Dallas DJ Jon Dillon spun the soundtrack of our youth. She was there when the music stopped | SharonFGrigsby
J.D.’s wife, Nancy, took charge when Alzheimer’s began to creep up on this Texas rock radio legend and one of the original KZEW Zoo Freaks.
It twists my heart to imagine this nightmarish disease progressively stealing the words of a deejay whom we grew up and grew older with, a perfectionist who always said just the right thing on the radio.With his passing, we’ve lost another link to vinyl, to record shops and to a powerful FM station that shaped the lives of young people not just in North Texas but all the way to Oklahoma, to Midland, Odessa and Lubbock, and to my tiny hometown of Hewitt, outside Waco.
He had a way of talking to you on the air that made you feel “like you were the only guy in the room,” Kirby recalled. Mike Rhyner, a Zoo alum and godfather of sports talk radio The Ticket, still marvels at KZEW’s deep cultural imprint. “The Zoo did a real good job of throwing down that vibe and leaving you feeling like you had stepped into another world,” Mike told me.
In KZEW’s first year, I was one of just many at my high school who signed on as Zoo Freaks. Listening to J.D. is how I became a Led Zeppelin fanatic, learned about blues guitarist Freddie King and eventually frequented the live music spot, Faces, on Cedar Springs Road. For 14 years, Dillon made it work at The Zoo, even when management started listening to the guys in suits more carefully than its own deejays.
The man who once came home every day excited about pulling off a great show increasingly was bewildered by the on-air moments that went wrong — when he forgot the details of the story he was telling or what day of the week it was. “I would take him in the car, roll down the windows and we’d blare music,” she said. Their destination was often to get ice cream at McDonald’s.
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