Bangert: Farewell to a Lafayette DJ, K105’s Bob Vizza

LAFAYETTE, Ind. – How Bob Vizza, already a decade into a 41-year radio career when he arrived from a stint in Rensselaer in the early-’80s, made his way to Lafayette’s air waves is easy enough to tell.

A train dropped off Vizza on Fifth Street in downtown Lafayette – back when rails still ran down the center of the street. He was on the air at the old WXUS studios in Market Square Shopping Center later that day, and the Michigan City native stuck around for a town he came to love and a radio audience that loved him back.

From those days until last week, when the personable disc jockey died at age 64, Vizza had one of those voices that became woven into the fabric of Lafayette.

How Vizza wound up in a business that had him riding afternoons and assorted shifts on WKOA-K105FM for the bulk of that time is sweeter still.

It turned out to be all about friendship.

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In 2011, Shamus, host of K105’s morning show, “Shamus & Annie,” asked Vizza that question: Why radio? Here’s the story Vizza told. (At least the part he told after he joked: “Because I can’t spell.”)

Vizza explained that when he was 8 years old, he became ill enough that he had to spend the better part of two years in the hospital. Later in life, Vizza would go through two kidney transplants and become an advocate for the Indiana Donor Network.

Vizza said those hospital rooms had no TVs. But his family brought him a radio.

“At night, they wouldn’t let kids’ parents stay in the room,” Vizza said. “They just turned off the lights and said you had to go to sleep. So, I couldn’t sleep, I was left alone in a room, and I had a radio. I would listen to the radio all night.”

He said he liked the music, picking up AM stations from across the country after dark. But most important were the DJs who kept him company.

“What I liked about radio was the companionship and the disc jockeys who would talk to me,” Vizza said. “They would become my friends.”

How Vizza translated that into his own style behind the mic was one reason Don Hibschweiler hired him in 1989 at K105.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after we hired him, that was the first year K105 became the No. 1 station in the market,” said Hibschweiler, now the morning host for WFYI, a public radio station in Indianapolis. In those days, Hibschweiler was on the air as Don Riley.

Hibschweiler worked with Vizza until 2000, and the two remained friends from then on. He said Vizza had a conversational tone on air.

“Which is very difficult for most people to do, because they want to put on a show. And Bob never did that. He always was really himself on the air,” Hibschweiler said. “In country radio, the air personality and the country radio listeners have a very close relationship. And those listeners can spot a phony. Bob was not a phony.”

Vizza gave Rick Mummey, a longtime morning show host at WKHY and other stations, his first job in radio after an overnight DJ at WXUS walked out. Mummey said that in those days, circa 1984, stations needed someone on hand around the clock to make sure things kept running. The job included no speaking role, only playing the breaks between songs as recorded by an evening DJ earlier in the day.

“One night, the guy didn't want to do it, so I was live,” Mummey said. “Bob called about an hour in. He never started out with any angst or anger when he meant, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I answered the phone and Bob just said, ‘Hey buddy, I hear you live. Everything OK?’ I explained, and he said, ‘No, it's OK. Keep on doing it.’”

A two-week temporary job went for the next 25 years for Mummey.

“Bob let us do what we wanted, even when, I’m pretty sure, it scared him a bit,” Mummey said. “He was a good man, a good boss, a good voice.”

Dave North, disc jockey at WYCM-95.7FM, was a 14-year-old Sunnyside Junior High student when he first heard Vizza doing night shifts. He didn’t care for the music. He couldn’t quit listening to the DJ.

“Until I heard Bob Vizza, disc jockeys were just something you put up with while you waited to hear the songs you liked,” North said. “What was so compelling about Bob was that he sounded like there was nothing he would rather be doing. And it was genuine. He was always happiest behind a mic.”

Vizza came to Sunnyside to meet with North for one of those career reports for school. (Add that to the list of public appearances a radio DJ makes, along with the kiss-a-pig contests at the county fair and assorted on-location live broadcasts.) North said Vizza let him hang out in the studio, cut his first audition tape and helped him land a job, at age 17, at the now defunct WVTL in Monticello.

“To say he was one of a kind just doesn’t begin to cover it,” North said.

Vizza hadn’t been on the air for the past year, as he dealt with health issues.

“During my stint at Star City (Broadcasting), I am consistently stopped by people who ask, ‘Aren’t you …’” said Chris Morisse Vizza, a longtime reporter in Greater Lafayette, now for WPBI TV stations. “And I answer, ‘Yes, I’m Bob Vizza’s wife.’ To a person, they tell me how much they miss hearing him on the air.”

Tuesday and Wednesday, as friends and old DJs gather for funeral services, old radio friends will tell more stories about old radio days.

“It is rare, if I’m traveling on vacation and I’m listening to the radio, that I’ll hear somebody who really is good,” Hibschweiler said. “Every once in a while, you’ll hit one. They come across as somebody really personable and sound great – the way Bob was. You hear somebody like that and you go, ‘I’m going to listen to this guy for a while.’”

Which is what Lafayette did to Bob Vizza for more than three decades.

IF YOU GO: Visitation for Bob Vizza will be 4-8 p.m. Tuesday at Faith Church, 5526 Indiana 26 East, Lafayette. A memorial service will be 10 a.m. Wednesday at the church.

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.