With the tiny earplug in his ear he would scan the AM dial and spend half the night listening to far away Top 40 stations and idolizing dj's like Cousin Bruce Morrow,then at WABC New York, Dick Summers of WBZ Boston, John Ahr, a night jock at WLAC in Nashville and Joel Sebastian out of WLS Chicago.
As a student in High School he majored in Concert Band and Choir and formed a rock band, known briefly in the Jackson, Michigan area as "The Beathovens". The manager of the band, Bill Edwards, was also the Morning Show Host at the local Top 40 station WIBM-AM. The story goes that LD was in the studio one morning talking about band activites, when he mentioned off- handedly, that he wouldn't mind being a disc jockey. Bill, then said "Okay! How about starting right now!" and proceeded to leave the studio with LD in total panic as the record that was playing was rapidly coming to an end. His first day as a DJ just happened to be the most embarassing moment in his life.
Much to his
parents shigrin, he was hooked. He began working parttime at WIBM, then
graduated to the much larger market of Lansing where he spent about a
year at WJIM-AM and
WILS-AM. It was in 1967 that he heard the call of the islands and came
to Maui where his first love, radio, became a close second to his love
of the island. For the next 32 years he took to the airwaves at KMVI-AM
1967 to 1985, KMVI-FM from 1985 to 1991, KLHI-FM for a year, then
helped
startup KONI-FM in 1993. As of March 2003 he has a hand in the day to
day operations at the KAOI Radio Group which owns KAOI AM/FM, KNUQ
(Q-103) FM, KDLX-FM and KMKK-FM.
In 1999 LD
began experimenting with transmitting live audio over the internet
Joining forces with George Fontaine at Maui Gateway (An Internet
Service Provider since purchased by Maui Net). As a result of that
association, KONI-FM became the first radio station in Hawaii to
broadcast
live over the internet and at the same time, "Hawaiian Jamz" internet
radio was born. Citing
the internet as the "new broadcast frontier" and his dissolution with
Terrestrial Radio
Broadcasting as a profession, he left KONI in March of 1999 to become a
full time employee at Maui Gateway and to devote more time to the
Hawaiian
Jamz Project. The project has since evolved into a major 24 hour a day
fulltime broadcast called "Hawaiian Hits Live!", part of an Educational
Hawaiian Culture Web Site called "Voice
of Hawaii". He is President and CEO of the 501(c)(3) non-profit
corporation, Pacific Broadcast Services, which operates the web site
and the broadcasts.
After two marriages and two children, he's been single now going on 20 years and says he's still waiting for the right girl. He is now 58 years old and resides in Kihei, Maui, Hawaii where he runs his own production studio from a one bedroom apartment. He built a state-of-the-art studio in the bedroom and sleeps on the sofa. Crazy? He won't disagree with that description. In fact he says that about describes his whole career. He has high hopes for the future and he looks back with no regrets.