by Joseph H. RADDER
For almost forty years hes been starting our days with a smile. Just as Buffalo
wouldnt be Buffalo without beef on weck, Buffalo wouldnt be Buffalo without
Danny Neaverth.
You cant sit down to talk to Dan Neaverth without laughing with him. He answered our
first question, When were you born? with the quick retort Very
young! Its this kind of wit that has endeared him to radio listeners as far
back as a lot of us can remember. He can get serious, however. For example he told us that
growing up in South Buffalo, I picked up a lot of street smarts. Its
interesting, he continued, that no matter where you grew up...South Buffalo,
the east side, the west side, or North Buffalo, everybody seemed to be really proud of
where theyre from.
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Dan and his parents Herman and Louise - 1942. | Dan - 1944. |
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Dan - 1947. | Dan graduated from Bishop Timon High School in 1955. |
Pinning down his childhood neighborhood even finer, he said I was from St.
Monicas Parish. We always came home from school at lunch time. Nobody walked,
everybody ran. In later years, Dan told his kids he ran three or four miles to
school every day, uphill both ways. But about five years ago I took the car and I
measured it. Its less than a mile!
Neaverth got his start in radio with a little radio station at the South Buffalo
Boys Club. Joey Reynolds and Danny McBride were on the staff, he
remembered.
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Dan's first on air job was at WFRM in Coudersport, PA. | Joey Reynolds and Dan. |
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Dan with Frankie Avalon. | Dan, Joe DeLamielleure and Sandy Beach. |
You would expect Danny Neaverth to admit to being the class clown at Bishop Timon High
School. On the contrary. Its funny, he said. I met a woman about
ten years ago from the old neighborhood, and she said, laughing, You know I
cant believe it. Youve been on radio and television all these years doing that
funny stuff. I dont understand it. You were the most boring kid in the
neighborhood. Frankly, we find that hard to believe.
Like so many people weve talked to from South Buffalo, Dan credits the priests and
the nuns with shaping his strong character. Those Franciscans didnt take any
guff, he said. They were real men.
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Dan conducting the BPO. | Dan skiing. |
Herman Neaverth, Dans father, was a banker, and worked for the M&T Bank all his
life. His mother, Louise Zeaska Neaverth obviously created a very happy home for Dan and
his Dad. I was an only child, he said, and the nuns used to think that
if you were an only child you were spoiled. That wasnt really true. We were one of
the last families on Keppel Street to have a television set, one of the last families to
have a refrigerator, and were one of the last families in the neighborhood to have a car.
During the war when the other kids fathers were working in the defense plants and
making big money, my father was working in the bank, and bank employees were not very well
paid.
Dan married Marie Seifert in 1958. The Neaverths had four boys, Danny, David, Darren, and
Dean. Its a good thing they didnt have a fifth son. We were going to
name him Dopey he said.
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Dan and Marie's wedding - 1958. | Dan, Marie and family - 1972. |
When he was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame he said Marie was my
wife, mother, lover and friend. She is a special person from a special family. Her mother
and father were a very important part of my life too. I dont know anybody who
doesnt like Marie.
In addition to their four adult sons, Marie and Dan have nine grandchildren, seven girls
and two boys.
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Back row: Dan, Jr., Darren, Dean and David. Front row: Marie and Dan. |
Dan' and Marie's grandchildren: Top row: Kim,
Darren, Jr., Dean, Jr. Bottom row: Chelsea, Darci, Elizabeth, Christina and Danielle. Missing from photo: Delacy. |
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Daughter in law Pam P.J. Foxx (D.J.), Dan Jr. (Sports Director), Darren (Sales Manager WHTT) and Dan - 1989. |
After high school, Dan went to Curran Studios, a broadcasting school in Syracuse. He
graduated in 1957, and his first job in radio was in Coudersport, Pa. Then he went to
Dunkirk to station WDOE. While he was working in these towns, his parents would send him
the Buffalo papers. One day I read that some guy from WBNY was leaving, so I went up
there for an audition and got the job.
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Dan at Buffalo City Hall after a bicycle race from Albany to Buffalo for cancer research. | Dan with Richard Simmons on Nearly Noon, Channel 2. |
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Marquee at Shea's for Dan's 25th anniversary at KB - 1986. | County Executive Ed Rutkowski and Mayor Jimmy Griffin with Dan at dedication of Keppel Street name change to Dan Neaverth Lane (for one day). |
Future goals? All I want to do is live a long life and see my grandchildren all
happily married.
Dan Neaverth is not only in the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, but in the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame in Cleveland. Apparently they have a room full of computers where you can log onto
rock and roll disc jockeys in all the major cities. If you go there and click on Dan
Neaverths name, be forewarned that hes not all that proud of the material he
sent them. At the time I didnt think the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was
going to amount to anything, so when they asked me for tapes, I sent them the first thing
I could put my hands on. It isnt funny at all. By the way, because they have
so many DJs in the northeast, youll have to look for Dan under mid-west.
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Dan and Hank Nevins. | Tom Donahoe, Dan and Sandy Beach. |
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Dan - PA announcer for Buffalo Bills for 13 seasons. |
Dan seems to be happy to be back on KB, playing the kind of music and doing the kind of
humor that made him famous. Everything retro is popular these days, retro cars, retro
trolleys and retro radio too. Listening to Danny Neaverth in the morning will take you
back to the 60s and 70s. And Buffalo was apparently ready for a return to the
old KB sound. According to a recent article in the Buffalo News, ratings have tripled
according to Arbitron., and Dan Neaverth was the big reason for KBs
rise.
It may surprise you to learn that Dan Neaverth is a train buff. He has traveled thousands
of miles on Amtrak. Marie has shared a few of my train rides, he said,
but shes not as excited about train travel as I am. Last year Dan did the Seattle to
Buffalo trip. He has also taken Americas longest train trip, from Los Angeles to
Orlando, that takes three and a half days. And he collects model trains. When I was
a kid, he said, I used to go to Spoonley the Train Man on Choate Avenue and
drool over the stuff he had there. Id make lists every year and leave them lying
around the house before Christmas, but I never got any of the stuff. So now I have the
stuff that I wanted to have then. He tells us, surprisingly, his grand-daughters and
even his daughters-in-law seem to be more interested in his trains than his sons and
grand-sons.
Hed love to see high speed rail across New York State but isnt optimistic. He
enthuses about his experience on the TGV in France. Its incredible! 140 miles
an hour, dedicated track (no freights). Curves are banked where they need to be banked.
All crossings are elevated. And when they come into the terminal its whoosh! And
when they leave theyre going 90 miles an hour when theyre still in the
yards.
Summing up his interesting life, Dan told us, I think the key to any success that
Ive had is that I know who I really am. In other words, unlike some humorists,
hes not always on. Apparently when you see Dan Neaverth in a serious
mood, you can be pretty sure hes relaxing.
Youd think a man who is a Buffalo legend might have a big ego. Not at all. Dan
Neaverth is the same person he was in South Buffalo all those years ago. I guess
thats what makes him so likeable. That down-to-earth quality comes through on the
air and is probably the secret of his popularity.
Joseph H. Radder, a free-lance writer and regular contributor to Living Prime
Time, is the author of a new book, a fictional biography of a young Jew named Jesus,
Young Jesus, the missing years.