Passing the mic

Leadership transitions are often controversial, difficult, involve power struggles, or come at the end of a bitter political contest.

In corporate America, they frequently are dominated by strong personalities and the financial bottom line. In today’s government, one party loses and another wins amid a tumult of criticism and finger-pointing. In professional sports, if you don’t win, you quickly become expendable.

But in Huntley and Sun City, we just had a transition that was quiet, mutually respectful, peaceful, and totally seamless.

With a 10-second exchange of chairs in a small office on Aug. 1, six-year-old Huntley Radio accomplished a silent but significant leadership transition that signals an expansion of fund-raising but business as usual activities otherwise.

On that day, the Sun Day witnessed Allen Pollack, the station’s founding father and first executive director, retire to a role as board member and adviser. Jim Eggers, a “famous” Sun City restaurant critic, took on the executive director role that he has been preparing for during the past nine months.

In six busy and positive years of growth, Huntley Community Radio has become a daily source of information and entertainment in Sun City and the surrounding Huntley community. It operates around the clock with dozens of volunteers, a lot of creative home-grown programming and fund-raising, and an annual budget of about $25,000.

Take a look at Pollack’s and Eggers’ backgrounds, and a community radio partnership does not come to mind immediately.

Pollack started off as a public school teacher, but then spent more than 30 years in corporate America, working in the technology and computer areas. He wound up as a senior-level project director and mentor for Hewlett-Packard. He and his wife, Jackie, moved to Sun City in 2001, and along the way he took the time to pursue two interests: He obtained a private pilot license and briefly started a Flyers Charter Club in the Sun City. And, he still pursues an interest in music as a member of the Sun City Sun-Tones, a small barbershop group that barnstorms all over the northwest suburban area, as well as Sun City, regaling audiences with old but still-popular harmonies.

Eggers started as an electronic engineer, which put him close to all of the emerging technologies of the 20th century. But then, he took a U-turn into tool and dye, going to work in a shop after marriage and eventually taking over the company for 28 years. He and his wife, Nancy, came to Sun City in 2010 and eventually gained some local prominence when they started to write columns and reviews about area restaurants in the Sun Day. Shortly after Huntley Radio got started, they took their eatery act to the station. Today, he and Nancy conduct a regular daytime show on food and restaurant topics.

In the past year, Eggers and Pollack had begun talking about station management issues, and discovering each other’s talents and interests related to radio.

“Allen is a people-oriented person,” Eggers said. “He’s skilled at conflict management and resolution and is insightful about vision and long range planning. I offer technical skills and engineering, and knowledge of business management and technology,” Eggers said.

“It was only a matter of time before we started talking about the future of the radio station.”

Toward the end of 2017, Eggers approached Pollack with an interest in becoming involved in management of the station, and the conversations led to the Aug. 1 transition.

“I am pleased that Jim is someone who can take the reins, and I can become an adviser and stay on our board of directors,” Pollack said.

“We have about 100 volunteers that actually do all of the work that’s required, but we remain as a non-profit low power FM station,” Pollack said. “We were the first radio station in Illinois to get a license in that category after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted a freeze on issuing these kinds of licenses. We proved that we could operate properly among larger AM and FM stations.”

Allen and Jackie visited Florida in 2008 and checked out a low-power FM station operated by the Villages community there. It inspired him to continue to pursue the idea here. “From day one here, I dreamed that we could have more information and entertainment sources than the Northwest Herald in our area,” Pollack said. “I thought a radio station could accomplish that, and with a lot of help from a lot of people, we’ve accomplished that.”

Pollack said he wants to thank the many officials and veteran radio people in the Chicago area for their assistance in the Huntley Radio project.

“We owe so much to Dorothy Litwin, who had a strong background in radio and television in South Carolina and here,” he said. “Also, Jim Carollo, chief engineer at WGN Radio; Joe Loughlin, a member of the Wisconsin Radio Broadcasting Hall of Fame; and Tom Palmer, executive director of the Huntley Park District.

“Tom moved his finance operations out of the community building in Deicke Park and rented us a wing of the building that we now occupy,” Pollack said. “His assistance has helped us so much.”

Huntley Radio’s transmitter and antenna are located in Deicke, which is the geographical center of the village of Huntley, Pollack added.

Eggers said, “One of the main things I want and need to do, is expand our fund-raising. As we planned this transition, we learned that one of our major financial supporters, Centegra Health Care, cannot support us any more because of its September 1 merger with Northwestern Medicine (see sidebar, above).

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