George -
Your recent note about air names forces me into a confession.
I’ve told some folks who commented on my rock ’n roll monicker of Possum Riley that it wasn’t my choice. That’s true, but what I left unsaid is that I didn’t object, either. WKGN PD Skip Broussard called me as I was packing in Wichita for my drive to Ktown in 1969 and said, “Hey, I’d really like for you to go by ‘Possum Riley’ on the air. I had been going by a reversal of my genuine name, calling myself Dick Randall. It was pretty plain vanilla. I’d used it for a half-dozen years and it was almost a place-keeper kind of name. I figured Skip knew his market and had a reason for landing on ‘Possum’, so I said, ‘yeah, OK.’
I began using my legit name when I went back into radio news at WMAK in March of 1976. Operations Manager Stu Bowers asked me, “So, you’re going to go by Paul Dickerson?” I told him, “No. If I’m going to use my own name, I’m using all of it.” When I went to work at The Associated Press in 1989, I dropped the first name because it, literally, wouldn’t fit. It was too wide to be printed in a column inch when I started doing newspaper feature stories. When I did my first print story, some AP members identified me as Paul Dickerson, some as Randall Dickerson, and at least one called me Paul Randall. I wasn’t going to let them choose, so I dropped the ‘Paul’. But after all of those years of doing radio news, most folks I know use either all three on me or just ‘PRD’, which is fine.
Possibly forgotten factoid: Sonny (Kivett) Knight’s younger brother was also on WKGN. He did some weekend jock shows and was known on air as Kevin Young. Kevin bore the distinction of once having dropped into the Tennessee River from the Henley Street Bridge on a bet and lived to tell the tale.
Thanks for hangin’
Possum
