ST. LOUIS - It was on a snowy morning when I was a boy hoping for a snow day, I first heard the sound of KMOX.
KMOX used to be on every room of the house, but mostly from the radio in my mother's kitchen windowsill.
KMOX was a place where people like Bob Hardy, Rex Davis, Bruce Bradley and Anne Keefe were arguing about the adult issues of the day. I didn't really care about the issues, but I loved the way they would interrupt each other while having fun, just clashing verbal swords on the air.
Then there was Jack Carney, whom my mother would always be laughing at him.
I would always hear about how people would listen to KMOX in the parking lot of their cars just before they would be trudge into another day of work in the salt mines.
Somehow, I ended up working at KMOX and I chased the wind of news for 28 years. From election nights, murder trials, bank robberies and ribbon cuttings where we would corner some mayor and cut him to ribbons with questions
Over my time here, I got to work with Bob Hamilton, Bill Reker, Carol Daniel, Megan Lynch, Debbie Monterrey, Roger Brand and Michael Calhoun.
I remember when I was still a newbie the great Jack Buck would come up to my desk and ask 'Hey, do you mind if I read you a poem I'm working on?' How could you say no to that?
Jim White was also extremely kind to me. He would used to say to me 'Killeen, nobody in management is thinking 'how could we make Kevin Killeen a star?', that is up to you' he would tell me. Looking back, I guess that applies to all jobs out there.
Well, I never did become a star, but like The Loop trolley, I managed to stay on the track somehow.
Now it's time to say goodbye to KMOX. My wife told me I should tie it all up with a bow with how KMOX and 'Whole Nother Story' has meant to me.
In reality, I have no idea myself what it's all meant. I think the closest I have ever came to understanding my work was once at a picnic while in the potato salad line.
Charlie Brennan's producer was there along with his mother and his mother told me 'Are you Kevin Killeen? I have to tell you, you have a very interesting way of talking in a long roundabout way in circles, and somersaults, and loop de loops, then landing the plane and arriving at nothing'
With a 'Whole Nother Story' I'm Kevin Killeen.