By Martha Deller
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH -- George Nolen was "Captain Swabby" on KFJZ-TV's first children's show in the late 1950s.

A decade later, Lee Randall was a "hippy-dippy" KFJZ radio disc jockey who locked himself in an animal cage for five days to raise money to buy two tigers for the Fort Worth Zoo.

Nolen, now a Colorado knifemaker, and Randall, a San Antonio consultant, joined their former colleagues Saturday night at a reunion at Joe T. Garcia's restaurant that drew more than 230 people from California to Pennsylvania.

Organized by former KFJZ disc jockey Larry Shannon and former KFJZ general manager Stan Wilson, the reunion expanded to include past and present Fort Worth radio and TV personalities, thanks to a Web page that Shannon designed.

The media reunion and Wilson's four-decade broadcasting career were recognized by Mayor Kenneth Barr in proclamations read during the gathering.

"For most of us, this was the heyday of our careers," Randall said. "A radio station had its own spirit and personality that made you a part of your community. Now, we're like old military veterans trading war stories. Thanks to the Internet, we can all connect again."

KFJZ, one of Fort Worth's major radio stations for four decades, launched its own TV station in 1955. By the 1970s, much of the radio audience had switched to FM, Shannon said. The station changed owners several times. A Hispanic station now has the KFJZ radio frequency.

Nolen was one of the KFJZ radio personalities who switched over to television. But Ann Harper Youree was recruited from an Abilene TV station to be KFJZ's first female announcer.

"It was an exciting time," said Youree, who came from Nashville for the reunion. "I did interviews, commercials, emceed movies and everything was live."

That led to some interesting moments when the station cat wandered across the set during shows or commercials, said Macalee Murchison Hime, secretary to the station president from 1952-60.

The reunion even drew Tarrant County Judge Tom Vandergriff, who worked for the station in the 1940s when Elliott Roosevelt, son of former president Franklin Roosevelt, owned it.

"All the good announcers had gone off to war," Vandergriff recalled. "They were so desperate they hired a 16- year-old high school kid as an announcer."

Martha Deller, (817) 390-7857
mdeller@star-telegram.com