Last week, the mayor of Stamford and the U.S. Representative representing the city made a cameo appearance.
This week, we’re going to circle back to a prominent public figure of a different sort who showed up on my grandpa’s calendar:
September 1972. Please don’t call the number; God only knows what it connects to these days.
Don Russell, born Rustici, got in on the ground floor of television in the 1940s and seemed poised to make a big-time career of it.
He worked for the DuMont network, served as Jackie Gleason’s on-camera announcer, and anchored the first national broadcast of a presidential inauguration in 1953. He hosted early TV news programs in New York, and produced broadcasts of the Grand Old Opry in Nashville.
But, having made his mark on a larger stage, Russell apparently decided he preferred the comforts of home. For the last few decades of his professional life, Russell split his time between WSTC-AM — Stamford’s local AM radio station — and the local daily paper, the Stamford Advocate, where he wrote a column about current and historic local events.
It strikes me that — with the decline in newspapers and local radio — the likes of Don Russell may be on their way out. The local media celebrity may be an endangered species.
On the other hand, the media outlets I worked for in the ’90s and 2000s were eager to create their own local celebrities, crafting ads that promoted reporters who had no deep ties to the local area and were likely to be gone in two years’ time.
(I worked for one such chain of papers in Massachusetts in the Nineties. I left the chain just as it was about to promote me; but I know it advertised others whose attachment to the company was just as short-lived.)
Perhaps the issue is not that Don Russells do not happen any more, but that they do not happen organically.
You can’t really fake a connection to a community, nor can you douse it with Miracle-Gro and hope it develops overnight.
“He loved this city like few people have, and while he was not afraid to criticize it, he always looked for the best in Stamford, throughout its history, up into our time of momentous change,” Stamford Advocate editorial page editor Tom Mellana is quoted in Russell’s obit (linked above).
Every city needs a Don Russell to tell its stories. And while Russell’s coverage probably seemed provincial at the time, it probably looks deeply informed and sincere by comparison to whatever passes for commentary these days.
I have no way to know what my grandpa called Don Russell about. Perhaps the great man did a news item about one of my grandpa’s local art exhibitions. Or maybe he wrote a scathing column about dirty water in the Springdale neighborhood, using my grandpa as a source.
Either way, I give Russell credit for knowing who Bill Blumenau was. A truly top-class local columnist or reporter can’t just rely on their own experience. They have to have a network of townies willing to pass on the scoop from their neighborhoods.
The truly great local reporters have to have an amicable relationship with City Hall, but must also be able to rip open its poses and bluffs using the word of real people. If my grandpa was one of those real people, it’s a credit to Don Russell that my grandpa felt he could pass along information and get results.
Don Russell died in 2010, nine years after my grandfather. The old WSTC disappeared a year later, when the station was sold to a nonprofit organization broadcasting National Public Radio programming.
I have no idea what means a Stamford resident might use nowadays to get publicity for a local story. They probably have to call some twentysomething reporter who’s already busy covering three events at once.
Good luck to them both.
Our local Penfield equivalent is Don Alhart, albeit heavier on the “show up and support all the local events and do good with church and Rotary etc.” and lighter on the “wise curmudgeon” aspect of Rustici. I know he has been asked to run for Town Supervisor and what all, but seems content to keep his career going. He’s only 1 year younger than I am.
Bood
According to Don Alhart’s Twitter feed, he started at WOKR on June 6, 1966, and is still there.
In my limited interaction with him over the years (I went to PHS with a couple of his kids), he seemed like a nice guy.
For what its worth, I think I went to high school with his daughter, Peggy Rustici.
However, that was not the topic of your Grandfather’s phone call, or I would have been aware of it.
Just thought I’d mention, that number for Don Russell was used to call into his live program which was on wstc every day at noon in the 70’s. He would discuss community topics and people could call in and comment. It was very lively because they would frequently argue. Don was also know to hang up on people when he’d had enough. It was all live and could be quite amusing, for parents anyhow. As a teenager I thought it was ridiculous, (but I also thought I knew everything lol) wstc was on our kitchen radio until 1pm every day except Sunday and we listened in the car on the way to school. I imagine your grandfather called in at some point. Long time since I heard 348-4208, they would say it over and over encouraging people to call in….
Thanks once again for the great real-life historical context.
Now I wonder what had my grandpa interested enough to call Don Russell and sound off.
(The fact that he wrote the name and number on his calendar suggests to me that he had some deeper commitment to calling in.)
[…] (I find it interesting that he didn’t watch the news; he listened to it on the radio. He might have been tuned in to local legend Don Russell’s program on WSTC, described in an earlier blog post.) […]