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Local radio icon Don Weeks dead at 76
By Mark McGuire March 11, 2015


ROTTERDAM — Don Weeks, who fulfilled a childhood ambition by entertaining and informing generations of radio listeners as an iconic morning personality on WGY, died this morning, March 11, 2015. Weeks, who retired from a Hall of Fame career in 2010, was 76 and had been in failing health in recent months.

A complete obituary will be published in tomorrow’s Daily Gazette. Arrangements are by the Gleason Funeral Home.

For three decades Weeks served as the morning host on the 810 AM powerhouse, presenting a show that was a mix of news, interviews and humor that rarely if ever veered into the acerbic, even as talk radio grew more vitriolic in the 1990s. The formula worked, as "Don Weeks and the WGY Morning News" earned high ratings, a Marconi award and a spot for the Schenectady d and a spot in the New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

"Uncle Don," as he was known to listeners, carried on a mostly congenial conversation that lasted for 30 years, through six presidencies, more than three dozen characters, hundreds up hundreds of schools closings and thousands of interviews and comedy bits.

"I don’t think of myself as a performer," he said in a 2009 interview with the Daily Gazette. "I think of myself as somebody who everybody knows — everybody who listens to WGY knows — and I just show up in the morning and talk about things that they’re interested in,"

Weeks' radio career begans as a teenager, when the 1956 Nott Terrace High School graduate won a contest to host WOKO's Saturday afternoon show "Teen Time" for five weeks. His first paying gig came at WSNY on the upper floor of the old Plaza Theater on State Street. He then played Top 40 for WTRY.

In 1965, Weeks jumped to television and WAST (now WNYT) as the cartooning weatherman for "Wally Weather" segments in an era before weathercasters were almost all meteorologists. In 1968, he became art director at WRGB, before leaving two years later to becoming creative director at Helpin and Williams, an Albany advertising agency.

But he kept his hand in radio, running a morning show at WABY before working a full day at at the ad agency. In 1980, he took the morning show job at WGY, and a Hall of Fame career took off. It also fulfilled a childhood dream of working for the AM station.

"I grew up listening to WGY," Weeks said in 2009. "I’m old enough to say this — I was born on the cusp, when radio was making a transition to television and television was pretty much radio shows they could produce cheaply on television. I remember drama on the radio, I remember listening to 'Gunsmoke' in the 1950s before it made its transition to television, and I just loved the medium. I loved the idea you could conjure up pictures of things on the radio. They used to call it 'Theater of the Mind,' and I was fascinated by it.

"Bill Edwardsen was on in the morning on WGY, and I thought he was the coolest guy in the world because he would talk to celebrities. He seemed to be the toast of the town, and I thought, 'Wow, what a dream job. I would love to be the morning man at WGY.'"

Weeks' shows mixed taped and live interviews, riffs off the news, characters (into the 1990s) and a speed-reading of school closings in the pre-Internet era. The morning show was largely apolitical with periodic exceptions, making it distinct in the second half of his career as news talk radio in general, and WGY in particular, veered toward a predominantly conservative format.

"We had eras here .... Don's was the longest," said Joseph A. Reilly, the former president and CEO of the New York State Broadcasters Association. "Don got ratings without being dirty. Don did it in a good, all-American way ... and he had a huge following because of it."

When Weeks retired he was replaced Chuck Custer and Kelly Lynch; "Chuck and Kelly" remains the morning show on WGY.

“Don is one of the most talented, trusted and versatile performers I’ve ever heard,” Custer says of Weeks on the Broadcasters Hall of Fame website. “Don has been a TV weatherman, a Top 40 disc jockey, an ad executive and now handles everything from serious interviews to comedy. There’s nothing he can’t do.”

A national Marconi award winner for broadcasting excellence, Weeks was inducted into the New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame in a 2009 class that included CBS television anchor and radio commentator Charles Osgood. “Well, they obviously need me to park Charles’ car,” he quipped at the time.

Despite talking to thousands of listeners daily, Weeks said he was reserved. "You tell people this and they say, 'Nah, come on,' but it’s true — I do have a touch of shyness," he said. "Once I’ve learned to fight it and get over it, once I get beyond the initial 'Hey, aren’t you Don Weeks?' we chat like friends. Because I consider my listeners, they’re like friends in the morning or they wouldn’t be there."

Weeks announced his retiredment on the air in June 2010 effective at the end of that year.

"It's been a tremendous run," Weeks said. "They say there are no happy endings in radio. Yes, there are. It's going to be a very happy ending for me."

Weeks' wife, Suzanne M. Weeks, died Dec. 20. The couple had four children, Jonathan Weeks of Malone, NY, Christine DeGennaro of Scotia, Holly Weeks of Schenectady and Noelle (Frank J.) Falvo of Glenville and five grandchildren.

Reach Gazette reporter Mark McGuire at 395-3105, mmcguire@dailygazette.net or @MJMcGuire on Twitter.