Dan Shoaf - Higher Frequency and Lost in the 60's

Dan Shoaf was born in Sewickley, PA, seventeen miles from Pittsburg, PA.  His father worked for the Alabama based firm, Vulcan Materials, recycling steel and tin plate from nearby industrial sites.  Dan’s mother was a telephone operator but found herself too busy to take calls after Dan was born so she became a career“domestic godess”.  Vulcan transferred his father to their Gary, Indiana facility in 1955.  Dan thought that Gary was the coldest place on earth as he recalls a seventeen degree below zero temperature when walking to school.  Vulcan transferred his father again in 1961 to their Houston, Texas facility half way through Dan’s High School tenure.  This was tramatic as shy (not any more!)Dan had to make new friends.  This was difficult as he did not participate in any outside of school activities other than watching television western series.  The favorites he recalls were Cheyenne with Clint Walker and Gunsmoke with Jim Arness.

After graduating from Spring Branch High School in the Houston area, Dan attended and graduated from Sam Houston State University with a BS degree in Geography and a minor in Business Administration. Transportation challenged ( no car) Dan’s first forray into running was slow jogging three miles with a friend to his part time job at radio station KSAM in Huntsville, Texas.  KSAM was the beginning of a life long beautiful friendship between Dan and the radio media.  Dan had a three hour shift spinning top forty Rock and Roll tunes for the AM station and changing the prerecorded tape for the sister FM staion.

Dan graduated from college in the Vietnam era and was drafted into the U.S. Army undergoing Basic Training at Fort Bliss near El Paso, Texas.  After Advanced Individual Training, Dan became an Army Public Affairs Broadcast Specialist at Fort Gordon, near Augusta, Georgia.  Dan spent the balance of his two year military stint recording taped military news to be utuilized by public radio stations.  He appreciated and enjoyed being involved in the radio media but did not receive combat pay.  Dan moonlighted at nearby WAUG in Augusta on a part time basis, again with a top forty format for his progam.  Still without a car, Dan recalls the long wait to catch a bus ride to the radio station in Augusta from Fort Gordon and back.  Dan found his last name hard to pronounce on the radio.  He was accused of spitting into the mike when attempting to say “Dan Shoaf” and alternatively listeners thought he was saying “Dan Show”.  This was corrected by adopting the name of an uncle and to this day he is know professionally as Dan Scott.  Dan quips he used the professional name to “keep the women off his back, but now has the opposite problem”.

Post military, Dan purchased his first vehicle-a 1968 Dodge, which he used to visit his grandparents in Pennsylvania and his parents who had again relocated to Long Beach, California.  Unemployed Dan moved in with his parents subsisting on a $54 a week unemployment check and began his hobby of collecting phonograph records.  Dan, when not seeking employment, would frequent record shops purchasing music albums that apealed to him in the $.50-.75  cent cost range.   A professional break came when an Army buddy from upstate South Carolina called him in 1971 to advise of an opening at a radio  station in Anderson, South Carolina.  Dan drove to the station and sucessfully interviewed for the position.  Dan became the music director for WANS and stayed five years.  Dan recalls this was the beginning of the hard rock era.  In 1977 he moved to WCCT in nearby Clemson, South Carolina after a change in ownership at WANS.  The owner of the Clemson station offered Dan a position with a new start up station in Anderson (WRIX) in 1977 where he has remained to this day. Dan has held the positons of Music Director, Program Director, and Operations Manager while WRIX transformed its’ format from rock to country over the years.  Dan, at age seventy, airs a three hour Sunday morning religious music format program.  Dan advises that this weeky stint keeps him in the radio media with a goal of achieving fifty years in broadcast radio (currently at forty-eight and a half and counting).

Dan’s favorite music genre is popular music from the 1950s through the 1970s. He also likes beach music that originated in South Carolina, as Shaggers can appreciate.   Dan has a collection of over five thousand albums and ten thousand forty-five RPM records.  Some were damaged by a flood in part of his home last year.  Many in his collection are considered “hard to find” now and represent the best of top 1950s Rock and R&B music.  Dan does not have any records in his collection from year 1980 to the present.   Dan also has a collection of old model railroad pieces that contains three dozen locomotives and fifty plus rail cars of all gauges.

Dan started running in the Anderson area in 1982 and could be seen with fellow runner Betty Burrell at Run and See Georgia Grand Prix and Black Bag races over the years.   He considers himself a middle of the pack runner although his 5K PR is 20:30 achieved at the Ellijay Apple Festival, which he recalls was only good enough for a third place finish in his age group.  His favorite race is the Winder’s Summer End 5000 race.  Dan’s  best 10K PR was 44:39 and marathon time of 3 hr 30 minutes in a practice run. Dan has completed six marathons including the Columbia South Carolina Marathon that he recalls was “too cheap to give a finisher medal”.  Dan was a long time member of the now defunt Anderson Road Runners race club.

As Dan enters the 70-74 year old competative men’s category in 2015, he finds himself slowed by statin laced blood pressure medication and Morton’s Neuroma disease in his left foot.  Dan previously was consistently particiapting in fifty to sixty Grand Prix and Black Bag races a year but has cut back to twenty due to health reasons with the eternnal graditude of those of us in the same age group.  Dan’s recommendation to is to disuade race directors from having ten year age groups and for race coordinators to always do the awards starting with the senior members of the running community first. He lauds Black Bag race coordinators for following this practice as he is often on a timeline to return to South Carolina for broadcast responsibilities.

Bob checking out from the back of the pack. Watch for the profile on Sheri Price and anticipate the profile on high point achiever Donnie Chaffin.