from
Floyd's 1999 wgnradio.com Bio
When you think
of high visibility in the Chicago media, you must be thinking
of Floyd Brown. On both WGN Radio and WGN-TV, Floyd has
served in numerous on-air capacities.
On WGN Radio,
"The Floyd Brown Show" featured an entertaining variety
of music, special events and interviews with interesting,
provocative guests. The program focused on investments and
entrepreneurship from 11:00pm to midnight each Sunday, followed
by two hours of America's "great jazz music."
Beginning his
career as an engineer at WRMN in Elgin, Floyd has occupied
almost every position in broadcasting. He has served as
a chief engineer, program manager, newscaster and associate
news editor, as well as program host for a variety of radio
and television formats. Aside from his work with the WGN
organizations, Floyd has seen plenty of broadcast action
at WMAQ-Channel 5, WYNR, WNUS and NBC.
Floyd's activities
off the air are just as impressive. Throughout Illinois,
he is in high demand as a public speaker and a Master of
Ceremonies. Along with being an active member of the first
Congregational Church of Elgin, Floyd is a television host
with the Chicago Sunday Evening Club, and is active in Rotary
International, the American Heart Association, is a board
member of the Salvation Army and is involved with countless
other civic organizations and charities.
In fact, the entire
Brown family is a visible part of the Chicagoland area.
Betty, Floyd's wife, is well-known as a civic leader, successful
business woman and patron of the arts. His son, Keith, is
a judge in the 16th Judicial Circuit, while their daughter,
Dianne, is also successful in the business world, as an
officer with one of the nation's largest corporations.
TOP
from
the Courier-News 7/4/1999
By Kathaleen
Roberts STAFF WRITER
When Floyd Brown launched his broadcasting career at WRMN,
the owners tried to muzzle him because he was black.
By 1965, the Elgin resident had signed with NBC and landed
on the cover of a national magazine next to Bill Cosby.
Brown shattered the color barrier with his trademark dose
of gentlemanly grace, fueled by a veiled undercurrent of
rage. The WGN radio announcer and former sports anchor retires
today after 28 years at the station.
Armed with a baritone as smooth and rich as molasses, Brown
invented a career spanning the Big Band era, the Beatles
and the Bears. Relentlessly self-critical, he barely can
stand to listen to his own show. But he possesses a disarming
honesty that never tilts into boastfulness.
"It's hard to dislike me," he said quietly.
Brown was born in Texas, the son of a divorced mother who
worked in a dress shop. His grandmother picked cotton and
served as a domestic.
"The earliest memory I have of Metro Street in Dallas is
seeing people sitting on a porch," he said. "There had just
been a hanging in the neighborhood. They said he had raped
a white woman.
"You couldn't eat in a restaurant," he continued. "You had
to go to 'colored only' washrooms. The first time I was
in an integrated school was at Northwestern (University).
I was an oddity there. I'd walk through a room and people
would stop talking."
The family moved to Washington, D.C., where he says his
mother "cried me through high school." Street toughs frequently
lured him away from the school grounds. But he graduated
at 16, then headed to college in 1947, where he became interested
in radio. He wanted to study engineering, but his advisers
told him to open a radio shop instead. He decided to take
accounting because of the number of black-owned businesses
springing up in Chicago.
To support himself, Brown worked as a porter at the Drake
Hotel, scribbling his homework in linen closets. He often
passed the Radio Institute of Chicago during his commute,
and he decided to follow his first love. In 1951, he signed
up for engineering and announcing classes and came to Elgin
and WRMN, then owned by Joe McNoughton.
Hired as an engineer, Brown worked at the station's transmitter
site, then located on Illinois 58, far from WRMN's downtown
newsroom. But he edged onto the airwaves when the usual
announcer was late for work.
"He found out the world didn't explode when I came on the
air," he said. "I started getting more mail than anybody
else."
Elgin's worst
moments
Longtime friend Fern Risley, who started her career at WRMN
with Brown, remembers going into the city to listen to jazz.
Risley now works in the tourist information center of the
Grand Victoria Casino.
"We couldn't take him anywhere in Elgin," she said. "He
had to go to Chicago to get his hair cut. My husband tried
to make a (golf) date for him at a local golf course and
they wouldn't let him."
If life is marked by turning points or personal epiphanies,
Brown's came in Elgin. He still calls it "the worst day
of my life." He was earning $70 a week, and his wife Betty
was pregnant.
The station's general manager appointed him chief engineer.
"I said, 'That means a raise, doesn't it?' He said, 'No,
we don't have the money.' I was furious enough to strike
out in anger," Brown said, his warm eyes still narrowing
into slits. "He did that because he knew I couldn't go anywhere
because I was black. I got a lump in my throat so big I
could hardly swallow. I went out because the tears were
coming out. I sat there and I labored with it and I thought,
'I'll show those sons of bitches.'"
Years later, at the height of Brown's success, that same
manager would claim to have been the best man at his wedding.
On his own
Brown left WRMN to help start up WYNR, a Chicago rock station
owned by the Dallas-based McLendon Corp. He doubled his
salary and stepped into the volatile world of rock 'n' roll
"culture shock."
"I used to get a headache listening to it," he acknowledged.
"Motown had just come into its own. We were one of the first
to play Beatles' music in the U.S.
"We brought in Cassius Clay who later became Muhammad Ali,"
he added. "We put him on with our morning man and we called
it the battle of the lip."
Three years later, he left the station for NBC's WMAQ, becoming
the first black to be hired by a national network. Parent
company Chairman David Sarnoff put Brown on the cover of
RCA's company magazine next to Cosby, then starring in the
TV series I Spy.
Brown worked as a DJ and as an announcer for WMAQ's radio
show during the height of the '60s anti-war violence.
"There was so much turbulence," he said. "Our newsmen would
come in bleeding and wearing helmets."
The more experienced NBC announcers wouldn't talk to him
until he had worked for every program and proved he was
more than just a token.
Sunday jazz
Then WGN called, made Brown an announcer, and gave him his
own Sunday jazz show at the request of listeners who bombarded
the station with calls and letters. There he interviewed
jazz royalty: Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Ella Fitzgerald.
The station also named him the WGN-TV sports anchor, a slot
he filled for "10 or 12 years."
Ward Quaal, retired WGN president and chief executive officer,
hired Brown on the recommendation of his staff.
"You can find some people who can do sports, but nothing
else," he said. "You can find people to do news but nothing
else. He could adjust himself to any need."
At one point, Brown was working 15 hours a day, six days
a week.
"Whenever they needed a body, I was the guy," he said. "I
used to start my day at noon up at the Bears' camp and I'd
wind up doing the midnight news."
He had also started his own marketing firm after being approached
by friends for advice. Always a familiar face at community
fund-raisers, he was the director of a mutual fund group
and served on the board of a local savings and loan. He
set "ridiculous" fees to discourage speaker requests, but
still they came.
Changing life
The pressures mounted, then exploded in 1978 when Brown
landed in the hospital with open heart surgery for angina.
It proved to be a wake-up call. He stopped pushing so hard,
and gave up his anchor position.
"Nobody in the hospital ever says 'I didn't spend enough
time at the office,'" he said. "I never had the ego problem
of 'I have to be on the air; I have to be on stage.' I just
enjoyed it."
He's spent the last few years anchoring a Sunday night radio
program centering on his two greatest interests: finance
and jazz.
He'll close tonight's final show accompanied by his family,
including his daughter Diane, the owner of an interior design
firm, and his son Keith, a 16th judicial circuit judge.
After some rest, he'll take computer classes, work on his
golf game, travel and focus more closely on his investments.
Influencing millions
If America's racial chasm plunged Brown into his deepest
point of despair, it also raised him. During the height
of the nation's civil rights unrest, Brown was struggling
mightily with the urge to head south and join Martin Luther
King when the vice president of Montgomery Ward approached
him in a restaurant.
"When we get into a group and people are making derogatory
remarks (about blacks), we don't know how to answer," Brown
quoted the man as saying. "Now I can say that's not true,
I know Floyd Brown and his family and they're not like that."
"A light bulb went on in my head," Brown said. "I used to
talk to the Lord a lot in my car. I said, 'Lord, if you'll
just get me through this, I will live a life that stresses
that being a Christian and being a good man is a positive
way of life.' With that approach in mind, I think I've influenced
millions of people."
TOP
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