Dale has been working in newspaper and radio since the early 1970s. He has won more than 50 state and national awards from the Missouri Broadcasters Association, the Oklahoma Broadcasters Association, UPI, AP and the Radio and Television News Directors Association. Dale has managed small news departments (him), large news departments (17 at KMBZ-KCMO-WDAF Kansas City), programmed radio stations and directed the Wisconsin Radio Network. He owns six computers (five laptops) for no apparent reason and has been a member of the same fantasy baseball league for 26 years, finally winning the title last summer. Dale plays lots of sports -- with no skill, but plenty of enthusiasm -- and reads incessantly: newspapers, books, online gossip, soup can labels and those battered machines in gas station restrooms.

Calvin Smith, son of Mr. and Mrs. Cloyd Smith, is a native of Clay County. He graduated from the Clay County High School and from Eastern Ky State College with a BS degree in business administration and a teachers certificate. He completed two years in the Armed Forces with the 18^th Airborne Corps Artillery as Communications officer and Headquarters Battery Commander, with the rank of 1^st Lieutenant. He did graduate work in the radio and television Arts Department at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, coming directly from the school to WWXL in November in the first days of the station's operation. Cal is married and he and wife Ruth lives with their two fine sons, Calvin Lynn and David, near Manchester. Cal is a great asset to the station, because he is well qualified and because he is well liked by all who meet him.

After fighting polio, man plays life's song

 

By Byron Crawford

Louisville Courier-Journal (Spring 1982)

Stanford, Ky.- It was 41 years ago when, at the age of 3, Arvil "Plow" Jones of Clay County was among the first children in Kentucky to be placed in an iron lung at Kosair Hospital in Louisville.

 

Arvil, who was suffering a mysterious and awful illness called infantile paralysis, or polio, had been moved to Louisville from London by train.

As Christmas drew near that year, a Courier-Journal story carried the headline: "Boy, 3, Lends Iron Lung to Girl at Kosair Hospital, But She Dies."

 

It was accompanied by a picture of Arvil, who had temporarily given up his iron lung, the only one at Kosair, to a girl from Marion County who later died of polio.

 

The newspaper story went on to explain that Jones could stand no more than one hour out of the iron lung, and that nurses had stood by to give him artificial respiration had another iron lung, borrowed from City Hospital, not reached Kosair in time.

 

"Smiling pleasantly at visitors, the little boy, whose chest muscles have been injured by the disease, will sing a breathless tune about Santa Claus when he becomes sufficiently acquainted," the newspaper reporter wrote.

 

The "little boy" is now 44 years old, but he is still making music. His afternoon record show on radio station WRSL in Stanford is a permanent fixture. And several years ago he organized a country music band in which he sings tenor.

 

Jones was not able to walk until he was 18. Then, following many operations and years of therapy at Kosair and at Cardinal Hill Hospital in Lexington, he was finally able to move about with the aid of crutches and a brace.

 

His first brush with broadcasting came when he was still a youngster on Paces's Creek in Clay County. Plow and an older brother who had studied electronics built a radio station in their smokehouse.

 

It could only be heard for a mile or so, but folks thereabouts tuned in each day to hear the Joneses and a neighbor boy, Cal Smith, play records and plug local "businesses," such as Gib Abner's mule lot.

 

By and by Smith landed a job at radio station WWXL in Manchester, where he eventually became manager. Plow often came to visit his friend at the station, and one day Smith put him on the air.

 

"I thought he (Smith) was going into another room and listen to me," Jones recalls, "but in a few minutes he called me from a service station downtown to tell me I was sounding good.

 

"I couldn't even find the telephone when it rang. And when I did, I left the microphone on and the conversation went out over the air."

 

After stints at WYGO in Corbin, both Smith and Jones wound up at Stanford in Lincoln County, where Smith is the owner and Jones the station manager of WRSL-AM and WRSL-FM.

 

Although Jones has long since discarded his brace, he still needs crutches to walk. But he flips switches on turntables and broadcast boards with masterful dexterity.

 

I do about what anybody else can do. It just takes me a little longer, " he quips.

 

He still goes by the nickname "Plow," which has been with him since he was a baby.

 

There used to be an old man named Harvest Plow in our neck of the woods," Jones explains, "and when he'd come to our house, I'd crawl under the bed. I was scared of him. My cousin started calling me 'Plow,' and it stuck.'

 

Broadcasting is not quite as exciting to him now as it was when he started 26 years ago. But Plow is more than satisfied with his career.

 

Had Polio not crippled him, he imagines that he would have followed his father and brothers into the coal mines.

 

He currently works a 10 a.m.-to-4 p.m. shift on radio before coming home to his wife and three children. What more could a man want?

 

"Well, I've dreamed," Jones remarked with a smile. Just once, he says, he'd like to introduce a country music act on the Grand Ole' Opry stage, one of his favorite entertainers, such as Charlie Louvin or Bill Monroe.

 

"In radio, you play the entertainers' music for so many years, and feel so close to them, it would be fun to introduce them live," he said.

 

Maybe one day he will.

 

After all, 41 years ago, as he lay in an iron lung at the point of death, who'd have given Plow Jones much chance of making a career as a disc jockey, or singing tenor in his own country band?

 

Copyright 1982, The Courier-Journal.