St. Mary’s DJ-for-a-Day Auction Winner Knows his Music

As a birthday gift, Jack Ruiter's family bid on KRFO's DJ-for-a-Day item at April's Night of Knights auction. Jack made his radio debut Tuesday, the day before his 11th birthday.

It turns out the fifth-grader is a fan of Elvis, The Beatles and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. He got some help from his grandmother in putting together a play list. They came up with a great one. The lead off number was "Big, Bad John" by Jimmy Dean. I could not confirm that was an inside joke directed at KRFO's own John Connor, who assists with the St. Mary's auction and whose wife is a teacher at the school. It was confirmed by Jack that "Hit the Road Jack" by Ray Charles was included because of the name reference.

Jack has an interest in broadcasting and was thrilled to learn his family bid on the opportunity to join me on the air. He also might like to get into engineering or computers when it comes time to choose a career.

For two hours on Tuesday, Jack learned how to work the board and the computer that runs AM 1390 KRFO. He introduced songs and read the weather and news. We also did a live Facebook video segment that is included in this post, showing you a little of the behind-the-scenes aspect of radio.

Jack is also a baseball fan and attends games every year at Target Field and has gone to some historic parks such as Wrigley in Chicago. If we bring him on the radio again maybe he can help us diagnose the Twins' problems this season.

Jack's father, Dan, works in television and sat in with us for the broadcast. He worked with Jack beforehand on his voice projection and the concept of proofreading. They also typed up his first several segments. Jack was doing a great job of improvising as the time went along.

Jack's brother Brady just had his picture on the KRFO website for qualifying for the international DECA conference in Nashville. Seems to me that Jack might have bigger bragging rights now though. I had a fun time with the DJ-for-a-Day segment. Happy Birthday, Jack!