DOVER — Sometime in late June, Roger Wood will arrive at the office sometime before 5 a.m., he’ll go on the air, and bring the news to northern New England listeners as he has for 18 years. But on this day, when morning drive time ends, the show will be over.
After almost two decades on your radio dial, the WOKQ newsman has decided to call it quits, leaving the Seacoast airwaves behind him.
Wood, WOKQ news and public affairs director, has announced that he will retire from his position at the station this spring to pursue other interests.
At 50, the easy-going gentleman with the silky-smooth voice is far from calling it a career, however. Instead of grabbing a golf bag or buying himself a sailboat, the broadcast journalist is taking some time to tackle the projects he always thought about doing.
"I’m really not that good at either of those things," he said with a smile Tuesday. "But I may lie on a the beach a bit."
Wood has a couple of ideas in mind, all of which involve sending out information to a wide audience.
Wood landed his position at WOKQ in 1979, a time when fewer and fewer radio news personnel were anything but news readers. Wood, however, is respected for his old fashioned reporting ability, having interviewed thousands of people and covered hundreds of events.
Whether slogging through marshes with no-nukes protesters during the eighties, chronicling the ups of Reagan-omics, or the downs of the post-Pease Seacoast economy, Wood has covered it all, including one of the most widely reported news stories of the last 20 years.
In late January 1986, Wood made his way to Cape Canaveral Florida to report on New Hampshire’s own Christa McAuliffe who became a national hero when she was chosen to become the first teacher to be carried into space.
As the only Seacoast reporter broadcasting the event live, Wood relayed the events that transpired back to New Hampshire, experiencing first hand along with his listeners first the explosion and then the realization of its implications.
"It left me... deeply moved," he said. "and permanently affected me in many ways."
Seventeen years before the disaster, he and long time friend and associate Gerry Wilkinson produced a half-hour documentary about Apollo 10, the last space mission before the successful moon landing, on WXUR in Media, Pa.
While that event stands out for Wood as "easily the most memorable story I’ve ever covered," he has left his mark on the listening public by reporting on the day to day events which affect them, coming into their bedrooms, and kitchens, and cars every weekday morning with the local news.
Born in Philadelphia in 1948, he remembers picking up the old WBZ out of Boston on late night AM radio and listening to Bruce Bradly. He loved to listen to the rock and roll DJ’s, with their smooth voices coming in mysteriously over the airwaves.
"I idolized people like them," he said. "And I wanted to be like one of them."
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Wood got his first job at WXUR, doing a radio program called "Years Gone By" back in 1968 with Wilkinson. He bounced around getting different gigs in radio and television until he landed in Portsmouth in 1970 with the AM/FM station WHEB. He worked at several stations around the Seacoast until landing at WOKQ.
Married for 27 years, he and his wife Elaine have three grown children, one of which is currently a student at the University of New Hampshire, and none of which are planning on careers in broadcasting.
That’s just fine with Wood, who is the first to note how difficult it can be to maintain a family life when one’s time is so often dictated by breaking news.
"I’ve breathed a lot of smoke over the years," he said. "But I’ve had a great career. I’m ready to open a new chapter in my life, start something new."
Wood is quick to express how much he has enjoyed working at the station, how supportive management has been, and how many fantastic New Englanders he has met over the years.
He said he found something special about working in a community such as the Seacoast. Wood said he has enjoyed the opportunity to develop personal relationships. Something that isn’t possible in a large city-market.
"You’re more in a position to connect with the people your talking to," he said. "They’re very often your neighbors."
Would he do it all over again?
"Oh definitely, yes, I would still do it" he said without hesitation. "And I might be back in radio, one never knows."