JAMESTOWN, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – Robert L. (Bob) Richardson, Jamestown, ND, died Monday, January 27, 2025, at Sanford Hospital in Fargo ND.
For more than two decades, Richardson has seen the careers of broadcasters begin under his leadership including the legendary Los Angeles disk jockey Shadow Stevens (Terry Ingstad when he was 12), as well as his younger brothers, including his youngest brother Dick, himself a highly respected morning guy. Chicago broadcaster Cliff Powers, North Dakota radio news legends Dan Brannon and the late Mark Swartzell, Mick Wagner, a prominent jazz jock, as well as radioman turned state politician Dave Nething. Long-time radio broadcaster Tim Ost, sports broadcaster Terry Dean, and Dewey Heggen all started their careers with Bob Richardson at the Jamestown radio station.
Richardson was sports and staff announcer at KSJB radio in Jamestown while a student at Jamestown College. He was then assistant manager of the classified ad department at the Fargo Forum. Returning to Jamestown, he was one of the organizers of KEYJ (now KQDJ) radio in 1954 and became sole owner of the station in 1968 after he bought it from Bob Ingstad Sr. Richardson sold the station in 1980, after which he became Director of Development, Alumni and Public Relations at Jamestown College, then Vice President of the Jamestown College Foundation, retiring in 1999. He was part-time Development Director of the Jamestown Area Foundation and an Associate of the Borr*Strawhecker Group Resource Development Counsel from 1999 to 2004. He was instructor of Jamestown College radio courses from 1956-1960.
Tim Ost, got his start in radio thanks to Bob Richardson. Ost gave this tribute to Bob, listen below.
Richardson was active in many organizations, serving as President of the Jamestown Chamber of Commerce; the North Dakota Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives; the North Dakota Broadcasters Association; the Jamestown Twilight Baseball League; North Dakota Amateur Baseball Association; the Jamestown Volunteer Firemen’s Association (he was a volunteer fireman for 21 years); the Jamestown College Alumni Association; the Jamestown Airport Authority; Jamestown Quarterback Club; North Dakota Independent College Fund; and chairman of Republican Party Districts 48/29.
He also served as Assistant Chief of the Jamestown Fire Department, a Trustee of Jamestown College, and was a member of the Jamestown Industrial Development Commission board, North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations board and a member of the Jamestown Eagles Lodge.
He was active on the Jamestown Community Foundation board, Dakotas Conference United Methodist Foundation board, and Advisory Board of North Dakota Dollars for Scholars, as well as a member of the Jamestown Public School Foundation/Dollars for Scholars board. He was a volunteer for the Medora Foundation, Cross Ranch Blue Grass Festival and the Jamestown Frontier Village. He was a member of Masonic bodies and a life member of the El Zagel Shrine and Clown Unit and a life member of the Jamestown Elks Lodge. He was a long-time Sunday School teacher at First United Methodist Church where he also served as chairman of the Finance Committee and member of the Administrative Board, as well as district Lay Delegate to the annual Dakotas Conference.
Bob was honored by induction into the Jamestown College Hall of Fame in 2004, named JayCees Boss of the Year, and North Dakota Fundraising Executive of the Year.
Two year’s ago Mitch Berg posted this story about his experience and the history of Bob Richardson below.
Where Credit Is Due: Bob Richardson
Posted on October 10, 2023 by Mitch Berg
It was the long, hot summer after tenth grade when I was looking for a way to make more money than the buck a lawn I was getting from mowing and raking (In retrospect, I think my parents and grandma had quite the racket going).
But I had no idea what I actually wanted to do. There wasn’t a lot of jobs for cripplingly awkward teenagers back then. And I talked myself out of many of the ones that were.
Perhaps as much out of exasperation as anything, one day around the time school let out, Dad suggested maybe I should call Bob Richardson at KEYJ, one of the local radio stations. And one day, somehow, I drummed up the nerve to do exactly that.
They say you can find anything on the internet. Photos of Bob from 1980 or thereabouts, however, don’t count. This is Bob and his wife of close to 70 years, Norma, from 2012. He doesn’t look a whole lot different today than he did when I worked for him.
Bob was the voice of Jamestown. With a booming voice that gave up nothing in authority terms to a drill sergeant, Bob had an easy sense of absolute authority about him that left me pretty much shaking in my shoes as I dialed. As I waited on hold, I took three deep breaths, and he picked up.
“This is Bob”.
I introduced myself, and asked if I might, maybe, apply for a job.
He audibly thought for a moment.
“You’ve got good diction”, he started. “And your dad knows something about speech – he can teach you a think or two…”
He thought for a moment.
“Let’s see how things look in the fall. In the meantime…”, he said, leading into a list of homework I needed to do. Read newspaper stories into a cassette deck, and listen to myself to see if I liked the way I sounded. Learn to read to a rhythm. Become familiar with local and regional politicians – the job involved not only reading the news, but writing it.
And so I waited, and read news stories, and listened to the horror that was my adolescent voice, and crossed my fingers.
It took three months, but one day in late July, Bob called, asking me if I was still interested. I jumped. I spent the next three Saturdays and Sundays waking up at 4:30AM, walking to the studio (above the White Drug store in Jamestown), and learning the basics – how to run the board, how to talk on the air, how to juggle all the elements of doing live radio, the news and weather and sports and fire calls and, least of all, records.
The main control room board at KEYJ. It was built in the late 1930s, which used to seem like a long time ago. That’s nothing; the production room board had a stamping from the 1920s, and I believe it completely. I can still remember what every knob, toggle and button does.
And on August 12, I soloed for the first time.
The rest is history. Lots of it.
I’m writing about Bob, partly because he gave me my first radio job – the job that vaulted me from “cripplingly shy, socially toxic, athletically inept adolescent” to “young fella who was kinda starting to believe in himself”.
It went way beyond that.
I was just the latest. and, as it turned out, last – of a long line of high school kids who got their start under Bob’s wing. Bob had seen it as part of his mission in buying and running that little 1,000 watt station to help teach kids how to do radio. He was uncompromising in his demands; be on time; cover the news, including writing up stories that happened on our shifts; remember the station’s mission in the community; pronounce names right (Bob would have had a great time teaching Hugh Hewitt to do radio); learn and practice the craft of doing good radio. There was no time of the schedule, from sign-on at 5:55AM to sign-off at 11:55PM, where flubbing a name or writing a clumsy bit of copy wouldn’t get you a phone call, a stern talking to and a crisp invitation to do it better, then and there. You don’t repeat mistakes on Bob’s station.
And generations of local kids got their starts at KEYJ and went on to bigger things; legendary LA disk jockey Shadow Stevens (who started as Terry Ingstad at KEYJ when he was 12), as well as his younger brothers, including his youngest brother Dick, himself a highly respected morning guy; North Dakota radio news legends Dan Brannon and the late Mark Swartzell; Mick Wagner, today a very prominent jazz jock; radioman turned state politician Dave Nething. They are just the top of the heap; going to stations like KEYJ was, for a generation of radiomen and women, the best possible job to get out of broadcast school; in your first year, you’d do literally everything one could do in a radio station.
Bob’s still with us. I told him, 5-6 years ago, that he was one of my bucket list interviews. I could never close the deal to get him to come on the show; I’m not sure he thinks anything he did was worth an interview.
He was wrong. I never got to tell him that when I worked for him. There’s a first time for just about everything.
This entry was posted in Where Credit Is Due by Mitch Berg.
Funeral services for Bob Richardson will be held at 11:00 am on Saturday, February 1 at First United Methodist Church, Jamestown, with Pastor Marty Toepke-Floyd officiating. In lieu of flowers, a memorial is suggested for the Richardson Scholarships at the University of Jamestown or First United Methodist Church, Jamestown.