If you have a radio, I'll bet it's been tuned to hear a community affairs interview or sports coverage by KBLJ's Pat McGee. He's had a good run and has decided to enjoy retirement.
I was fortunate enough to sit across from him, doing his news, planning our "bits in the hall" more on that later, for three and a half years.
When I first met him I thought, "how am I going to match his energy?" He was all over the place, running around the station, getting ready to go on air, responding to email, answering phones, uploading programs, running to get breakfast, running to get something else. I was exhausted in the first 20 minutes. Little did I know that I would indeed match that energy and we would indeed become Colorado's Best Morning Talk Show, winning Colorado Broadcasters Association's award in 2020.
We bonded at first through radio station stories. I had been in Louisville, Kentucky, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Colorado Springs. Pat had been on the air in Detroit, Michigan. It was the city that turned him into that "hippy kid" with a knack for making people smile. He had all the best stories, he'd been to all the concerts, seen all the artists who were up and coming. It became a little joke on the air when he would say some artist was having a birthday today and I would say "lemme guess....you saw the show?" Of course. If you didn't know who the band was he was referring to he would always say, "Oh you have to check them out...look them up and listen!" We would sometimes hear that band later coming from his office on sound level "somewhat loud."
When something would break around the station, he would fix it. He is very handy and I often times would call on him to take care of something.
As we started to get to know each other, we would send each other memes and would often times try and out do the other. And sometimes we would practice our best shock jock rock show bits BEFORE the mic was hot (turned on) before the show. Those are the "bits in the hall." It's just stuff radio people get out of their system before behaving well on-the-air. Those are truly fun times.
I will really miss working alongside him. But, this man really deserves retirement. The community will miss his Tiger Sports and Valley Sports play-by-play calls on the radio, we'll all miss the way he woke us up on Around the Valley, the way he knows how to pronounce all the names on the birthday club list and basically is just Southeast Colorado and the Arkansas Valley Wikipedia.
I thought you'd enjoy seeing some of the silly photos and some not so much on Pat's last day on-the-air with KBLJ radio in La Junta.
Anne Boswell
Morning show news director and Pat's partner
We'll start with one of the serious ones. Hard at work here, I took this. :)
And YES I get such a kick out of playing around with the snapchat filters so we was my victim, lol, on his last day on the air. Growing up is waaaaaaaaaay overrated.
"Whatcha looking at?"
Retirement suggestions! Sledding on a waffle? Why not?
He's never seen Tiger King but I felt this was a little Carole Baskin inspired.
And here we are, just being us.
A KBLJ partnership, established May 18, 2018-November 30, 2021
By the way, if you'd like to contact Pat in retirement, don't. He says he'll be around but he's looking forward to sleeping in until at least 7, watching Good Morning America, taking a daily long walk and petting his cats.
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