Johnny Rabbitt, KXOK St. Louis, 1966 (14:07)

. . . in this presentation,
you will hear excerpts from an actual mid-60's broadcast . . .

The KXOK 60's Reunion...

(L-R) Shad O'Shea, Robert R. Lynn, Danny Dark, Bud Connell, Delcia Devon, Ray Otis, and William A. Hopkins at the St. Louis Library September 29, 2001.

[Description by Mike Anderson]

On September 29, 2001, Frank Absher put together a reunion of KXOK (AM 630) radio personalities, management and support personnel. Frank was formerly a St. Louis radio news person and is currently curator of the STL Radio.com historical archives in place at the St. Louis downtown Public Library. Frank is also a contributing editor of The St. Louis Journalism Review.

The KXOK reunion took place on a gorgeous Fall day at the Library (too bad they have such limited parking). More than a dozen of the "old crew" showed up and had the best time reliving the incredible success of this legendary radio station.

I honestly didn't expect much of an audience to show up for this, but there must have been about 50 members of the public and three video crews. Audio and video of the entire presentation was recorded.

The KXOK staffers enjoyed a great private dinner together later in the evening at the St. Louis landmark hotel, The Mayfair. Frank said that the meal, good as it was, was pretty much ignored in favor of table hopping and catching up on the events of the past 40 or so years.

Richard Ward Fatherley put together a 14-minute audio cassette presentation highlighting the station's personalities and centering on the biggest star, Don Pietromonaco's "Johnny Rabbitt" and "Bruno J. Grunion" characters. It was converted to digital audio by Ian Geisz, the board op of the Frank O. Pinion show on News/Sports/Talk KTRS (550AM). Pietromonaco's son was present at the reunion; Don passed away in 1997 in Los Angeles, where he was working as a film producer.