Buns. And it was where we would call somebody pretending to be someone. And get them to do something that they clearly wouldn't do.
And in this particular case we called as the person at the Carrier Dome who schedules the individual sings the national anthem. Syracuse was playing Notre Dame that day on national television on NBC. And we called a local sorority saying, will you please do us a favor? The person who was supposed to sing the national anthem has fallen ill. And Larry played the Carrier Dome executive who burned her buns.
JAG: And we're gonna hear Larry as that so called Carrier Dome executive right here.
Larry: And the reason why I'm interested in a fabulous singer is because a young woman from Chi Omega who was supposed to sing the national anthem at today's Syracuse Notre Dame basketball game has suddenly had the flu and had to cancel on us.
I'm in a major bind. I've got the chancellor breathing down my neck to get someone from another sorority. To come on and do the national anthem today. Lori told me that you are just a beautiful singer, and I'm wondering if you'd be possibly interested.
Jenny: Would it be acapella?
Larry: I could do it any way you want.
Any way you want to do it. It'd be this afternoon. It'd be on national television. It would be great for your national chapter, of course. Very prestigious. Your parents, of course, would be watching at home. And I'm just in such a bind here, I'm basically asking you to help save my job.
Jenny: I would love to.
Larry: Would you? Oh, Jenny, you are terrific. I do have to ask you one little favor though. Could you give me just a quick little rendition here so I can just get a feel for what you're gonna sound like?
JAG: Okay the whole song goes through, she sings the whole thing, and then, as she's going through, they're trying to interrupt her and say, okay, that's enough, and she just keeps going.
I'm gonna leave all your mics open here as we hear her finish the anthem and then the big reveal at the end of the bit.
Jenny: Through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Danny: Gets better. Take it to the bridge, jenny.
Scott: It's actually pretty good, by the way.
Carl: Let's give Jenny a little credit here.
Scott: Ah, this poor woman.
Danny: 33 years later, Jenny's still here. Still getting played.
Jenny: For the land of, wow.
Larry: Jenny. I gotta tell you something. It's not national tv. This is actually Larry Barron and cousin Danny calling from Z89's crazy morning crew. And you are on the air with us right now.
Danny: Jenny, we just burned your buns.
Jenny: Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Danny: We're back after five years and we just. We're just out of practice. We needed to burn
somebody. Jenny, let me ask you something. What's your favorite radio station?
Jenny: Z89 I guess?
Scott: Yeah, I don't know about that.
JAG: I wanted to get Larry's voice on this podcast and thanks Danny and Chris Bungo for having the tape all these years later to get that on. That pretty much summed up the show in a nutshell Danny?
Danny: Yeah, he ran the show. I was just there to show up and talk into a microphone. Larry was the master DJ and he was, the best straight man and in his own right, a very funny guy. His job was to make everybody else look good and he did a really good job of that.
JAG: There was a moment, you talk about him being the consummate DJ, the professional DJ, we had Chris Godsick on the podcast a while back, and he told the story that Larry would probably wish we would all forget. So let me let me play that here real quick.
Chris: There's also the moment he would like to forget. Larry Barron, the consummate radio man, dropped an F bomb on the air. He did. We had a morning show my senior year, and Larry, I don't know where it came from, but an F bomb left his lips. I looked at him, and he looked at me. And he did not know how to recover. I've never seen him speechless before, but he looked at me, his head was about to explode, and he just walked out of the studio. It was a low moment. I think I took complete advantage of the situation and did not try to brush it under the rug.
I think I highlighted it. Pretty much for the rest of the show. And then he composed himself and he came back. But that's one of those moments. It's like Walter Cronkite letting an F bomb fly. That was the importance of that. That was the respect that this man had.
JAG: Reactions to that?
Danny: Yeah. And I'm sure that by the way, there wasn't any buttons getting pushed in those songs being played because if Larry wasn't in the studio, Lord knows Godsick wasn't doing it.
Scott: I'm sure he was mortified. Larry, the rule follower was mortified.
Danny: I can tell you, I think, before his memorial, I figured out that we did over 200 shows together, and
I can tell you, in not one of those shows did he ever curse.
JAG: So it's Godsick's fault.
Danny: Yeah, we blame Godzick.
Carl: Always Godsick's fault.
JAG: We start with Pete talking about how he was this consummate, you know, as a sophomore in high school, all the way up and total overachiever, and then I can't imagine him dropping the F bomb in college. Go ahead, Pete.
Pete: I did have a swear jar at my station, and I, even if someone dropped an F bomb, not over the air, but just in the station, in the studios, anywhere, They had to contribute to my swear jar because again, if it's part of your natural vocabulary, I guess, that's the best word for it. You might accidentally use it when you are on the air. So once you entered the door, my rules were you weren't allowed to say anything like that, or you had to contribute to the swear jar.
Scott: We did not have that rule. No. Had we had a swear jar, we would have had a lot of extra money in our house.
JAG: You would have had all the beer money you ever needed, Scotty.
Danny: And Larry would have invested it.
JAG: The other story that Godsick told, which I want you guys to add some color to afterwards here, It's about how Larry somehow got the rights to announce when SU basketball tickets are going on sale, and I'll let Chris tell the story here.
Chris: I don't know if it was Larry Barron who worked it out, but somebody made a deal.
At that point, they were still trying different things on how to make tickets available to students for the SU basketball games. And they had tried a number of things. And this year, they were going to make an announcement. You were not allowed to line up for basketball tickets. And there was going to be an announcement.
And then everybody was to go to the Dome and line up and get their place in line or to buy tickets. And somebody had worked it out that Larry Barron was gonna make the announcement of when the basketball tickets were gonna be available. And this was the era of Pearl Washington. So Larry was going to make this announcement, and Larry was very serious about it, for those of you who know Larry he took this very seriously, I mean it was a big deal, so he wouldn't tell any of us, and I remember I was in, visiting somebody in Lawrinson, and of course, everybody, I mean everybody, was listening to the station, waiting for this announcement, because they promote it, everybody knew it was going to come on Z89, but no one knew when, so we had everybody listening, at that time. And it was great, so I remember Larry announcing it, And then I remember being in Lawrinson, visiting somebody, and looking out the window, and it was like somebody poured hot water on an anthill.
And you could see people running out of Sadler, Lawrinson, coming from all directions. It was extraordinary. People were running. There was a riot forming. And that announcement came from Larry Barron. And that was pretty damn cool.
JAG: You guys remember that story?
Danny: Yeah I lived in Sadler Hall and what he's describing is completely accurate. It was chaotic mayhem. It was almost riotous. How many people descended on, on that gate with their tents and blankets and whatever to get tickets.
Scott: How did Larry get the rights to do that? How did, how did he figure that one out?
Carl: Here's what strikes me as we listen to these three stories. So we started with one about Larry pulling this uber procedural move at a student government meeting that may have saved the station. We heard him anchor a crazy morning crew bit that was hilarious. And now we hear a story about how he basically helps put the station on the map with the student body by getting the rights to announce when basketball tickets go on sale and creates a promotional frenzy.
That's the range of Larry Barron right there. Unbelievable. From creative genius, promotional genius, business person. Managerial. Really unbelievable.
JAG: I'm glad you jumped in Carl, cause I wanted to turn to you a little bit to talk about some more, any more station memories you have. And then I know you also want to spend some time talking about Larry the person as well.
Carl: Yeah, I was a freshman when I met Larry. He was station manager. He was already on his way to becoming a legend. He was, part of the team of forefathers and mothers who put WJPZ on the FM dial and went on to be general manager. We've noted that, and broadcast consultant. So he was already on his way to being a legend, and we'll talk a little bit about what he did after.
Scott: And prom king.
Carl: Yes, and that was on my list too, and prom king, yes. Or homecoming king. And that's Larry.
JAG: Prom king would be Pete's realm. I think homecoming king would be Syracuse.
Carl: Yeah, okay. Homecoming king, yes. Yeah. What strikes you about Larry is, first of all, he had this incredibly infectious, almost childlike energy about him, and his creativity was unbelievable. And his ability to move from business ideas to the creative side. It was amazing. And the thing that struck me even back then was Larry's ability to take people under his wing, mentor them, help bring them along, help to not just give them the mentorship, but give them the encouragement.
I often say he didn't talk to people as if they we're going to achieve things. He talked to people as if they already had achieved things. And it was just a mindset that was really unique and really empowering. He served that role with me. I saw him do it with my son 30 years later, who also went to Syracuse.
And, when Larry passed away, I thought that my experience with Larry was unique. I thought I was just this unique friend of his. And then I realized very quickly as the various memorial sites on Facebook came up, the memorial services that Scott put together, and I'd love for Scott to talk about that a little bit.
It was unbelievable. But what I realized was all of a sudden people came out of every corner and started talking about the way Larry opened doors for them, made connections for them. The role he played in helping people get internships and he treated everybody like a peer, whether they were in fact a producing peer in Hollywood or an assistant.
He gave everybody his undivided attention. When I heard Pete tell the story about how Larry reached out to him shortly before he had passed away and just to reconnect. I wasn't the least bit surprised because Larry did that with everybody. I wondered sometimes how he ever got like work done because everyone I since talked to is, oh yeah, I talked to Larry a month ago. I talked to Larry six weeks ago. I talked to Larry yesterday.
Because that's what he did. He just stayed connected with everybody. And it was unique in a way. I've never met anybody like that and his impact on people, his ability to encourage people, to mentor people, to bring the best out in people. There's only ever been one Larry. There will only ever be one Larry.
JAG: Definitely a standout in our group, which has quite a few all stars. He stands alone in that regard. I'm glad you talked about the mentorship. And throughout the generations, Carl, you mentioned how he mentored your son, Cole, and someone close to Cole's age was Shruti Marathe, who was the general manager of the radio station from the class of 2019. This hasn't aired at the time of this recording, but it actually is going to air the week before this episode publishes. Shruti told me about Larry mentoring her as she was getting her start. So let's listen to that real quick.
Shruti: Even before I moved out to L. A., I was connected to Larry Baron being told he will be the best resource. He's so great. He was a former GM and we talked on the phone so much before I moved out to Los Angeles and he was so helpful giving my resume edits, putting me up for internships. I had never met him before and he was still being so helpful. The fact that he was such a mentor and somebody I could really rely on no matter like what I needed, like I remember two or three years ago, I was up for another job postgrad and I was considering taking it, but I hadn't been at my previous job for a year.
So it's I don't know if this is a good look if I leave the job in less than a year. And my sisters were like, oh, what does Larry say? This guy that had graduated so many years before me and owed me nothing. But again, he just always went above and beyond to help people. And that was really nice because I didn't know actually that many Z89 alumni out in LA.
So even though it was a small presence, Larry really made like the Z89 presence in Los Angeles known. And it wasn't just me, everyone I know that has moved out to LA from Z that Larry got to meet, but he was there to help them, which was awesome.
JAG: Tracks exactly with what you're saying, Carl.
Carl: It's unbelievable. Everybody had that experience. It's like I'd coordinated that story yet I've never spoken to her. By the way, I know Larry mentored her because he mentored everybody who ever called him looking for advice. And I think every GM that served the station since the day he graduated. He had some connection with. Truly a unique, special gift, and he gave it back to the world.
JAG: I do want to turn to his time in Los Angeles. One of the things I've done on the podcast as we meet various alumni is ask about your career path. So for those who don't know his career path, I want to hear about his career path, what he's done in L. A., and then also the living situation we can turn to Scotty on as well. But tell me about his time in L. A. and some of the things he accomplished. Whoever wants to take it.
Scott: Oh I'll go really quickly on his accomplishments because I think his accomplishments pale in the face of the kind of person that he was and all of this. The way he talked to people, but his accomplishments, that said, were huge.
He went from, I believe his first job out of LA was doing traffic in Atlanta and then working at CNN at the same time. He was that guy who pounded on his chest and pretended he was in a helicopter. He went like this and then gave the traffic on whatever freeway it was in Atlanta. He moved to LA after about, I don't know, a year or two and stayed working for CNN.
He was a producer on like Entertainment Tonight and the CNN entertainment show and he met everybody and he talked to everybody and he was on camera, yet he was off camera, and then he left CNN and went on to produce all kinds of TV and reality TV. And Pete mentioned TLC, his connection with Left Eye and the couple of different TLC shows that he did and Love Island and other kinds of really trashy, but amazing guilty pleasure TV shows that he produced and quiz shows.
And but what was really amazing about Larry's time in LA. Was somehow he had two days for every one of our days. The amount of time that he had, the amount of meals that he ate. He must have had eight meals a day and every single one was out. Danny and I can attest to this. He could cook nothing.
He ate cereal for three meals a day. He couldn't cook a thing
Danny: Yeah, Larry would eat cereal in a trough.
Scott: So much cereal So much he had a massive a salad bowl that was filled with Froot Loops. It was crazy.
Danny: Eating it with a serving spoon.
Scott: Yes, but he ate every meal out. If he wasn't eating cereal, he was eating meals with somebody at some restaurant in LA. And here's what I'll tell you about LA. Larry knew everyone, and everyone knew Larry. I'm telling you. He knew more people than the mayor of LA. And he was probably friendly with more people than the mayor of LA. He knew every single woman between the ages of 25 and 40, I guarantee you. And somehow, they all loved him, some of them hated him, but most of them loved him for one reason or another.
Whether it was romantic or non-romantic, but he was friends with everybody and everybody knew him. And like Carl said, when you're with him, when you were having a meal, he knew everybody and people would be talking to him and calling him and I'll tell you a story about the internet in a second. But if you were with him, it was like you were the only person that mattered ever.
And all he cared about was what you were doing. He didn't want to talk about what he was doing. He didn't want to talk about the 800 episodes of Idiot Test that they did. He wanted to talk about what you were doing. He gave me one of my first directing gigs on a TV show. Didn't have the interview or anything.
Just said, I have a TV show that's not reality. It's scripted, which is what I do. He said, yeah, we're going to give you the pilot. Out of nowhere, he was that kind of person. He talked all the time. He talked. He was the first person I ever knew that was in chat rooms on the internet. And then addicted the chat rooms on the internet. And Danny, he was in those stupid chat rooms with the AOL dial up all the time, talking to people from all over the world and just talking. And it was pretty fascinating. That's the kind of person he was. He talked to everybody. He was friends with everybody. He remembered everybody. He remembered everybody's birthday, including my mother, my sisters, my father. He would call everybody all the time to wish you happy birthday. It was bizarre. It was unbelievable. And I've never met anybody like that, which by the way you guys all owe me a call for my birthday,
Danny: Happy birthday.
Scott: Just saying.
Danny: I don't think there was a weekend that our couch wasn't being slept on. If anybody came to LA, they slept on our couch. And I guarantee you, they weren't coming to see me or Scotty.
Scott: No, most definitely not.
JAG: Any other great stories from you guys living together in LA at JPZ west?
Scott: Oh, there's lots of great stories that are totally...
JAG: Okay, any that are, that are okay to tell on this podcast?
Scott: No. I don't understand. The Larry that Pete knew is not the Larry that we knew. Not in our twenties, I'll tell you that much.
Carl: Here's a story I can tell, Jag. I moved to LA about 13 years ago, and one of the best parts about it was reconnecting with dear friends like Danny and Scott and Larry. And I would go out to dinner once a month, one of his many. I guess the good thing about him not cooking is he was forced to go out to every meal with somebody, and there's magic to that.
At some point, we would watch football, we'd talk about life, but he was just a great friend. But at one point, in most of the dinners, or many of them, I would finally get him to pull out his laptop and show me the various concepts he was working on for TV ideas. This stuff would just blow you away.
First of all, endless amounts of ideas just flowed from this creative mind. And it's almost hard to fathom how one person could come up with that many interesting, cool, and honestly, viable concepts. And he obviously had a lot of success in pitching many of them.
Scott: We had a thing and I spoke to Larry, I don't know, once a week, once every couple of weeks. Sometimes it was more than that. Sometimes it was less, like you do with friends when, you were roommates for a while and you move away from each other. But he would call and it would be random and it could be at eight o'clock in the morning or it could be at 11 o'clock at night. And I pick up the phone and I hear that.
Big booming voice. And it would just be "Scottie B!" And that's how every single phone call started, no matter what it was, whether he was in a good mood or bad mood. It, typically he was in a good mood, but every single time. And I miss that terribly.
JAG: Would this be a good time to talk about the memorial service that you guys put together for him?
Scott: The memorial was something that came about simply because it was pretty organic. As people started talking online, lots and lots of people had reached out to me and some other close friends, Jeff Bernstein, Doug Richter to see if we were holding a memorial. And that was the Syracuse Hollywood connection.
And then there was this whole other "Hollywood" connection that I was getting wind of that was thinking and talking about holding a reunion as well. All right, excuse me, a memorial. It ended up being a reunion because so many people ended up reconnecting from that. It's unbelievable. But we ended up having to do two memorials because evidently there was a good chance somebody told me we were going to crash Zoom because there were just simply too many people who wanted to be a part of it. So I straddled both worlds, both the SU Hollywood and the "professional" Hollywood world. So I organized the SU memorial and then I was part of the Hollywood memorial. We had, approximately, as far as we can tell, about 750 people between the two.
JAG: Wow!
Scott: If you think about it in those kind of terms, and I know that I reconnected with a ton of people from it. And I know that there's other people on there who have reconnected with people because of it. So this idea that people continue to connect because of Larry, and that was two and a half years ago at this point.
But because of that, as people have continued to reconnect. And it was... If I tell you, Jag, that everybody wanted to say something, it was hard to moderate it in many ways. It was hard to pick and choose and we did have to limit it time wise, but it was fascinating how many people wanted to say something and stand up and be there.
It was one of the situations, it was sad. I'm still sad about it, but it was also. A fantastic celebration of Larry.
Danny: One that I know his parents deeply appreciated Scotty.
JAG: It just seems appropriate that this man who connected so many people in so many ways, then was so passionate about doing so that even in his passing was able to reconnect people like that It just seems appropriate.
Carl: Absolutely.
JAG: And even after his passing he's continuing to give back in a way with the Larry Barron Memorial Fund So which one of you wants to take that?
Carl: I'll start and then Scotty, please chime in. Everyone was fortunate to have had Larry in their life at some point. And so many people on both memorials had benefited from Larry's big heart and ability to connect and mentor.
And it was really at those memorials that so many of these stories surfaced about how Larry made every single person feel like they were the only person in the world at the time he was helping and meanwhile he's helping hundreds of people and connecting hundreds of people and we wanted to do something to carry on Larry's amazing legacy of mentorship and of connecting people. But particularly the mentorship piece because so many people would have that experience with him and that was really one of his great gifts. So at the memorials, we announced what ultimately became the Larry Barron Fund for Mentorship.
It was just a germ of an idea at the time. And we asked people to start, if you had this connection to Larry, like so many of us did to please contribute, to what would ultimately become, our goal was to create an endowment in Larry's name at the University to carry on this incredible legacy. And over the next year or so, since Larry's passing back then.
We did, successfully, with the help of so many people, Larry's family, friends Larry's fraternity, Zeta Psi, members of the Hollywood community, members of the SU community raised a significant amount of money to create an endowment and launch the LBFM, the Larry Barron Fund for Mentorship. And the idea is to carry on Larry's name and legacy in a program that will enable two students each year to come out to Los Angeles over spring break for a week of meetings and meet and greets, tours, dinners, lunches, events an opportunity to find some mentorship and make some connections that can lead ultimately to internships or jobs. But to essentially tap into the SU and LA community of media professionals, media and entertainment professionals to help students who want a career like Larry did at one time when he was a student at the University.
In media and entertainment to get a headstart on that. And the very first class of the LBFM program will be selected this fall for their first trip out to LA over spring break in 2024. And what's most notable for this group, meaning the WJPZ community, is that there'll be two students selected each year to take part in the program.
And one of them has to come from, or is earmarked to come from the WJPZ active student body. In other words of the two students each year, one of them will be selected out of an active member of the WJPZ staff. Larry loved LA and was a huge part of the LASU community. He served on the advisory board of the SULA branch of Syracuse.
The advisory board, he obviously, loved SU, but he loved Z89 as well. And he would, I'm sure, want it no other way than, to make sure there was some way a student from Z89 could participate each year. So that's the way the program was created. And we're really excited to launch it this year and always looking for donations to keep this thing going for as long as possible and make it bigger. There's even some ideas of making a bigger mentorship program across the entire university. There's always a way for alumni in the media and entertainment business to participate because those students are going to come out to LA and we're looking for people to host them, people to meet with them, people to take them on tours, people to let them shadow their organizations.
So there's lots of ways to get involved and participate and we welcome everybody. on the WJPZ and the Syracuse University community to participate.
Scott: First of all, if you are a student and if you are listening, hopefully by the time this goes live, that the website will be live. We're actually figuring out part of that this week.
We are actively, this year for the first time, looking for students. And if you missed the point of this, It's an all-expenses paid trip to LA. So if you're a student and if you are interested in the world of entertainment in one way or another, we are going to find you people. And the whole idea of this week, it's based on what Larry would do, is you are going to have meals with entertainment professionals. If you want to be an entertainment lawyer, we're going to connect you with law firms. You want to be a writer? We're going to connect you with writers. If you want to be a producer, we're going to connect you with producers. If you want to be a director, you get to have lunch with me.
Danny: But you don't have to stay on our couch.
Scott: No. But a couple of more things. First of all, Carl's being a little bit modest, which is Carl was instrumental in raising a lot of his money through corporate matching which is really quite amazing.
The other part of this, the generosity of Larry's parents has been, I don't even know how to explain it, but the fact that Larry's parents have contributed to the point that they have to make this program happen in many ways is really pretty amazing. But before we get off that, the whole idea of this not only came from Larry's idea of having meals with everybody, but it really came from a spring break trip that Carl and Larry took.
Carl: Part of it was like, let's get some sun and live the dream for a week coming from Syracuse. But Larry, in the way only Larry could, stacked the week full of meetings with studios. We sat in on the Rick Dees show while it was being recorded. We met with producers. We did fun things like hitting some of the theme parks, but it was a self-curated, essentially, week of indoctrination into LA.
Larry made contacts on that trip that ultimately, led to opportunities and his deep connection to Los Angeles that carried him through his entire life, including moving out to LA to become a producer. So in a way, this whole concept was modeled after that spring break trip that was a springboard for Larry making LA his home and the media and entertainment business in LA where he ultimately, practiced his craft. And Jag, I have the URL for people who want to A, donate.
JAG: You can mention it right now and we'll put it in the show notes as well, Carl.
Carl: Awesome. Yeah. For people who want to A, donate, B, participate, and most importantly, for students to find an online application to be part of this first year of the program and all future years of the program. It's la.syr.edu.
And that's the Syracuse University, Los Angeles homepage, and you'll see right there a link at the top of the page that you'll be able to click through to these various LBFM, Larry Barron Fund for Mentorship opportunities.
JAG: All right, no conversation about Larry Barron would be complete without Scott E. Meach. He's able to join us for the final few minutes of our conversation. Scott, we started the podcast with everybody introducing themselves and talking about their connection to Larry, so why don't you go ahead and start.
Meach: Scotty Meach, class of 90, my connection to Larry was that he was part of the reason, a huge reason why I ended up at Syracuse, and he had an outsized influence on me in almost everything that happened to me at Syracuse, Mr. Bowers, who's on this conversation, was the first person to ever take a chance on me in radio. And Larry was the second and he had everything to do with me getting there and getting my foot in the door. And he was just an unbelievable role model and friend for the rest of his life.
JAG: Scott, when you were inducted into our Hall of Fame last year, or this past year, I should say, Rocco and Carl in their induction mentioned that you were his favorite mentee, that he mentored a lot of people, but that you guys really were very close. What can you tell us more about your relationship with him?
Meach: That was news. That was really nice to hear. I'm not sure if it's true or not. Larry was incredible to so many people. He brought me under his wing without ever having met me. He only knew what he knew about me through Mr. Bowers. And I reached out to him, Pete told him that I would call.
But at the time I was becoming interested in Syracuse. The football team played in the Cherry Bowl in Pontiac, Michigan, and Larry came in for that game. So I remember meeting up with him in the stands at the game. We only went to the game so I could meet Larry, and ostensibly watch the football team. But yeah, I remember we met in the stands.
I think that's the first time I had ever met him. And then I went for a weekend tour there and, we had done a whole bunch of college tours, four or five other schools and we got to Syracuse and Larry was living in one of those cool Lawrinson corner palaces and he was at the radio station and the fraternity and like he brought me everywhere with him for a weekend.
And we left campus and my parents knew that's where I was going before I had even applied or just, everything about it was perfect. So yeah, I remember a lot about that weekend and just, when I got to campus, he, here's a funny story. I get a letter from my peer advisor. Every incoming freshman gets a peer advisor that contacts them back in those days.
They had to contact me via letter. My peer advisor was Kevin Martinez. And I don't know if you even know the story, Carl, but Kevin was my peer advisor. So I call him. And we make plans to meet on the plaza, the Newhouse plaza, one of my first days on campus. So we meet, I get there, Kevin's hey, nice to meet you.
And we're talking for five minutes and I say, yeah, Larry Barron's a friend of mine. And he's Larry Barron?! You don't need me! He's, you don't need a peer advisor. You got Larry Barron. So Kevin and I joke about that still. He was just an incredible, he was incredible. He always reached out and cared about others. And I like to think that later as I became more mature and adult, I, was half as good a friend to him as he ever was to me. But everything with Larry was always about the other person. I was blessed. I had a nice opportunity several years ago. He was doing some shooting in Atlanta for one of his shows.
And so we got to spend some time together, a few different occasions. And I always say that I went to Syracuse for WAER and come back for WJPZ. But the real truth, and I said this when I introduced him, when I inducted him in the Hall of Fame, was that the real truth is that I came to Syracuse for WAER and because of Larry.
He was the one person I knew. He helped me with connections. Once I got there, of course, he was just remarkable. I was devastated by his loss and I'm so grateful for what Carl and Scotty Bergstein have been doing and all the people that have supported LBFM along the way. I know he was dear friends with so many people.
It's great to see you, Danny, and I know the two of you were big together and had a lot of good times, and it was such a devastating loss to lose him.
JAG: I don't want to end this on a down note. Rocco Macri told me that Larry was instrumental in helping him get our Alumni Association off the ground, something that I know Scott...
You were such a huge part of leading for so many years. Danny, you have a comment on that?
Danny: I'll tell you that as far as the Alumni Association is concerned, is that this was before Zoom. When we met, it was by phone, and Larry would actually come up from Atlanta for the one or two or three big meetings that he ran. It was that important, right?
He would come just for that reason from Atlanta to conduct that meeting of the JPZ Alumni Association board. It was just carried over, right? From JPZ in terms of how important the organization was to him and how important he knew that the Alumni Association would be.
JAG: Anybody else have any other stories or anything you want to drop in before I start to wrap it up? Go ahead, Pete.
Pete: I might have one addition on that phone call that I made with him a couple of years ago, and I had retired from 41 years with teenagers and still able to stand. So I wanted to hear about all his producing and everything. No, he was trying to figure out he said what are you going to do now that you're in retirement?
And I said I started watching The Wonder Years. I think I'll watch all six seasons of it. He goes, yeah, I just had lunch with Fred Savage a couple of days ago. And he goes then the week before that I had lunch with Danica, Winnie. And I go, oh, that's pretty cool, Larry. What do you want me to do?
He goes, I can see you doing a podcast. I can see you doing your own YouTube channel. He turned the whole thing around and he's trying to figure out what I'm going to be doing in retirement. That's the kind of guy he was.
JAG: That's Larry. That tracks with everything we've talked about in this episode. We want to thank you as an honorary member of the JPZ family for joining us today, Pete.
We think about all these values that we've talked about in a hundred some odd episodes of this podcast and the mentorship and the values of JPZ as the world's greatest media classroom. It seems that nobody exemplified that better than Larry Baron and the relationships he formed with the veritable all-star group of folks that we have on this call.
Pete, Danny, Scott, Scotty. Carl, I want to thank you all for taking a few minutes out of your evening across the country to do this tonight because I think it was, as Carl said, fitting that 89 goes to Larry.
Carl: Thank you, Jag.
Danny: Thanks for doing this, Jag.
Scott: Thanks, Jag.
Meach: Right on.
Pete: Thank you.
Scott: Good luck editing this one.