Since Jim Scott arrived at WSAI-AM in 1968 during a heavy late March snow storm, he spread warmth and sunshine for Cincinnati radio listeners every day.
“Good Old” Jim Scott, the cheerful morning personality and dedicated supporter for many nonprofits, died Friday night June 28 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a nervous system disease that weakens muscles and impacts physical function. He was 81.
His death came three months after his final public appearance in the Opening Day parade on March 28, riding in a blue convertible with his wife, Donna, and his doctor. Unable to speak, Scott gave the crowd a thumb's up throughout the parade. Scott learned of his ALS diagnosis on Opening Day in 2022.
"The grace with which he met and endured the indignities of ALS was astounding and inspiring. So very Jim. With his graciousness and thoughtfulness and gratitude, he continued to spark joy in everyone he met. A good friend said that Jim was in the pre-clearance line straight to heaven. And I envision Jim there meeting everyone, saying "Hi, I'm Jim Scott. What's your name? Tell me about you!' " his wife Donna posted on Facebook about 11:45 a.m. Saturday.
"Jim was so fortunate to have the grandest celebration of life on March 28 when he was honorary grand marshal of the Findlay Market Parade. The outpouring of love for Jim that day ... it's beyond words and filled our hearts with such happiness. Thank you for loving Jim!" Donna wrote.
In December, the long-time WLW-AM morning host — who announced his ALS diagnosis last August — was named honorary grand marshal of the 2024 Opening Day Parade.
Scott had learned of his ALS diagnosis on Opening Day in 2022.
“My favorite day of the year is Opening Day and being in that Findlay Market Parade,” Scott told me in 2017, two years after retiring from WLW-AM. He always walked in the parade, and since 2015 served as the unofficial spokesman for the Findlay Market Opening Day Parade. For years he would start Opening Day broadcasting his WLW-AM show from a billboard on I-75, just south of the I-74 interchange, waving to motorists.
Scott’s show was No. 1 in the Cincinnati morning radio ratings every decade from the 1970s until retiring in March 2015.
“Jim was one of the cornerstones that made 700 WLW what it is. He had the voice and personality that was suited for the morning show. He was always upbeat on the air,” says Dave “Yiddy” Armbruster, the station’s sports operations director who did traffic reports for Scott for more than 10 years.
Sports talk host Mo Egger, who began his career producing Scott’s show while attending college, says he “got years' worth of graduate-level radio training just by being around Jim. How to prepare. How to perform. How the business side of broadcasting worked. How to treat people,” says Egger, who says Scott belongs on Cincinnati broadcasting’s Mount Rushmore.
“Any one of us could learn a lot about how to treat people by being around Jim,” Egger says.
Scott made each listener — or potential listener — feel important where ever he went. He always introduced himself, then carefully listened to what everyone said. Often he would mention someone he met at an event the next morning on the radio.
“For nearly 50 years on Cincinnati radio, he felt like a friend to millions of listeners who awoke to his voice -- and he was that friend. Jim was the real deal, and I loved standing back and watching him meet people, talk with them and making others feel good about themselves. Jim's core motto and belief was, 'Everyone deserves recognition,' and he lived it every day. He always used his person and celebrity to do good and to make others feel special,” Donna wrote on Facebook.
In his first years at WSAI-AM, Scott went door-to-door in neighborhoods to gain listeners. “If you introduce yourself and ask them to listen to you, chances are they’ve never been asked that before. Radio is such an intimate medium. It doesn’t cost anything,” he once told me. And if he mentioned their name on the radio, “you’ve made a very intimate connection with that person, and you’ll never lose them.”
His one-on-one self-promotion reached historic proportions in the 1970s when he shook 8,514 hands at Northgate Mall, breaking “the handshake record held for years by Theodore Roosevelt,” according to the Enquirer on Sept. 8, 1977.
“Jim worked that job like a politician seeking votes. He also had an amazing ability to attend events that ran into the evening and was still able to have some bounce in his step the following day. I was always amazed by his energy and resilience,” says Enquirer sports reporter Scott Springer, who did morning sports reports on Scott’s WLW-AM show in the 1990s.
Scott was a tireless supporter — not just a guy who lends his voice to promotions — for the Salvation Army’s Christmas Red Kettle campaign, the Hoxworth Blood Center and March of Dimes. He chaired WCET-TV’s Action Auction, and served as an on-air master of ceremonies for nearly 50 years. He organized a celebrity basketball game at old Cincinnati Gardens against the Russian National Team in the 1970s, and once owned part of a local pro soccer team. He also recorded on-air promotions for WXVU-FM, and was one of the honorable co-chairs of Cincinnati Public Radio's capital campaign for building the new studios under construction on Dana Avenue in Evanston.
Darryl Parks, former WLW-AM program director and Clear Channel vice president for talk programming, calls Jim Scott “by far the kindest person I ever came across in my professional and in my personal life.”
When Parks and his late wife Kathie had dinner with Scott and his wife, Donna, at an Over-the-Rhine restaurant after Scott left WLW-AM, Scott told him: “You know what I'll miss about not being on the radio tomorrow morning? I won’t be able to mention the server’s name and say what a wonderful job he did and what a great time we’ve had at this restaurant.”
Scott explained to me after he retired: “It sounds a bit hokey, but my passion is to make people feel good and to recognize them. That’s what I miss."
“He was a true talent. Genuine,” Parks says. “There were a few people in my career that taught me the business of radio. Jim was one. A master endorsing businesses through commercials. There was nothing phony about him.”
Scott told listeners for years to carry a Grippo’s Potato Chip bag with them for good luck. And he did. When anyone asked, Scott would produce a folded red Grippo’s bag from his hip pocket — even while walking in the Opening Day parade.
Scott started his radio career in 1960 as a high school senior. He made his WSAI-AM debut on March 23, 1968.
"I drove down from Buffalo in a snow storm that dumped eight inches of snow on Cincinnati. I got about half-way down the state of Ohio, and ran into horrible weather," Scott says.
How fitting that the morning radio host who read school snow closings for nearly six decades was greeted by a paralyzing snow. He continued to read them after parents and kids got their school delays or closings from text messages, TV or websites.
“My audience grew up hearing me read school closings when they were kids. They tell me they find comfort in hearing me read the list,” Scott told me in 2010.
Born James Boland in 1942, he grew up in Binghamton N.Y., where he attended St. Paul Catholic School and Harper College (now Binghamton University). He worked at stations in York, Pa., San Diego and Buffalo before coming to WSAI-AM, the rock powerhouse which brought the Beatles to Cincinnati.
It was the beginning of a 50-year love affair with the Queen City. Well, technically 49 years. He spent 1972-73 as afternoon host in New York City's WNBC-AM, working with radio legends Don Imus, Murray the K and Wolfman Jack.
“I was trying to get to the biggest city and biggest station, that was my goal. Once I got there, it didn’t take long to realize that it wasn’t necessarily the place to raise my kids,” Scott said.
A year later, he came back to Cincinnati for good.
Scott was heard here on WSAI-AM, YES95, WINK94.1 and WLW-AM. He quit WLW-AM to join WWNK-FM (WINK) on Feb. 12, 1996. Later that day WLW-AM’s owners, Cincinnati’s Jacor Communications, bought the station under the new federal Telecommunications Act. So Scott sent Jacor President Randy Michaels a dozen red roses with a note saying, “I never believe in long divorces.” He returned to WLW-AM a year later.
Scott lived with his wife of 23 years, former Enquirer reporter Donna Hartman, on a 132-acre farm near Lawrenceburg across the road from Perfect North Slopes. Scott bought the 1912 farmhouse and property in 1977.
When Scott won the prestigious Marconi Award for best large-market radio personality in 2002, he paid for producers Egger and Rich Walburg and their significant others to go to Seattle for the National Broadcasters Association convention.
“Of all the personalities who won, Jim was the only one to bring any of his coworkers on stage. He made us feel like we won that Marconi, and the picture of the three of us with the Marconi is something I cherish,” Egger says. Scott also wrote Egger a check when WLW-AM had good ratings months. “Who in our business does that?”
Scott’s interest in people went deeper than greeting his fans. Not many people know he befriended aging parents of his loyal listeners and coworkers, such as veteran WLW-AM newsman Brian Combs.
“During many of the years we were doing the morning show together on 700 WLW, I was helping to take care of my aging dad and father-in-law. Jim would often join us for lunch or call to check in on them, and later visit in the nursing home,” Combs says.
“The kindness and attention he showed them really brightened up their golden years and I will always be grateful for the way that Jim was a light in their lives and mine,” says Combs, who thinks of Scott whenever he reads Matthew 5:14-16 at retreats for high school students. (“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put in under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others.”)
After meeting former Enquirer business editor Lee Ann Hamilton at a dinner party, Scott visited Hamilton’s mother in the nursing home.
“My dad and Jim hit it right off. My dad was never a social butterfly, and rarely had any small talk for anybody. But with Jim, he wouldn’t stop talking! I credit that all to Jim’s way of making every single person he ever met feel valued and seen for the unique individual he/she is,” Hamilton says.
”Jim began going to the 'first Friday of every month boys breakfast' at Bob Evans where my dad and two other old, retired P&G guys met for eggs and tall tales. When the other two men died off, Jim and my dad kept their monthly date. That wasn’t all. Every week or so, Jim would show up with a golf club and little putting green. He would get my 94-year-old dad to lumber out in the hall and practice putts. They laughed and laughed!
“On my dad’s last day on Earth, when he knew he was dying and thankful for it, Pop asked if his buddy knew . . . I called Jim Scott, and within the hour he was at my dad’s side and they were yakking about something only the two of them knew. I will always be grateful that Jim filled my dad’s last years with joy and friendship when so many of his old friends had passed away. Good Old Jim Scott is the kindest, nicest man on the planet,” Hamilton says.
When I visited him at his farm in January 2017, Scott told me that “one of the main reasons that I quit (is) I’m in good physical shape.” He was going to the gym three times a week, and ran regularly with Donna, including a 10K Thanksgiving race in 2016.
About three years ago, Scott experienced weakness with his left arm, hand and leg where he had polio in 1954 at age 12. Then in October 2022, he lost use of his left side. He continued to play golf, swinging the club one-handed.
“I was always able to do a lot of things (after polio), including playing two-handed golf quite well. But back in October last year (2022), out of the blue, it just hangs there. Everything is one-armed now,” he told me in August when announcing his ALS. "I can still play golf, I really enjoy that. You ought to see my one-armed swing!”
He could no longer run marathons with Donna. He walked with a cane. In December he rang the Salvation Army bell at the Harrison Kroger store from a wheelchair. It became increasingly more difficult to talk or move.
When we spoke for his 50th anniversary in Cincinnati in 2018 he told me: “50 years have gone by like wham! It's amazing! I've been lucky, John. I've had a great time."
His wife said that "we will not have a funeral funeral. There was nothing funerial about Jim. We will have a true celebration of life in the near future."
