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(Air)waves of success
Many a sports journalist got start at H-F radio station
February 8, 2009 BY TIM CRONIN Staff Writer
At most high schools, students wouldn't know Marconi from macaroni. Not so at Homewood-Flossmoor, where one of the most sophisticated high school radio stations in the country has turned out dozens of alumni, including a number who have made careers in sports broadcasting and journalism.
Four of them are directly involved in covering sports in Chicago.
Laurence Holmes is a morning co-host on WSCR-AM, working with Pro Football Hall of Famer Dan Hampton. Chuck Garfien is a reporter at Comcast SportsNet. Randy Merkin produces the "Waddle and Silvy" show on WMVP-AM. Scott Merkin, Randy's older brother, is the White Sox beat reporter for mlb.com.
They are but a few of the many who have started at WHFH-FM (88.5) and gone on to success in the communications business.
The secret of their individual successes lies in the common details, especially in the production of something that in commercial radio is as common as a unicorn in a zoo: a live 55-minute documentary.
"Doing that broadcast and working at WHFH, I realized it was something I could do for a living," said Garfien, a 1989 H-F graduate. "Would I be a sportscaster today if I hadn't gone through the program? Maybe, but I don't know. It was the biggest experience of my life, outside of my bar mitzvah.
"When you're young and impressionable, to come across a place like WHFH, to have an opportunity to do radio, it makes a huge impression on you, and it stays with you."
Garfien's endorsement is typical, and much of it centers upon Robert Comstock, a 1972 H-F graduate who, after graduating from college and working in radio downstate, came back to H-F to replace his mentor, Jerry Garber.
It was Garber who came up with the documentary concept to stretch the abilities of his students to the limit.
"When I took over, he said I could do anything I wanted with the curriculum but that I had to keep the documentary," Comstock said. "I told him he had nothing to worry about."
Comstock has kept it in its original form, even though in commercial radio and TV news, a two-minute report is considered long.
"It was impossible," Randy Merkin said. "I've gone through so much in radio, but Mr. Comstock was so tough on us. The documentary had to be exactly 55 minutes. If it was 54:59 or 55:01, your grade dropped one letter."
Another second off, and the grade dropped another letter, and so on.
"He was tough but fair," Merkin said.
Randy's brother echoed those remarks.
"It's like nothing I've ever experienced since," Scott Merkin said. "It was a professional atmosphere for a grade. The documentary is still the hardest thing I've done for anyone."
Scott Merkin, a former reporter for The Star newspaper, worked in radio, even calling Midlothian White Sox games one summer, before joining the Chicago Tribune and becoming one of the first reporters whose work appeared almost exclusively online.
"In this job, you get asked to be on radio and TV interviews," he said. "For that, WHFH was huge training."
Garfien's documentary was on Agent Orange, an herbicide used during the Vietnam War to defoliate areas of South Vietnam. The side effects on humans included increased risk of cancer and genetic defects. Among those affected were American soldiers and airmen who sprayed Agent Orange across the Vietnamese countryside.
"It opened my eyes to the reality of war," Garfien said. "I remember one vet told me, 'The greatest casualty of war is the truth.' "
For the broadcast, Garfien spoke with Vietnam veterans, both at a VA hospital and over the phone, and also interviewed the first reporter to cover Agent Orange.
"Bill Kurtis broke that story, and I interviewed him about it," Garfien recalled. "My dad drove me downtown to the CBS studios. Kurtis' sound bites are all over the documentary."
The station, at 1,500 watts the highest-powered high school FM station in the country, is, beyond faculty overseeing, completely student-run, from operation of the transmitter to all the programming.
"There's a lot of fun, but the on-air production is very serious," said Holmes, who was "hired" at WHFH by Ben Bradley, now a reporter at WLS-Ch. 7. "The progress you make from when you come into the program to where you are when you leave is amazing."
In Holmes' case, it allowed him to make the most of an internship at WMAQ Radio while attending DePaul. He was helping on WMAQ's old Sports Huddle show, and when the producer left, he was given that job at age 19 in part because he had earned an FCC license while at Homewood-Flossmoor.
"I was working for Lou Canellis and Jeff Joniak, and Joniak doesn't take anything lightly," said Holmes, who left WMAQ to finish college. "What WHFH really taught me is how to listen."
Now, station owner CBS having moved WSCR to WMAQ's AM frequency at 670 several years ago, Holmes - once a sports correspondent for the Daily Southtown - co-hosts his show with Hampton from the same studio and is preparing to start work on his master's degree in communication.
"I can't say enough nice things about the program," said Holmes, whose parents moved from Chicago's Morgan Park community to Glenwood so he could go to school at H-F. "It gave me a career."
The Merkins, including brother Jeff, who also worked at WHFH, lived on the other side of what now is Coyote Run Golf Course from the station. They were often there until sign-off.
"For eight years, our parents drove over and took us home at 9 p.m.," Randy Merkin said. "At the end of my senior year, Mr. Comstock hired a limo to take my parents to and from the station's banquet."
Scott and Jeff Merkin debuted WHFH's "SportsView" show, which continues to this day as "SportsMania."
"We covered more than Homewood-Flossmoor," Scott Merkin said. "We would get credentials to games to get interviews. I remember getting a credential to a Bulls game, and Brian McIntyre, the PR guy, came over and said, 'So you're WHFH, huh?' But I got interviews with Artis Gilmore and Reggie Theus.
"Karl-Heinz Granitza of the Sting came to the studio and did the show live. We even got Muhammad Ali on the phone in 1980."
Garfien went to Southern California, where, in his first semester, he went to audition at what is now KUSC-FM.
"This is emblematic of what WHFH is like," Garfien said. "The station manager looked at my resume and said, 'I don't know why you're interning here. You have more experience than I do.' "
Comstock said the program, which has included a television component since the early 1990s, isn't really designed to develop broadcasters.
"My philosophy is, I don't really care what you're doing, but whatever you do, the experience will help you," Comstock said. "It will help whether you're communicating with your manager or with a subordinate."
Perhaps, but careers are forged at WHFH. Other graduates of the program include Dave Mitchell, an anchor-reporter for WBBM Radio; Scott Rude, a producer for the Golf Channel; and Michelle Eccles McLaughlin, the news director at WTAX Radio in Springfield and a past president of the Illinois News Broadcasters Association.
"You learn so much about yourself," Randy Merkin said. "This isn't out of a book. This is practical. I owe my passion and interest in broadcasting to WHFH."
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