Former WMJL radio station manager Blair Trask died unexpectedly on Thanksgiving Day at a hospital in Indiana.
Trask, 60, is widely credited with having helped to build WMJL from a low-powered, rural Kentucky AM station into a modern broadcasting company. He did everything at the station from on-air broadcasting to engineering, said Brad Dossett, who was at WMJL as programming manager shortly after Trask left in the late 1980s.
When he passed away, Trask was living in Floyds Knob, Ind., where he was broadcast co-owner-operator of WXKU 92.7 and WZZB 1390/99.3 in Seymour and WUME 95.3 and WSEZ 1560 and WKLO 96.9 in Paoli.
Trask was born in Louisville and graduated from Western Kentucky University. Shortly thereafter, he landed a job at the radio station in Marion. Dossett said George Patmor, who was co-owner of WMJL at the time, thought “Trask hung the moon.”
Dossett said Trask helped design and build the studio at WMJL’s headquarter’s on Old Morganfield Road after the station moved from its previous location in downtown on East Bellville Street.
“He was an electronics guy, but Blair could do a little bit of everything,” Dossett said.
“At a small station like that, you had to. This was before they added the FM frequency. Blair can be credited with making (WMJL) into a real radio station with the programing ideas he brought in the 1980s. He knew radio,” Dossett added.
Trask is survived by his wife, Kelly Oma Anderson; his children, Taurean (Vanessa) Trask, William Trask and Claire Trask; a brother, Everett A. (Becky) Trask IV; sisters, Myra (Bo) Mattingly and Jane (Wayne) Meredith.
Click Image to Enlarge
