Wayne Norman is a ‘yes’ kind of guy
by T. C. Karmel
Reprinted with the permission of the Chronicle. Appeared in the July 3, 2000 edition
People who know him — and if you count the 50,000-watt, 38-state University of Connecticut sports network, that figure probably numbers in the millions — have a habit of calling him Way-No. The name was even once on his license plate.
But a better name would be Way-Yes, the Molly Bloom kind of “yes” of affirmation for life and all of its imponderables and complexities that Joyce’s character was speaking of in her soliloquy at the end of “Ulysses.”
For Wayne Norman, whose voice area residents have woken up to for the past 30 years on WILI radio, is a “yes” kind of guy: yes to the countless listeners who have asked that their or a family member’s name be added to the morning Birthday Club; yes to the dozen or so weathermen who have set him straight or who he has set straight about historic storms or heat waves; yes to broadcast partner Joe D’Ambrosio during play-by-play of UConn basketball games; yes to my request to watch and listen to him on a so-called “typical” morning drive; yes to the variety of civic and official organizations that count on his services to make their functions memorable — as will happen Tuesday, of course, when he assumes his rightful spot as grand marshal of the city’s 14th annual Boom Box Parade.
The marshal’s job is one of the many he relishes each year; for the rest of us, it’s a chance to attach a face (long, thin, shock of graying brown hair), and 6-foot-3-inch frame beginning to show its 50-ish years, to the voice that catches the airwaves and drifts through eastern Connecticut each day.
A transplanted Californian, Wayne Norman moved to Connecticut as a boy when Westinghouse transferred his father to Bridgeport. He went to UConn and there, after becoming involved with WHUS, found his passion.
This morning, four days before he struts down Main Street in whatever get-up — secret until the big event — he’s selected for this parade (past choices: a UConn basketball player in Jake Voskuhl’s uniform, riding a spooked horse, trying to keep his balance a la lookalike Dick Van Dyke on roller blades, in a fire department cherry picker), that passion is manifesting itself in a plea to Ray from South Windham to call the studio again so Norman can get his full name and phone number for that evening’s drawing of the “which came first?” contest.
After answering correctly that paper money (1862) came before Chanel No. 5 (1921), Ray hung up and the vital information was lost in that dead air between downtown Willimantic, dawning lazily on Main Street, and the sleepy little borough to the south of us.
As I watch his perpetual motion, it occurs to be that in an earlier-life Wayne Norman was probably an octopus. At any one time during his show, his long arms are reaching in a dozen directions: to carts with pre-recorded ads, to a file scribbled with bits of Willimantic history (this day is the 17th anniversary of the Windham-Willimantic consolidation), to the phone ringing in front of his red and green sound board, to notes propped up in front of him, to a CD or a tape on shelves behind him.
His is a life that is measured in nanoseconds: a 30-second ad cut, a three-minute Beatles song, a five-minute chat with the weatherman du jour, Ron Anderson, a one-minute synopsis of the previous night’s baseball scores, given with the authority of someone who has been creating and reading box scores for nearly half a century.
A jungle of microphones separates an elevated Norman from a semi-circular table for guests, from his swivel chair where he presides each day from 6 to 10 a.m., the Weather Channel announcers emoting silently from a mute television overhead. (Norman’s lively chatter and knowledge of weather would put that crew to shame). This morning, Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” is jerking its way through the string of rooms that is the underground bunker of WILI-AM and FM because it is “Forgotten Oldie Friday,” that morning each week, Norman tells me, “when we bring back the good stuff.”
For Wayne Norman, the good stuff includes the Red Sox, the Beatles, UConn basketball and football, the Willi-Mac softball league (he’s a designated hitter now that the years are setting in) and Willimantic, with which he has had a 30-year love affair. One would be hard-pressed to determine who gives who the most in this arrangement, although the balance may be tipped in favor of the radio man who was Romantic Willimantic’s first ever Cupid, back in 1982, when the tables were turned and possibly for the first time in his life he was left speechless, when surprised in his own studio with the honor.
As I drive down Main Street, which four days hence will be filled with the rousing sounds of John Phillip Sousa and the UConn fight song, Wayne Norman’s familiar voice is with me on the boom box that is my car radio.
And in one long, winding sentence, that voice is putting its history, its loves and losses, on the line for its listeners.
Having just played Peter and Gordon’s 1964 recording of “A World Without Love,” Wayne Norman is sharing an experience: “I have the original 45 of that,” he tells us with the intimacy of a close friend and the universality of a music historian.
“I bought it on Sunset and Vine in Hol–ly–wood …,” he continues, launching into the fact that it was one of the few songs by Lennon and McCartney that the Beatles did not record.
Later, he tells me of riding on his bike, delivering papers in Glendale, Calif., with the Peter and Gordon tune floating out of the portable radio in his back pocket, perhaps at the exact moment — who knows? — when the dream of filling homes with his music and stories made its way through the airwaves into the heart and soul of Wayne Norman.
Terese Karmel is features editor at the Chronicle.
