Remembering Jess
I worked with him from 1989 until he retired in 1991. Jess was a classy guy. At the time, WHDH had almost a family atmosphere. People enjoyed going to work there. I was hired by Dan Griffin right after David Mugar bought the station. Mr Mugar wanted to move the WHDH studios to the channel 7 building and he wanted a first class place. Anyone who ever worked at Stuart Street knows that towards the end the place was falling apart (smoke frequently came out of the old Mc Curdy control boards and most of the computers had Radio Shack on them). We built two air studios at Bullfinch Place: The main one and the Jess Cain studio. We did this not because Jess demanded it (after all, he didn't have his own at Stuart Street) but because we wanted to show our respect for Jess in some tangible way. The station ran on delay after Jess' show and we had set up the delay unit so the producers could surgically remove things. To do this they pushed and held a green button on the board. This button cut the delayed audio off air and instead played it through a speaker behind the producer-LOUD. That way if the stuff was coming from BEHIND them, they knew it wasn't going out over the air. There was such a speaker in each control room. We had been in the new studios perhaps a week when Jess came walking down the hall past his control room right when someone said "FU!" Just as he walked by, suddenly a LOUD "FU" came blasting out of the speaker in his empty contol room! I was walking towards Jess and the look on his face was one of horror! For that split second he thought his studio was haunted! I explained what had happened and he smiled-almost as if the joke was on him.
I was there Jess' last day at Top of the Hub. It was a good day-everyone who was anyone in Boston came. Grant Moulason hovered in the helicopter 50 feet from the building and waved to Jess. I remember laughing a lot that day. After the broadcast was over and my crew and I were packing up the remote broadcast equipment (Engineers are always the first to get there and the last to leave), I remember feeling like somehow tomorrow wasn't going to be the same . Somehow it wasn't going to be as funny, as enjoyable because Jess wouldn't be driving me in to work any more.
I feel the same way today......In some ways, Jess is like the ocean. Most of us don't go to the beach, but it's reassuring to know that it's there. Even though Jess has been off the air for a while and I'm over 3000 miles away from Boston, it was reassuring to know that this good man was still there. Now he isn't and the world is just a bit worse off for it.
Godspeed Jess! I and thousands of others will miss you!
Dana Puopolo
