I got an e-mail this week from Chuck Quirmbach, Mr. deep voice perfect annunciator extraordinaire at Wisconsin and National Public radio.

He's in my bedroom every morning, his alluring voice wakes me at 6 a.m.

Last week his news clip for NPR highlighted midnight at a huge outlet mall near the Wisconsin/Illinois border as shoppers screamed their way into bargain hell on Black Friday.

I had to chuckle.

Despite the baritone resonance he is Chuck Quirmbach, another memory from grade school, short, red hair, freckles. I can't get that picture of him out of my mind, because of course, I never see him.

That's the magic intimacy of radio. My mother's long affair listening to Gordon Hinkley and "Ask Your Neighbor," a housewife's staple that lasted for decades (I've seen Gordon is still alive and doing Church & Chapel T.V. commercials -LOL); hot summer nights long ago, transistor held to the ear way past bedtime listening to WOKY and Wolfman Jack's top 40; Tuning in as a teen to Bleeker Street coming from an underground station in Little Rock Arkansas; sitting in the parking lot as a young adult with hundreds of fans as Milwaukee's WZMF radio with a then much younger and pretty hot Bob Reitman goes off the air (I still have an unused bumper sticker).

Nick Carter of the Journal Sentinel staff wrote: March 23, 1979: For many local radio listeners, it was the day the spirit of rock radio died. It was on that date that WZMF-FM, a 3,000-watt radio station, went off the air for good, saying farewell with Jimi Hendrix's rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner," followed by static.

Freddie Mercury, bless your soul, you were right.

"Radio...Someone who loves you."