…to the memory of Cynthia Doyon, host and creative genius behind KUOW’s The Swing Years And Then Some. She’d been at the UW’s other station at the time, KCMU (now KEXP), a couple of years before I was. She moved on to the UW’s “pro” station, KUOW, in 1979, just as public radio was really taking off as a national institution. Her Saturday-night show became a local institution for 24 years, honoring a 30-year era of music that created much of American pop culture’s most timeless classics. She deftly programmed a show that was neither rigidly “historical” (just about anything from the 78-rpm era could find its way into the show) nor timidly nostalgic (she took care, in her selections and her introductions, to make the music come alive for contemporary listeners).

But Doyon was only employed part-time at KUOW, and couldn’t find enough outside work to pay the bills. Apparently despondent over her personal finances during the Great Depression II, she allegedly shot herself on the UW campus, on what Billie Holiday once referred to as a “Gloomy Monday.”