A Voice From the Past
By Betsy Allen
You have to wonder, as the first flakes of Loudoun County's epic snows fell earlier this month, how many hands strayed to their radios, eager for the local take from WAGE (1200 AM).
Since 1958, WAGE, Loudoun's only radio station, had been a friend on the air, keeping everyone abreast of county news as it happened. Challenged by a variety of factors, the station ceased broadcasting last August.
"The thing WAGE was really known for was the local news," says Chris King, who was a fixture at the station for many years. "That was our prime directive. We'd get pages and pages of school closings, business closings, cancellations. With the first snowflake, we'd get tons of calls."
"Community is the word," says Paul Draisey, another longtime staffer, who first went on-air at WAGE at the tender age of 14. Draisey remembers the many days and nights King and other WAGE employees braved bad weather to hole up at the radio station and keep it broadcasting. "(Chris) would have camped at the station. I called it the opening of Camp Run-Amok," Draisey adds with a chuckle. "But that's dedication. You can't teach people that. It's ingrained. You need to care about your community."
True, WAGE is gone now, but Chris King is going strong. In his newest role as customer service assistant with Franklin Park Performing and Visual Arts Center in Purcellville, King has the opportunity to interact both with the public and with the many performers who grace its stage. Drawing on his expertise and wealth of experience, it's a job he's particularly well qualified to do.
"I was always totally drawn to the performing arts," King says. A graduate of the University of Maryland, he studied theater and music. After college, King was under contract at the Round House Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland, and worked as an actor, instructor and technician. His theater experience ran the spectrum - plays, musicals, touring groups, even educational theater for young people.
"It was a very fun career," King says, "but I wanted to settle down a bit. I went back to school for some broadcasting classes, and started with WAGE Radio in Leesburg in 1985."
"I hired Chris the first time," Draisey recalls. "He was a student at Montgomery Community College. My brother, Bill, he was kind of the talent finder (and also a teacher). He called me one day and said, 'I got this guy called Chris King. You gotta talk to him."
In 1987, Draisey left WAGE, but he didn't stay away long. "Crazy radio! It gets into your blood," he says.
King, too, left for other jobs in Atlantic City and Frederick, Maryland, but returned to WAGE in 2000. That year, King, now WAGE's program director, hired Draisey back to do the morning show. "You know, broadcasting tends to come full circle," Draisey says.
Anyone who has ever worked at a small business knows that employees are expected to multitask, and WAGE was no different for King. At different times, he was the production manager, program director, sports director, an announcer, along with, as Draisey puts it, "other duties as assigned."
One of those other duties stemmed from King's considerable writing talents; while at WAGE, he penned a number of award-winning radio commercials. "The guy is an incredible writer," Draisey says. "He has an incredible sense of humor. He'd write pieces that would have you in tears."
But for King, the true love centered on area musicians. "I always had a passion for local music," King says, recalling his WAGE show "Live in Loudoun." It highlighted local and regional performers such as Andrew McKnight, Mike Rayburn, Al Petteway, Amy White, Lisa Taylor and Les Thompson, who was one of the founding members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and is now the technical director at Franklin Park. "It was all about the community - everything you did was for the community."
A resident of Round Hill who has been married for 28 years and has two stepchildren and two grandchildren, King hired on with the Franklin Park Arts Center in December 2008. He emphasizes that "it's still all about the community. We support all the arts associations in Loudoun County. Even with the national acts we bring in, it's still with a commitment to the things people in the community want to see."
These days, King interacts with representatives and performers from local arts groups, such as the Loudoun Symphony, Master Singers of Virginia, the Dance Academy of Loudoun and Loudoun School of Ballet, among others. He also notes, with some satisfaction, that some of the familiar voices heard at WAGE are now heard at the center. "It's wonderful working with them again," he says.
King oversees the box office and designed the software the center uses. He provides support wherever it's needed. He also works in the realm of marketing and publicity, using his well-honed communications skills with a twice-monthly newsletter and to help the center make its initial forays into the Facebook and Twitter universes.
"The great thing about Chris," observes Jeff Stern, manager of the center, "is that he brings a wealth of experience in the community even as it changes - and Loudoun is always in flux, folks coming in and going. He understands the community." This means being able to communicate on equally sure footing with people coming from the spheres of technology or
agriculture, with newcomers or Loudoun natives.
"From a programming standpoint, he's also deeply connected to individuals within the Loudoun music community," Stern adds. He says he admires King's "street cred" with local artists; by extension, he helps give the center some of that.
"We're only going to grow if artists are going to float new ideas by us and see if we can work with them," Stern notes. "Chris has the ability to impart information in a clear, very confident way. It makes artists feel comfortable. It's great to have stalwarts of the arts community here."
The center, positioned on a bluff on the western edge of town, is part of the Loudoun County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Services. Opened in 2008 and dedicated to providing outstanding performing and visual arts programming and services, it's a building full of big spaces, natural light and enthusiastic people like King.
"We've got good energy," Stern says with a smile. "Positive vibes."
Yes, there is life after WAGE. While King thrives at Franklin Park, Draisey, a resident of Middleburg, has been enjoying a new career with Farmer's Insurance and also does some real estate work with Keller Williams. He speaks fondly of the old days, but knows King is a great fit in his new job. "The key is to talk to people and not at them," Draisey sums up. "He gets that. He's one of the good guys."
And King knows he's got a pretty sweet gig. "I'm really happy," he says, "because I feel that what I do makes the community a better place to live."
There's a long tradition of bowling in Leesburg, at least among the families that gather every week at Vil-lage Lanes Bowling Center in Leesburg for the Thursday Nite Owls bowling league. Fathers, sons and uncles. Wives and daughters. Single men and ladies. What they all have in common is the game, and every one of them is in serious communion with it. Faces are trained forward at the player, the lane, the pins ... and the scoreboard. 
Leagues, however, are always changing, especially in an area like this where people are transplanted, Butler says. "We're always developing new bowlers." 
