Today is a very special episode of the podcast. Three of Jag's classmates from the Class of 2002 reflect back on a day at the beginning of their senior year - September 11, 2001.
Dave Peterson, aka "Peterman," was the station's GM and morning show host that morning. Leah Hoffman was his co-host, out on campus interviewing folks about the Syracuse primary elections, scheduled that Tuesday. Brett Bosse was the news director, and Jag was on in afternoon drive.
Peterman and Leah start the story in the morning when the towers were hit, and how they had to get information, with no televisions in the station, only one other station in the market that would come in to the new WJPZ facilities, and no internet.
Brett picks it up with the station's skeleton news crew. Having just come back to a rebuilt studio after a year in an off-campus house on Ostrom Avenue, he was trying to rebuild the news department as the school year started. And Jag chimes in with what happened in the afternoon of 9/11.
You'll hear some raw emotion in this episode as the four of us recount our memories of that day, and a very personal connection for one of our cohosts. But you'll also hear about the power of the WJPZ family - not only how everyone stepped up to help in any way possible, but how the station became a gathering place for so many. In that moment of fear and uncertainty, we all needed to be with our Syracuse Family.
This episode isn't all serious though. We wrap up on some brighter notes, reflecting on some hilarious stories from our time at Z89. And Peterman shares two of them - as only he can.
Link: Peterman's handwritten notes from the morning of 9/11: https://twitter.com/pieceofpeterman/status/1436749769683124229?s=20&t=cUMIDjlgiL10cxC7_bo9Pg
Join Us in Syracuse 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 group episode today from the class of 2002. We have Leah Hoffman, Brett Bosse, and Dave Peterson, aka Peterman. We're gonna reflect a little bit on one of the momentous days in the station's history, and that was of course, the September 11th, 2001 Terror Attacks, which was the senior year for all four of us.
But before we get to the real serious talk, we'll introduce everybody and get to know all of our guests today. And Leah, ladies first, we'll start with you. Tell us what you did at the station and what you've been doing in the time since.
Leah: Oh, wow. Started at the bottom or the two to four, and four to six. I had, my dear friend and I, we decided to bond together and do all of those hours together.
And so we had a lot of late nights and so I didn't get a lot of sleep, especially in the beginning and then moved to drive and morning co-host work. Also for one lovely short period of time, I was music director, which was really interesting seeing all these new songs come out that are classics for the better, or for worse. You know, every time I hear and Hit Me Baby One More Time. It hits different.
JAG: Well done.
Leah: And since graduating, have spent over a decade living and working in Asia, in Central Asia, in Kazakhstan, in Pakistan, in Vietnam, and in Papua New Guinea, which is just north of Australia and in the Pacific.
Work with communications, but leveraging commercial marketing techniques to help people keep healthy. So on HIV prevention, malaria prevention and testing, gender based violence, safe water hygiene. It just ran the gamut. And really it was my experience at JPZ that kind of got me ready to understand media to communicate in that way.
Because my background was in international relations and political science. I did not get it in the classroom. I got in the booth. So, came back to the United States back in 2014 and have been working on overnment projects, basically doing the same thing. Public education campaigns to help support people live in healthy behaviors and saving some lives.
JAG: And you're focused on US stuff now, or you're focused on international based out of the nation's capital there?
Leah: Focused on US right now, including working on COVID. So people getting vaccinated, get their updated vaccines. So if you haven't already, It's time to get your updated vaccine.
JAG: Excellent. Peterman, kind of a tough act to follow with all the wonderful work Leah has done in the international community, but tell us about your roles at the station and what you've been doing since.
Peterman: Let me just say that Leah is one of the most intelligent women I know, and she was like that in college too. We stuck her on the morning show and made her tell jokes, but honestly, anyone that can uproot your life and go to Asia and help humanitarian issues like that deserves a round of applause, and I really appreciate everything that you have been doing because it's so far above what I'm doing. Which is running a baseball team.
JAG: That said, a lot of our alumni are gonna be fascinated by your journey. Dave, it's weird to call you Dave, it' be like calling me Jon. Tell us about again, your experience at the station and then since.
Peterman: Yeah. So I started the station after being rejected from the other radio station on the Syracuse University campus.
JAG: ERW?!
Peterman: Can you believe it? I guess it didn't have enough Weird Al Yankovic CDs to bring in for the overnight show. But much like Leah, I started on air, 4:00 to 6:00 AM on Saturday mornings, and Jag, it was actually you that encouraged me to use the stage name Peterman when I was on the air. Cuz I did not have a name when I first came in for that first show I did. And I believe you were there before me. I think you had done the two to four overnight and you're the one that said you might as well just call yourself Peterman. And it stuck.
JAG: Wow.
Peterman: So between you and Bernie Kim from Fox Sports, who's out in California now, you were the two that encouraged me to just use the name Peterman and that's stuck ever since.
And so I worked my way up primarily doing news. I started in news cause I was a broadcast journalism major, so I would come in on the morning show and provide the news reports doing that alongside Emily Zizza, Almas and Marty Dundics, who I'm still very close with. Once the two of them graduated, they're both older than me.
I took over the morning show and hosted and my senior year I was the general manager of WJPZ. So there was a lot that I did at the radio station that prepared me for my career and I was brought to Central Massachusetts, Worcester. Because of my experience at WJPZ, I got a job in radio in Worcester because of Emily Zizza, and that also helped me bring another alum to Worcester, Steve, Donovan.
And I had a radio career, not on air, but doing promotions basically for about three years. And then I got into sales. That's where you make the money in sales, radio sales.
JAG: Major market coin.
Peterman: Yes. So I sold commercials on three radio stations and that was part of Citadel, which is now Cumulus Media here in Worcester.
And that basically prepped me to get a job in baseball, doing sponsorship sales, which elevated me to now being a general manager of a summer collegiate baseball team.
JAG: You wanna give your team a shout out?
Peterman: The Worcester Bravehearts. We play for 10 weeks over the course of the summer here in Worcester at the College of the Holy Cross.
Very much like the Cape Cod League. If our listeners know about that, it's amateur baseball, but we bring a full minor league experience to it with promotions, full concessions. Beer. And we're owned by a catering company. So the reason we do it is because we wanna sell beer and hotdogs.
JAG: It's a 10-week season, but it's a year round job, right Peterman?
Peterman: Yeah. And so that's what's the difficult thing, you know, what are you gonna do for the other 42 weeks out of the year? And so a lot of what I do in the offseason is community initiatives, getting into schools, talking to kids about the importance of sportsmanship, staying healthy, literacy.
There's a lot of literacy initiatives that we have here in the city. Enticing elementary age students to start reading at a young age by giving them rewards of tickets. We have a pen pal program, which has really taken off here in the state of Massachusetts, where we pair up senior citizens and they write letters to middle school kids.
They write letters every month, and then they meet at the ballpark in June. And so there's a lot of what I do that's just not even baseball. It's what goes on around it, and baseball is the byproduct.
JAG: That's really cool. Brett Bosse decked out in his orange and blue. Brett, tell us about your journey.
Brett: My journey at JPZ. I guess I would describe as jack of all trades, master of none. I did a little bit of everything, had my hand in a lot of different pots much like our other friends here. I started out on the overnight shift doing 4:00 to 6:00 AM. That included one day where I did 4:00 to 10:00 AM because the morning show host, they hit the snooze bar, and I had to fill out in the morning show after I was cleared for not very long.
It was a fun kind of a "without a net" experience for me. I didn't really know what it was doing, but it's JPZ. None of us knew what we were doing when we started. I also did sports that year and then sophomore year got more involved in the station where I got onto Friday afternoons uh, 12 to 3, and then moved my way up, did every shift there was throughout my time there. Junior year, I became development director as a way to try to get involved into leadership in the station. That was the Ostrom year, which I think is probably another episode, Jag.
JAG: Yeah, well we have to come back to that, and there will be episodes about that, but yes, continue.
Brett: And then senior year I became news director maintaining on air. I was also an announcer for the women's basketball. Did that in the sports department. But again my primary role senior year was as news director trying to relaunch the news department out of nothing, it kind of deteriorated. Working to bring it back. And that came in September of 2001.
JAG: Which we'll come back to in just a moment, Brett. But first, quickly your professional career since?
Brett: I started outside of Syracuse in radio, I took a job as a news and sports anchor at a radio station in Washington State. Did that for a year.
Came back to New Hampshire and did a little bit of television work. And then for a few years, got into freelance where I was doing radio work. I was the announcer for University of Vermont Women's Basketball for a few years. Jag and I, again, have stories that we won't share on this channel.
After that, I took a job as a morning show host at a radio station, a news talk station in Hampshire. Did that for a year, made a move to get in the PR business. That did not go as I had hoped. And then to the last 11 years, I've been a TV news producer. Five years in Portland, and then six here in Buffalo. And I currently produce the 5 o'clock clock show at the ABC affiliate in Buffalo.
JAG: So let's talk about 9/11. One of many significant events in the 50 year history of the station and everybody listening, at least that's old enough. There are some recent alums that may not remember it as well, but everybody that's old enough to have conscious memories of the day seems to remember every minute of that day because it was such a formative moment in our lives.
Probably like the Kennedy assassination was for some of our parents. I was afternoon drive that afternoon. That was the only day in my life I went by "Jon Gay" on the air. Brett was the news director, as he mentioned. Peterman was our GM ,and Peterman and Leah did the morning show together. So I guess let's start chronologically, Peterman, Leah, take us through that day through your eyes.
Peterman: That day was a pretty big day in Syracuse because it was the primaries. September 11th, 2001, was the primaries for mayor and a lot of the common council positions. You know, Matt DelSignore had always said when you're on a student run radio station like WJPZ, you don't tell them that you are a student.
You operate the radio station like it is a radio station in Syracuse, New York. And this is your full-time job. So even though none of us were going to vote in the primaries in Syracuse, we were covering the primaries. And I distinctly remember Leah being out of the studio that day because we were trying to get out on the street, go out and interview people about the primaries, particularly Mayor Matt Driscoll.
He was up for reelection, so he was having his primary that day. And so a lot of what we did and how we found out about September 11th and the terrorist attacks is through the eyes of Leah who was not in the studio when everything was happening because we did not have a television in the radio studio at that time.
And obviously we were paying attention to running our own four-hour show, so we were not monitoring things like Twitter, which didn't exist. We didn't, we couldn't see that there were real time updates. So yeah, and I'll let Leah give her perspective. My recollection is that Leah was at the Schine Student Center on the campus, I think interviewing students about, particularly the primaries that day when she was the one that saw what was happening on the televisions
at Schine and told me that we have to pay attention to this and we have to change what we're doing for the rest of the show. Is that accurate?
Leah: I think I was at the bookstore and someone had said on TV there's a building on fire.
I go, oh, okay. I always thought it was like local news that something had been, you know, that a house had caught up there, which is really unfortunate, but the way that he had said it sounded different. And so I was expecting for this to be, it's kind of an interesting and fun little experience and to talk to a bunch of different people.
People are ready to have a conversation with me, which is nice because not often will someone randomly let you talk to them and especially put a microphone in their mouth, in their face, and do that. So I went to see, there was a TV on in the bookstore and it was the first tower on fire with the plume of smoke coming out of it.
Then they showed, and I can't remember if this was live or if this was a recording of what just happened, but then the second tower got hit.
JAG: Okay, so you saw that on tv. Okay.
Leah: On the tv. So here we are. We're the news, and we find out on tv. Because there was, you know, no other way to really get that. We didn't have those insights.
So really I booted all the way back to the radio station as soon as I could so we could take care of this. And so then the news was coming in and we had these updates coming up, and so it was clearly like this was not a one-off situation.
JAG: So Peterman, when you're back at the studio, Leah shows back up at the studio, what goes through your head, both as the morning show host and as the GM at the time?
What are you thinking as far as the day, the planning? What's going through your mind at that point as this is starting to unfold?
Peterman: Before we knew that it was a terrorist attack, we thought it was just a large plane that had accidentally run into the World Trade Center, right? And so we were trying to get information and again, remember, no television. No social media.
JAG: Actually, if I can interrupt you for a second. If I remember this from being the afternoon jock that day, our internet wasn't working at the station, and I remember in the afternoon at least, we had to run back and forth to the Kimmel computer cluster across the street to check CNN.com and whatever infancy of those websites existed in 2001.
I feel like the internet was down at the time too. I dunno if that was your memory in the morning too or not.
Peterman: Yeah. You know, we had a lot of issues technically, technologically, in that studio and it was a new studio, by the way. That was the first year that the studio had been completely renovated, and then of course it's been renovated since, but that was the first year of the Menschel Media Center, so it was a gorgeous brand new studio.
And so we're tucked in a corner. And the way that we started to get information is we tuned into other radio stations. And particularly, I remember listening to Howard Stern that morning on 95X. Because that was one of the only radio stations that came in the Menschel Media Center. So we were still playing music.
We had gone away from all of our programming and breaks, and we were just playing music for as long as we could before we were gathering enough information to know what was going on. And you know, listening to Howard Stern that morning made me scared. Because the way that he was describing it first with the two planes that had hit the tower.
Then talking about the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, and then Howard Stern was speculating as to what would happen next. And so we are in the studio just looking at each other, listening to this and saying, wow, what is going to happen next? I had a full, it's a ripped out white line piece of paper from a notebook, which I kept to this day because I just started scribbling notes as soon as I would hear something, particularly on 95X, which was also a Citadel radio station at the time.
I was just writing notes from their news reports, and so I still have this piece of paper. Two American Airlines planes out of Fort Worth are unaccounted for, which is something I heard on the radio, which I guess didn't turn out to be true. FBI investigating reports of a hijacking just before the crash into the building.
An unnamed government official said it does not look an accident. Planes have erupted inside the building with black smoke billowing. And then about all these evacuations, they're evacuating. Greenwich Village. There's a piece of the plane still sticking out of the World Trade Center. The George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel had been shut down.
The President says it's an apparent terrorist attack. And so at this moment, we're just frantically writing down notes. And at some point we had to stop playing Jay-Z . Okay? Because we were probably the last radio station in Syracuse that was still playing music just because it took us so much longer to get this information.
And at that point, we had to stop playing the music and go on live. And start giving news updates. And that's really where Brett came in because he was able to come into the radio station and start gathering that information, not just nationally, but on the local level because he was the one on the ground at Syracuse University figuring out what the school was doing in that moment as well.
And he was the one that was making these news reports for us throughout the day. We'll get to the amount of hours that went into that, but it was Brett who came in and actually started giving real news reports so that we weren't playing music the entire day.
JAG: Brett, take us through that morning through your eyes.
Brett: Well, I was getting up, it was a Tuesday morning, which for most of us meant a 10 o'clock class and for my 10 o'clock class that happened to be television announcing performance class with Dr. Rick Wright. I was getting ready for that. I went to Kimmel to get breakfast and I look up, see the TV, and see smoke coming outta the World Trade Center, and I remember my initial reaction was looking back to 1993 when the attack on the towers happened then, and thinking, oh my God, you know, it's happened again.
It's just kind of a weird thing, I didn't initially understand the gravity of what was happening, so I'm watching that for a few minutes and then, you know, being at Kimmel, I go across the street and to Z and just kind of see what's happening. And I see Peterman and Leah doing what they're doing, and we kind of map out that initial plan.
Okay, what's going to happen? We give the updated information as we can, and then I went to class because it wasn't really clear what to do at that point. The towers were still standing. I don't know if there was an understanding that that was a possibility or a likelihood. So I went to class and we turn on the radio there and Rick, as I recall, comes in and speaks to the importance of having live local radio.
JAG: On brand.
Brett: Exactly. I mean, this isn't something where you can just go to a national syndicated show. You need a local crew to help guide you through the events of the day. I think we made it through 20 minutes of that class. We listened to the buildings come down and I went immediately back to JPZ and started to get to work.
And as Peterman said, my role that day was gathering information from campus and I went to one of the campus offices to learn about their response. Classes were canceled during the day. Learned of the vigil that was going to happen at Hendricks Chapel later in that day. Periodically dipped back into the station again, just to give updates and get updates as well.
Because there was a lot that I didn't know because I wasn't able to listen to the radio or watch tv. I kind of peeked in here and there, but I was a little bit out of the loop as to what exactly was going on, outside my bubble for that day. And then covered that vigil, gave updates on that when I came back and the day was kind of a blur before I knew it was six, seven o'clock and went back to regular programming, or did we go back to regular programming? Did we turn the station off?
JAG: Yeah, no, I'll handle that part. As the scheduled, that semester, I was doing Tuesday afternoons and that was my shift. And so I remember my roommate, the late Bill Leaf. His mom called our apartment and woke us up in the morning and said, Hey, you see what's going on the tv?
No, I have an astronomy class and a quiz that I never studied for that I was gonna try to get to at some point. I do remember bringing a boombox to the station so we could tape our coverage, which ironically, I cannot find that audio and it kills me to this day. I'm hoping we can find the audio from that day at some point.
Peterman: Me too. Yeah.
JAG: But I remember dropping the boombox off at the station and taking this class and then coming back to the station and then. I remember by the afternoon when I was scheduled to be on at, two or three or whatever it was, y'all had made the determination to run 95X and then break in at the top of the hour to give the legal ID for the station and give the local update for what's going on.
I remember we got permission from Citadel to sort of refeed what was I believe ABC News that was running on Citadel on 95X. And then we'd come in every hour with as best the information as we could get. I remember Brett running around like crazy that day. Peterman and Leah were still there, and then I was trying to get some information too.
We'd come in as WJPZ Syracuse, I'm Jon Gay, here's what's going on. I'm trying to give the resources. I remember they had converted what they used as a phone bank to call alumni and ask for money. They'd converted that as a phone bank so the students with family in New York or DC could try to reach their loved ones, cuz there was really very little cell phones at that time and the towers were overloaded anyway. So people trying to find if their loved ones are okay cuz they knew that there were gonna be students that had parents in those towers.
So we were trying to gather the information as best we could. I remember running to the Kimmel computer cluster, like I said earlier, to try and get information. I remember going to CNN.com, printing off everything I could, running back across the street at the station, trying to figure it out.
Peterman, how did we end up running the 95X ABC News feed?
Peterman: We had no other choice. We were a student run radio station that had no affiliation with the AP or any other news service. So I called the chief engineer at 95x and in conjunction with the general manager, I asked permission to rebroadcast their radio station on our frequency.
And they gave me permission. And every time they broke and said 95x, we were there on the board to basically pot that down and go into a local live break at WJPZ. We would do our news break and then we would go right back to the national feed from 95x and that happened basically from, I wanna say 9:00 AM until 7:00 PM.
Because we obviously found out about everything 8:15AM, maybe? It was a little bit after the planes hit. And, you know, again, thank goodness that Leah was actually out of the studio because it probably would've been another 45 minutes or so before anyone had ever come in and told us what was going on.
So I was there from 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM that day. I remember. And I remember writing a thank you letter to 95x because in our time of need, where we needed to deliver information to our listeners, they're the ones that allowed us to step up and they actually allowed us to rebroadcast their signal on the 89.1 FM frequency.
So I remember specifically writing them a thank you note for that generosity that they showed us in that trying time. And then the other thing that really hit me was just the sheer number of people who came to the radio station that day. All of our friends, all of the people that worked at that radio station were filtering in.
It was like a gathering point. And there were a lot of people who were very, very upset, who had family members in New York City, and we were there to comfort them while trying to do a radio show.
JAG: If there is a theme throughout this podcast, it's been that WJPZ is such a family and has been a family for half a century now. And there's probably no better illustration of that than, you know, our brothers and sisters are in great distress not knowing if their loved ones are okay, and where do they come?
They come to the radio station because that's where their family is, or their local Syracuse family and trying to comfort each other, but also coming to help. Like, okay, Peterman, as the GM and the morning show host. Leah as the morning show host. Brett as the news director. Jag as the afternoon guy.
What do you need? How can I help? Like that outpouring of help of everybody coming in and. What do you need me to do? What can I do? What can I help? How can I help us deal with this situation? And that went on up until 7:00 PM where we kind of made the decision, okay, it's seven o'clock, we're gonna switch back to music.
And I remember having to go through the playlist with a red pen, essentially. Okay, this is a song that's not gonna work today. This song is about, okay, no, this is gonna be inappropriate to play today. So I remember like we really scaled back the playlist and then we ended up going over to what we called the Batcave, which is where Matt DelSignore and Jana Fiorello and Beth Berlin and so many others lived.
And we kind of just watched the news there cuz we just needed to be with our family at that point.
Brett, Leah, things that stick out to you about that day? Any vivid memory specifically?
Leah: Yeah, I mean, for me, my family is in the DC area. My father worked four blocks away from the White House. And you know, the rest of that day was trying to make sure that my family was okay cause we didn't know where the next target was, and it seemed likely the White House.
And my father wouldn't leave his office because everyone's trying to get out and it was hard to get, I mean, the traffic was horrible, that basically people were just out there exposed in the streets in their car, and they couldn't go anywhere because it was bumper to bumper and he refused to leave and so he just stayed.
And so, you know, horror, listening to the news and watching the news and seeing the... Remember the replays over and over again of hitting the towers and it was just like it was happening again and again. Actually September 11th is my stepmom's birthday and I was the one to wake her up cuz she had slept in.
Said, it's my birthday, I'm gonna sleep in. So I was the first to tell her the news. And she had this like lovely sweet little voice. "Oh, hello." Like thinking I was calling to wish her a happy birthday, but instead, and so it was just waiting and not knowing, and the not being able to reach out to people to contact them.
They didn't know about for area schools if they were gonna close the schools, if people were allowed to pick their kids up. So it was just the rest of the day I was, I just felt so powerless and just hoping that, you know, the people I know, the people I love were okay. I'm very fortunate that they are. And they were, but my heart just breaks thinking of the people whose love once just never came back.
JAG: I had not remembered that there was such a personal connection there for you, Leah. Brett, what, what if that day stands out to you as you look back on it?
Brett: You know, I didn't have any personal connection to anybody who's affected, obviously, you know, no friends or family among the 3000 victims. Fortunate in that respect.
This hit all of us. This was an attack in our nation. This is one of the darkest days America's ever seen. It was at the time, the largest attack on America since Pearl Harbor. The date which will live in infamy. That was our day. You mentioned the JFK assassination. That was the other parallel. And it was just one where at the end of the day I think I ended up at Faegans, just kind of watching the news, putting out a beer and...
What was this? And there was still an element where you didn't really understand what was happening. There was still that fear of, as Peterman you said, and as Howard Stern said, what's next? You know, 12 hours later there was still that fear. It was just that uncertainty that we didn't know, I think there was also that feeling though, even amongst all of that, that at least I could say that I was part of something that helped, in some small way. It wasn't really anything tangible, you know, there wasn't a telethon or a food drive or anything like that, but it was sharing information, keeping people informed, letting people know what was happening. Because at that point, information is power and information is reassuring.
At least in our way. We could inform people in Syracuse about what was happening here, how it relates to what's happening elsewhere. And at least trying to give people a sense that we knew what was happening, we understand the effect it was having on people and at least trying to help in that respect.
JAG: Peterman, anything that sticks out to you, memories from that day?
Peterman: To this day, my mother tells me that the way that she found out about the terrorist attacks was that she was listening to our radio show on the internet. And it's real heavy to think about the power that you have as a broadcaster to deliver that kind of information to people, which is one of the reasons why I always loved doing the morning show.
I loved getting up at, well, I didn't love getting up at 5:15 AM but I love being ahead of others. So when they were waking up, we were the ones that were not just entertaining them, but we were giving them their news and I felt like that was why I wanted to be in journalism, which then I ended up moving into television, radio, and film.
But I just became so much closer with so many great people at the radio station that day. Beth Berlin, number one, because she was, I remember one person who was very, very distraught and she came to the radio station to seek solace with all of her friends, cuz I know that she had family members that were in New York City that day as well.
Jana Fiorello, obviously I mentioned Matt DelSignore. There are just so many people that we'd see each other in passing. You know, I did the morning show and they would do the top eight at nine or they'd do the afternoon drive. And yes, we'd go to executive board meetings once a week together.
I felt like September 11th was the day that brought everyone at WJPZ closer, and there were a lot of great things that came out of that. After that we brought back the staffer of the month award, which is a plaque that still hangs in the hallway at WJPZ. And each month we awarded a new staffer with a name on that plaque.
I think maybe you remember we started doing the flag football games. We had the sports department playing against the news department. That happened after September 11th, and we just felt. As a station, we needed to do more things together because it was where everybody gravitated in their time of need.
JAG: That's really a great point, Dave. And we did ice skating down at Tennity on South campus. Katie Bell, now Katie's Zeise, put that together. There were so many things that we did that really kind of solidified this whole family thing from 9/11, and to this day, I think of the relationships that many of us have made.
over at Z89. I mentioned earlier you know, Brett was a groomsman in my wedding. Dave, I've stayed very close with over the years. Leah, I'm thrilled to reconnect with on this podcast as well. Aside from just seeing each other's Facebook updates and things like that. So what other takeaways do you have from your time at the station that have stuck with you even outside of nine 11?
Leah: I just wanted to, first of all, thank Peterman because when you could have stepped back and you could have handed over to the next person on that day, you stayed for hours on air and just, I mean, as we all know, doing a shift can take a lot outta you. I can't even imagine how much that took out of you for each hour.
Every hour. And so, I mean, you were such a great GM in that you created that safe place for people and you were that dependable person to keep things going in that time. And years later, I'm just so struck by that and you know, early twenties, like it just that level of maturity and that safe space that you gave so many of us.
I just wanna thank you for that. It just, it's a huge demanding job and you stepped up to the plate and I just wanted to say thank you, so thank you for that.
Peterman: Thank you, Leah. That means a lot. And that's the type of culture that I still try to develop here in my current job. You know, I want a place where people want to go.
Leah: I just wanted to recognize also the power of the class. Every class is important, but we're coming in freshman year and there were very few people left at WJPZ and a lot of people were graduating. . And so we were this upswell, we had huge class of people coming in and I just, I mean, we kind of had to teach ourselves, learn a lot, figure it out for ourselves and fill in the gaps.
And I think that also informed how connected we were in particular because. No one else was gonna do it. If we didn't do it, it wasn't gonna get done. I just think that was such a special part of our experience is that we were there.
JAG: I wanna piggyback off of that because I'm also gonna do an episode of this podcast with Harry Waring and Dena Giacobbe, because they were the class of 99 that were seniors when we were freshmen.
They had had a lot of staff upheaval when the station had flipped formats to the Pulse then back to Z89. There weren't a lot of upperclassmen left at that point, and Harry and Dena really saw, Hey, we've got a lot of recruits here in the fall of 1998, from the class of 2002, if we wanna keep this thing going, we have got to empower these kids, these 17, 18 year old kids to really, inherit the radio station from us when we leave.
You know, Matt DelSignore became program director and general manager. Jana, Beth, the three of you. Me on some smaller level. Brett and I didn't come in in August and September. We came in a little bit later, but we were still empowered to be that executive staff and they had the foresight to do that, to keep the station going.
Brett, memories from either 9/11 or the station in general and stuff that served you well today?
Brett: I think just reflecting on our role that day. And Dave, you mentioned the credo by which we operated is that, we don't present ourselves as a student run radio station. We present ourselves as a radio station.
On that day, we weren't students on that day, we were broadcasters, we were members of the community. And I think that informed our presentation, how we delivered information to the audience and ultimately enhanced our ability to perform in that role. And I think it served us well. I think it served the audience well, and I think it served the import of that day well.
Looking broader, I've been through a situation similar to that day a couple of times. I was a news producer in Portland, Maine during the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. I had the five o'clock show that day. So in terms of a story, again, and I use this phrase lightly, but an event literally blowing up your show two hours before air, that was it.
That turned into, that was the entire day. And then most recently, back in May, the grocery store shooting that happened one and a half miles from where I'm sitting right now.
JAG: In Buffalo. Yeah.
Brett: Yeah. I didn't work that day. I was in the next day where we're just giving whatever information we can and then it turns into away from more of the nuts and bolts to impact on community.
And maybe without realizing it, but I think some of the lessons and the experiences we had that day, 21 years ago. Were applied back in May.
JAG: I really appreciate all three of you coming on and joining me today to talk about such an important day in the station's history and history overall. And I think for those who weren't there, they appreciate the insight as to what went on in those walls, on that day.
I wanna ask the three of you each, if you have a funny story from the station that you just look back on and laugh fondly over a beer at Faegan's every year. I'll ask each of the three of you. Brett, looks like he's ready to go first.
Brett: Peterman, I'll let you tell the story about the mic screen.
Peterman: Oh, but I have still so many great stories. Brett!
Brett: You tell it every year, so you might as well put it on the air.
Peterman: It's a great, great story. A moment in time, Brett was sports coming in in the afternoons to do sports updates. This was in the old studio. So we worked in three different studios in four years.
JAG: This is the old Watson Theater Studio.
Peterman: The old Watson Theater Studio. Old equipment and an old microphone with like this, really like a mic screen that was just falling apart. And so I hit the stopset to run the PSAs and the sponsorships and we come out of the stopset and we're supposed to go into a sports report and Brett has prepared a 60 second sports update and I have the bed, the music I'm gonna play.
Well, he's standing there next to me and this, this mic screen that's all falling apart and he gets a nose bleed, about 20 seconds before he is supposed to go on the air. And so I'm like, you know, if you want to skip the sports report, Brett, you don't need to do this with a nose bleed.
And he said, no, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it right now. And he's holding his nose while he is yelling at me. Okay. He's got his hands, his fingers on his nostrils trying to stop the blood, but I had to adjust the microphone. Now, since he's got his nose bleed, I put the microphone right in front of him.
And I hit it. "And now a Z 89 sports update!" And the music starts and I open up the microphone and all a sudden, broadcaster Brett shows up and he takes his fingers off of his nostrils so that his voice is not distorted. And he does an incredible sports report while drops of blood are on this microphone.
JAG: Hemorrhaging.
Peterman: And so it was somewhat disgusting, but there's a lot of disgusting things that happen on Waverly Avenue those days. And so after that sports report, I said, well, this mic screen needed to get replaced. Anyway, today's as good a day as any . Thanks,
JAG: Peterman. It sounds like there's another one you wanted to share before Brett teed you up for that one.
Peterman: I'm sorry, I stole Brett's story there, but.
Brett: No, no, because I love you and Marty telling it because it's great. The fish gets bigger every year. I love it.
Peterman: Right. I didn't do the impression right, but there was a point where he says, Nope.
He started like barking. Do it right now! We're gonna go live! I was like, here we go. Oh, I hope the sports report's good. But the other story I'm gonna tell is the Ostrom house our junior year, Jag, that you mentioned. We were doing a promotion to give away tickets to see Nelly. It was a promotion called Shake Your Belly for Nelly, was the name of the promotion. We were giving away tickets. We invited women. Girls, I guess, to come to the studio and we had an event at the studio where these women would come in and shake their belly to win tickets to see Nelly. And at the time I was like, oh, this is fine. You know? And then I'm like, oh wow, this is probably not good.
JAG: Looking back on that in 2022, I'm thinking that might not have been acceptable by today's standards.
Leah: Come to this random house and shake your belly.
Peterman: Oh wow. And so like we got 15-year old girls that are showing up with their, you know, bellies decorated, and I was like, uh oh, oh, oh. I gotta get outta here right now.
So my job was to get out onto the street, which is a very dark street. There were no lights in front of the house and I had a large poster board sign that said, shake your belly for Nelly, cuz we had contestants that were showing up for this and they didn't know where to park. And I'm out there on the street, which is about 70 yards from a traffic light and then it turned red, and I'm holding up a poster board that says, shake your belly for Nelly. And I caused a four-car accident.
Because of the whiplash factor and there were people stopped at the traffic light and the cars look over at my poste board and they're like, what is Shake Your Belly for Nelly? And then before you know it, they had rear-ended the car in front of them, . So now I can't stay outside cuz I got these people. I get guys getting outta their cars, pointing at me like I caused the accident.
I gotta get out of there and I have to run. At that point, the better option was for me to run back into a building that had 15 to 18-year-old girls dancing, half naked.
All for tickets to see Nelly. And Nelly is still one of my top played artists on Spotify. ,
JAG: Leah, Brett, I don't know how you're gonna follow that, but if you have a story, I'm happy to hear it.
Leah: No, there's nothing that the only thing that keeps sticking my head, I mean, it's always was very hard for us, like to find what your radio name would be?
I think I had started as Imani and then just, like, I gave up and just called myself by my first name Leah. And that's what most female DJs did is that we just, we had our name and we just kept it. And while all you guys got to have really cool names, I can't even think of you with your, like your birth name.
I just, I can't imagine it. And I do remember Mike LaDolcetta who is like, so professional and just, you know, loved news and he was here for the news, but we liked having him around anyway. And so he was like, LaDolcetta. He was trying to figure out how he would say it on there because he wanted to be understood and then taken seriously.
But we'd like to have him around and so like, okay, what is your other name gonna be for the rest of the content? You know, we talked about it. We said, okay. And so somehow that evolved from that to the big cheese.
Peterman: That's true.
Leah: We just called them the big cheese, And so he'd go from like being on the show as the Big Cheese, and then sudden like there's this whole like personality change, like he just morphed from the big cheese into Mike LaDolcetta.
And it was just like this amazing thing of like his news persona versus his radio persona. And I just, I love that because it really is like your name helps to define you of who you are and how you present yourself to be and has just informed how I imagine everyone. Jon? I can't call you Jon.
I have to call you Jag. That's just how it has to be.
JAG: All right. Brett Posse, or should I say BJ Watson? Any stories that stick out for you?
Brett: I was gonna Leah, not everybody had a really cool DJ name.
That that was, that was a whiff on my part. Yeah. You mentioned. LaDolcetta and I just go back to when we almost murdered him at Peterman's Super Bowl party.
Peterman: Oh.
Brett: Because he was the one guy in the room that decided to root for the Rams when we were all Patriots fans. And we tease him all these years later and he loves it.
And Jag, I think the memories that we share, you know, they're not in the studio, they're at the Batcave or they're in the text threads that we've developed over the years. It's that connective tissue that JPZ creates over 50 years. I mean, there are people. Would never be in the same walk of life with. We would not know Greg Hernandez, you know, Jeff Kurkjian, people like that who are decades apart.
Were family because of this.
Peterman: Yep. I still call Brian Lapis for weather reports. You know, Lippy., Brian Lapis graduated 91. It was 11 years before us, and I know him through WJPZ. And whenever there's a thunderstorm coming through the area, he's 40 miles west of me out in Springfield, and I call him up and I say, am I gonna be able to play baseball tonight?
So, and that's the relationship I have because of WJPZ.
JAG: You never would've thought that as we walked through those halls, and you can also, Lippy's got his own episode of the podcast here as well, for you to check out. I think that's a great place to leave it. Leah Hoffman, Dave Peterson, Peterman, Brett Bosse.
I won't call you BJ Watson again, but from the, from the class of 2002. Thank you for sharing your memories both on 9/11 and on the station as a whole, and what a great experience it was for all of us. Appreciate all of you. We'll talk soon.
Leah: Thank you.