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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 30, 1988)
Friday, September 30, 1988AThe Battalion/Page 7 \ \ i Wj arm nedia rm ™ Hispifi the net tunitv i our cot ms," a •Corp: .“In pre»: toil Str« ghtot theh ,”C« an’t jj tO-WJ ers, sk )’sloi£ s bee com® ip b sen# ithef al«' ! Local disc jockey pledges: I’m not leaving till Agswin By Craig Sutherland Reporter It is 10 o’clock at night. Randy Davis, morning disc jockey for Bryan- College Station’s KTSR, is stretched out across a lawn chair. He is dressed in a bathrobe and slip pers. Although the sun set hours ago, he is still wearing dark sunglasses. It is strange attire for an interview. It is all made stranger by the fact that the inter view is taking place 35 feet above the ground on a billboard platform. Wednesday morning, Davis set out to spark enthusiasm in Texas A&M football fans by climb ing atop a billboard on Texas Avenue, next to the Townshire Shopping Center in Bryan. Davis has sworn not to leave his post until A&M wins its first game. “When I first got up here and looked down, I was scared to death,’’ Davis says. “But after about 30 minutes, I got used to it. Tm not bothered by heights. It’s falling that scares me.” After losses to Nebraska, Louisiana State, and Oklahoma State, A&M opens conference play with its first home game of the season against Texas Tech on Saturday afternoon. It is only the fourth 0-3 start in the school’s his tory. Across the billboard is Davis’ statement, “I’m not leaving’til they win. Gig’em Aggies.” “It was going to say Tm not coming down ’til they win,’ ” Davis says. “But then someone pointed out I’ve got to come down to use the bathroom.” U Rent M has since loaned him a portable toi let. He says he also plans to take his showers on the ground using a garden hose. After a few phone calls and a couple of pleas over the radio, Davis’ roost now has many of the comforts of home. GTE hooked up a phone; others have donated everything from a tent to a television set. Friends, fans, and several restaurants have brought Davis meals. “This thing has just taken off,” Davis says. “E- verybody has been so helpful. I wish I could get my phone at home hooked up as fast as they did this one.” If the Aggies win oYi Saturday, Davis will have spent approximately 80 hours on top of the bill board. If they lose, he says, he will stay there as long as it takes for A&M to post its first win. A&M fans are known for their dedication to their school, However, Davis attended the Uni versity of Texas and says he only recently has be come a fan of A&M. “At first, it was real hard to understand all of the traditions,” he says. “But I like schools rich in traditions. That’s why I went to UT.” After Davis graduated from South Lake High School in 1982, he spent four years at UT, but left after landing his first job in radio in 1984. “I didn’t see the use in staying in college when I all ready had the job I wanted,” he says. Davis stayed at KEYI 103, an adult contempo rary station in Austin, for two years. Then, he said, he left for Jackson, Miss, because he wanted to “find himself.’’ While there, he worked for WYYN 96.3 before moving back to Texas in Au gust 1987 and joining KTSR, another adult con temporary station. Although Davis has always worked for radio stations that play adult contemporary, he says it is not his favorite music. “I prefer top 40,” he says. “But I like a lot of the stuff we play at Star 92.” Because of the adult contemporary format, Davis’ audience is mostly women, 30 to 40 years old. He says that at first, it was difficult to relate to women that age because he was only 20. But now at age 24, with a few years of work behind him, Davis says he is more comfortable with his audience. He says that for him, the most important part of being a good disc jockey is just being himself. Davis is best known for his improvisations when he takes calls on the air. “Hardly anybody does live calls anymore,” he says. “It keeps me on the edge.” Davis attributes his on-the-air personality to his family. y- “I was raised as an only child,” he says. “When you’re an only child, you’ve either got to be crea tive or psychotic. I guess I’m a little bit of both. “My dad’s a salesman. He could sell snow to Eskimos. He’s where I get my b.s. “My mom is very outgoing. So is my dad. That is why they’re divorced now.” If Davis’ humor reminds his listeners of David Letterman, it is not surprising. Davis says “Late Night With David Letterman” is his favorite tele vision show. “I’m a ‘TV-aholic,’ ” he says. “I watch six hours a day, minimum. I watch Letterman first and foremost. I like Batman, and I watch Green Acres twice a day.” Davis will have plenty of time for television as he keeps his vigil in the nest he has built on the billboard. Father Knows Best’ star reforms after drug addiction, time in prison (AP) — Through the course of several years, Laurin Chapin went from America’s perfect little sister on the 1950s TV comedy “Father Knows Best” to a drug addict and prison inmate. Chapin — Kathy Anderson or “Kitten” to her TV father played by Robert Young — became a has-been at 14, married at 16 and a heroin ad dict by her early 20s. She spent three years in prison and bore two children out of wed lock. The show cast was almost a family, she said, and when the series ended suddenly, she wasn’t prepared. “They never even said goodbye,” she said. “We left one Friday night and got a letter that we were not to return to work. It was total abandon ment.” Today things are better. She has found solace as a born-again Chris tian and as a high school science tea cher in this small central Texas town. “In Killeen, of all places,” said Chapin, 43. “It’s neat. I’m not their token actress. My friends here love me for who I am now, for what I do now', not who I was. “I tried a lot of philosophies be fore I found the peace Td been looking for,” she said. “But when I did, my life changed. There was a boldness that I had not had before — the ability to say: ‘This is where I have been. This is what I have come through.’” Her once brown hair is strawberry blond, her face angular and unf reckled, her childhood chubbiness trimmed down now in tight jeans and T-shirt. But when she breaks into her cheek-splitting grin and pealing laughter the kid Kathy An derson comes through loud and clear. After the show ended, she tried to return to school, but it was a disci pline for which she was unprepared. “I never went to school longer than a month, and it was hard to ac climate, to talk their lingo and try to fit in, especially when you’re a movie star, and the kids think you’re con ceited,” Chapin told the Dallas Times Herald. “They don’t make friends with you, and I was an inse cure child who didn’t know how to relate to other children.” At home, Chapin’s mother was a creative, classically trained pianist supportive of her daughter’s ambi tions. At the same time, Chapin said, her mother was a hard-drinking housewife who subjected her chil dren to verbal abuse. She said her relationship with her father was even more turbulent. To escape, at the age of 16, she married a classmate she had known only 30 days. During their marriage of only three years Chapin suffered seven miscarriages and became ad dicted to heroin. “It was real easy for me to get into drugs, to try to deaden the pain of life, to take away the hurt I had been through,” she said. After seven years of heavy heroin abuse, Chapin was sentenced to prison for attempted forgery. “I floated in the real seedy side of life from 14 up to 26, caught up in the free-sex, free-drugs, free-love so ciety.” After three years in thd^ California Institute for Women, Chapin en tered a drug treatment program, spending a year with “The Family” Group. “It helped me to build new strengths in myself and to realize I didn’t need drugs in my life,” she said. Friends introduced her to Chris tianity, something she always had re jected, she said, because she believed Christians were squares. But she said the religious experience trans formed her. “I had lived in fear, in low self-es teem, but as I allowed Christ in, all those things that had made me afraid and ashamed were softened and released and healed.” She has shared that message through numerous speaking and television appearances, including one that landed her an invitation from a Temple pastor who asked her to head his women’s ministry. AM/PM Clinics CLINICS Minor Emergencies Weight Reduction Program Stop Smoking Program 10% Discount With Student ID College Station 845-4756 693-0202 779-4756 Geniitlichkeit ( OKTOBERFEST) LIVE GERMAN E N T E R T A I N M E NT every Saturday night in October 6:30 til... ALSO SPECIAL GERMAN OKTOBERFEST FOOD & BEER Zum Schnitzel Hans ( Dancing ) (No Cover) German Restaurant & Bar "BEST GERMAN FOOD N 210 S. 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