Remembering radio's Pat Evans

6/14/12, "Pat Evans," NY Radio Message Board

• Posted by Jimmy Fink on June 14, 2012 at 11:09:37:

"Around this time in 1985, Mel Karmazin began to assemble a team to operate a new rock station in New York City. Pat Evans, a young woman from Detroit was his selection to be Program Director of WXRK, soon to be known as K-Rock. With Tom Chiusano as General Manager and Mark DiDia as Music Director, Pat Evans, this special girl from Detroit began assembling a team. She hired a staff including me, Tony Pigg and Marc Coppola from the former New York’s Best Rock, WPLJ and on July 12, 1985, Live Aid weekend, K-Rock signed on the air playing The Who's Long Live Rock as its first song.

I have always felt that if you can ever be part of a new radio station, this is a point in your career that you will always look back on, appreciate and adore and the first two years of K-Rock was just that for me. Everything was new and fresh, every person hired knew they were wanted and under Pat Evans we were free to take the old AOR format in a new direction.

After a few years, Pat Evans left the station and went on to program K-Fog in San Francisco and a couple of years later left radio all together. She became Director of Marketing & Public Relations for the San Francisco Zoo, later was a VP at KQED, the San Francisco Public Television station and eventually settled into a job with Catholic Charities CYO as Director of Communications.

After a few years of searching to reconnect, I finally did so about a year ago, only to find out that Pat was ill and had fallen on hard times. Pat Evans was a warm, wonderful person to me and I will always be indebted to her for putting her faith in me by putting me on the air and allowing me to flourish. She became a friend. This past year I had communicated with her via email and telephone….we laughed, we remembered old times and she cried when she told me about the health challenges she would be facing. Sadly, Pat Evans died last night. May she always live in the hearts and minds of those who cherish her memory and may her soul rest in peace."

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• On Oct. 6, 2011 I posted Ben Fong-Torres' sad news that Pat Evans had lung cancer:

"Pat Evans was a major behind-the-scenester, beginning in the late '70s, as programmer at KYA, KSFX, KOME and KFOG (where she hired Dave Morey). She also did a stint in New York, where she worked with one Howard Stern. Now living in San Francisco, she's battling lung cancer and could use help with medical expenses. Donations can go to P.O. Box 31910, San Francisco, CA 94131."

• 10/2/11, "Radio Hall of Famers set for induction," Ben Fong-Torres, San Francisco Chronicle, Radio Waves, via RadioDailyNews

More on Pat Evans and word of a future commemorative from AllAccess.com

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Pat Evans was a key programming person for KYA and KYA FM in San Francisco prior to her New York radio career. She was a good friend of my good friend Sharon Rosenbush Kaplan whom I met while working at KYA in the late 1970's. Pat and Sharon worked together at both KYA and WXRK in New York. Pat was a lovely person who probably could have done anything she wanted. As Jimmy Fink described, her talents went beyond radio. If you had to create a stereotype of a rock and roll radio program director, it's unlikely you'd come up with Pat Evans. I was in local radio sales for 20 years and saw a few but none like her. She was one of a kind and much too young to die. Susan

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