Is Art Lake (WJAR) still alive?

[Peter Q. George]

Yes, Art is still with us. However, he is now retired after suffering a stroke back in '05.  John Quill was with WWLP since 1953 until he passed away a few years ago.  Even though John Quill was on the air for many, many years, Art Lake was on the air in New England for nearly 60 years.  Both Art and John are true New England legends.  A hard act to follow.

    
Peter Q. George (K1XRB)
Whitman, Massachusetts
"Scanning the bands since 1967"
radiojunkie1@yahoo.com
radiojunkie3@yahoo.com
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--- On Sun, 11/16/08, Kevin Vahey <kvahey@comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Kevin Vahey <kvahey@comcast.net>
> Subject: Is Art Lake (WJAR) still alive?
> To: "(newsgroup) Boston-Radio-Interest" <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
> Date: Sunday, November 16, 2008, 12:26 AM
> Just wondering if anybody on the list knows if Art Lake is
> still
> alive. He was still on the air as late as 2005 when he
> suffered a
> stroke.
> 
> There is a misconception that John Quill was on the air at
> WWLP longer
> than anyone in New England but I think Art Lake has that
> honor.
> 
> He was hired by WJAR radio in 1944 and moved to TV in 1949.
> 
> Professor Halper perhaps he should be honored given that
> WJAR's
> coverage area included much of southeastern Massachusetts
> and if he is
> still alive he must have a treasure of stories he can tell.
> 
> I notice the Wikipedia entry about WJAR has one major
> error. It says
> the station was still in the Outlet building when it was
> destroyed by
> fire but in fact they had moved to new studios 2 blocks
> away in the
> late 70's. Outlet then fled to Cranston when Mayor
> Buddy Cianci who
> was a frequent target raised their property tax bill by ten
> times.
> Outlet got even by selling the studios to a local college
> taking it
> off the tax rolls completely.
> 
> Outlet had no use for radio as they donated WJAR-FM to
> Brown
> University (now WBRU) and sold off WJAR-AM (now WHJJ) for
> cheap money.