#RememberCharly Butcher of WOWO & WMEE Fort Wayne

Photo provided by WOWO.com

There are a lot of postings online about the sudden and unexpected passing of my friend and co-worker Charly Butcher. I took some time to find some video’s that give a glimpse into the Charly we all know and love, but first a run-down of what happened in the past 24 hours.

Wednesday evening, August 15th, 2018, I was at home when my phone notified me that a work email arrived. It was the announcement that Federated Media Fort Wayne Market Manager Jim Allgeier sent us:

It’s with a heavy heart that I am sending this email out right now. Charly Butcher has passed away this afternoon. No details as of yet that I can share.

Over the next couple of hours my co-workers in the advertising sales team at WOWO and I were in communication with each other. Numb and shocked were the words that we used as this was totally out of the blue. We wondered how our WOWO News and Programming co-workers would handle this, as Charly worked daily with them in the studio.

A couple hours later, WOWO sent a news alert via text that Charly had died and they posted the initial story on WOWO.com and shared on Facebook and Twitter. Soon the news teams at WANE-TV and WPTA-TV had the news on their websites and I stayed up to see all three local network affiliates, CBS, ABC and NBC lead their local newscast with the shocking news about Charly Butcher. You can search online to find their stories.

Charly was on vacation this week so his usual fill-in host Steve Shine is on the radio all week.

Thursday morning it was all hands on deck at the studios. Many of us wore our WOWO staff shirts all day. The entire morning program, Fort Wayne’s Morning News with Charly Butcher along with the entire afternoon show, The Pat Miller Program were live and local tributes to Charly. Phone calls, emails, text messages, in studio appearances, social media posts were all shared from former Indiana Governor and current Vice President Mike Pence to Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry. Current and former co-workers and others in the media took part. And of course there were plenty of reminiscing moments from listeners and friends of WOWO and WMEE where Charly first built his reputation in Fort Wayne in the 1980’s.

When Charly Butcher joined WMEE in 1983, I was also on the air at WMEE, but it was 30 years later that our paths crossed again when I rejoined Federated Media in 2013. Charly has now firmly in the news/talk business instead of the top 40 radio business and for nearly 5 years now, I’ve had the pleasure of working with him as we would brainstorm ideas for my WOWO advertising partners or just reminisce about our old WMEE days.

Sometimes when you work in local media like Charly did, you don’t realize the impact you are having on peoples lives. Over 3,000 people shared the original Facebook posting and the link on the WOWO.com website crashed as so many people were trying to find out what happened.

A hashtag #RememberCharly is being used on Facebook and Twitter if you care to join in or simply read.

I took some time to find a few videos from the past to share: