Roger Radant, former Film Dept, Puppeteer

ROGER W. RADANT, 55 MACHESNEY PARK - Roger W. Radant, 55, ofMachesney Park passed away at 2:50 p.m. Thursday, May 1, 2008, in hishome. Born Dec. 6, 1952, in Rockford, the son of Kenneth W. and Mary(Wirtanen) Radant. Married Lisa Kirkpatrick on Sept. 16, 1991, inRockford. Employed by Barcol Door for 25 years. Roger was an avid Harleyenthusiast, Chicago Bears fan and loved spending time with his family athome. Survivors include wife, Lisa; daughter, Niki Wheat; mother, MaryRadant, all of Machesney Park; sisters, Diane (Jim) Thomas of Aurora andPat (Milt) Schwanke of Machesney Park; and brothers, Larry (Helen) ofRoscoe, Kenneth of Rockford and Doug (Judy) Radant of Lindenhurst.Predeceased by father.

From Dave A.

Paul Masquelier's Goodbye to WIFR

Kinda bittersweet, given he is no longer with us. He sure had a good time at WIFR, as I recall. I also recall a roomful of guys crowding into my Nap Room (also known as the announce booth) to record the "Happy Trails" whistling and horse clip-clops.

Pete's Near Miss

ALL I wanted to do was test out the new Ikegami HL-77 Camera the station had just bought. Unfortunately I chose to do so during a thunderstorm; I think I was trying to impress Sue!

The "NEW" Action News -1977?

I inherited this since it was before my time. It's in pretty poor shape, but you should enjoy.

I believe it marks Sue Mroz's first appearance on WIFR. I barely knew Kerry Donovan and Mark Ovenden (since I was weekend prompter op at that time) and never met Ken Staaf. I did enjoy Chuck Faber.

Rockford Commercials 1980

I stripped these out of a Rick Moore-anchored newscast from March of 1980. Mark DeSantis does the voice track for "Knight's Armor" (a men's clothing store); Sally Kolkmeyer hosts a Lou Bachrodt Chevrolet commercial, Bill Walters voices a commercial, and many other interesting tidbits are contained herein!

WIFR 1983 Christmas Show

For some reason someone sent this to me (Walt, probably, since his troubling mug is all over this show) and although I am not IN it, I hung onto it for 25 years! Enjoy! - Pete Barrett

October, 1980 Newscast

Snow got the lead...a thrilling school board story!

Christmas tape 1982

Yet another fine offering from Pete.

Lookin Good!

Another fun video. Look for perky Sally in the background...!

Blog Notes

I would like to encourage all partipants to post your own topics, and put up pictures and videos, as well as simply commenting on existing posts. It's easy to log on and create your own post. All you need is a google account (it's free) and the blog username and password...which I am happy to provide in case you haven't already received it.

If you are unsure how to create a post once you log on, there are tips and help buttons all along the way. If you're still confused, let me know and I'll be happy to help you through the process.
In the event you are hopelessly technically challenged, feel free to send me a post and any materials you have and I will put it up under your name.

Pictures should be well compressed and not too large. Videos must be under 100MB each and will be automatically re-formatted after they are uploaded. Videos can take some time to post so be prepared to wait several minutes or more depending on the size. There is a limit (maybe as low as 300MB) on how many total MB's we can use, so keep that in mind before you decide to post your entire collection of videos. The preferred method would be to "embed" videos (see "looking good" above) hosted on sites like youtube and vimeo with a simple copy and paste of HTML to your post...using this method, we can have unlimited video on this blog. Bottom line...upload your videos to youtube, and we can still see them on your post here.

If there's anyone out there with old WIFR graphic elements and a little knowlege of HTML that would care to design a more colorful and historically accurate banner for this site, go for it.
That kinda stuff is way over my head...