In the 1960’s, the disk jockeys at WHOT were known as “the Good Guys.” To this day, we all remember Boots Bell’s “Yes indeedie-doodie-daddy. Have yourself a happy…” or Johnny Kay’s morning broadcasts of the school lunch menus or shouting “Run, Bambi, run!” at the beginning of deer hunting season. Some of us remember Jerry Starr, Smoochie Causey, George Barry, and A.C. McCullough. He may not have been as memorable, but perhaps the mainstay of WHOT was Dick Thompson.

Dick Thompson was born in nearby Oil City, Pennsylvania in 1928. He got his start in radio when he hosted a program as a high school senior in Oil City. He had two stints in the army with
Armed Services Radio in Korea (Boots Bell was also a Korean war vet with a Purple Heart). Thompson briefly attended Grove City College between his two tours of duty.

He got back into radio when he came home. Later he moved to California, where he met his wife Sherry and worked for a time with Regis Philbin a newscaster at KSON-AM, where Thompson was working as program director. He also worked at radio stations in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Columbus, Ohio.

He was one of the early disk jockeys at WHOT, coming to Youngstown in 1958 when the station was a daytime only station at 1570 AM. He was soon joined by Johnny Kay and with the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll, they headed up one of the top 40 stations in the country. Boots Bell came in 1959.

As others joined the station, he took on more of a management role as program director. He still filled program slots in the day and on weekends. He also became “Big Al Knight” when WHOT started broadcasting 24 hours. Thompson recorded these programs, which ran from 12 to 6 am, saving the station from hiring another DJ. For many of us who stayed up, or were out late with the radio on, this is when we listened to Dick Thompson (and not all of us knew it). Thomas John, a later program director at the station said of him, “He did everything. It was fascinating to go by his office because you never know who would be in there.”

He worked at WHOT for 35 years. After a couple of years in retirement, he and his friend Johnny Kay teamed up once more in 1995 to do work together at WNIO and later WSOM, retiring once more in 2007. Johnny Kay passed away in December 2014. Thompson outlived his friend by a few years, dying at age 89 in November 2017.

While these voices no longer fill the Youngstown airwaves, you can listen to Dick Thompson as Big Al Knight on this clip from January 1, 1973:

He truly was one of the “Good Guys.”