Former WFAS News Director Frank Lepore. Frank, who served as News Director from the late 1970s to the early 1980s was my mentor. He later went on to teach at Columbia Journalism School, Mt. Saint Vincent, and other institutions. Born in Wheeling, West Virginia, his broadcasting career spanned over five decades and included most of the major outlets in the New York City Metropolitan area market. The WFAS Newsroom in 1980, when I started there at age 20, was rivaled only by the local daily newspaper chain founded in 1906 by Rochester businessman Frank Gannett, a Republican who once ran for President. Today Gannett is owned by a corporation that bears his name. Conversely, WFAS was named for Frank A. Seitz, Sr. by his widow who purchased the station. Mrs. Seitz’s son, Frank, Jr. headed up the station for 32 years. Frank, Jr. was a local businessman who, according to his New York Times obituary “had begun his career in broadcasting at the age of 17 as an announcer at WCOH in Yonkers.” WCOH was the predecessor of WFAS. It began in Mount Vernon in the late 1920s, the decade when commercial radio in the United States began. Today WCOH are the call letters affixed to a station in Georgia, a Fox News Radio affiliate.
(RYE BROOK, NY) MAY 15 – Republicans today nominated for governor of the state of New York Mr. Rob Astorino. He is County Executive here in Westchester. He’s also a former county legislator, a former member of the Mount Pleasant Town Council, and a former member of the Mount Pleasant Central School District. When he was 21 Rob worked as a reporter at WFAS, where I also started my career in 1980. I left WFAS in 1982 but in 2007, when I started broadcasting from China for Fox News Radio, I was back on its air since the station was, at that time, a Fox News Radio affiliate.
County Executive and now New York State 2014 Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino and I met many years ago, after we had both left WFAS. Our paths did not cross again until we met again today following his nomination.
Here’s my report from that event:
NEW YORK STATE REPUBLICANS THURSDAY NOMINATING WESTCHESTER COUNTY EXECUTIVE ROB ASTORINO TO TAKE ON SAFE-ACT AUTHOR AND GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO THIS NOVEMBER.
FOX NEWS RADIO’S BILL MARCUS HAS MORE FROM RYE, NEW YORK.
The news staff at WFAS&WWYD in the early 1980s, courtesy of Tom O’Hanlon,
pictured center, back. Yours truly, far right. The late, and absolutely wonderful,
DeLora Hanaham, in red, in the center.