The evening of December 8, 1980 I was working the night shift at a rock radio station in Albuquerque

The evening of December 8, 1980 I was working the night shift at a rock radio station in Albuquerque,

New Mexico. I'd only been in radio broadcasting for a couple of years at that point and the station I

worked for didn't even have a news wire machine or a television in the studio. So when all the phone

lines lit up at once and people started anxiously asking if it was true that John Lennon had been shot

it was quite a shock. I had to call a close friend to get confirmation.

It is a strange feeling to be in media when something of such a magnitude happens. Being a child of the

60's I am quite a Beatles fan and rock music lover. That night I had to open the microphone and tell

the audience that a music icon was dead, gunned down by an obsessed fanatic. It was an odd sensation.

It wasn't until after my show ended at midnight that I was able to let the news really sink in. I

played Beatles and Lennon records late into the night. The next morning I went into the production room

at the radio station and started working on a tribute special. Somehow it was cathartic.