A career meant to be: Lightfoot retires after 48-year career in broadcasting (2024)

When she was 16, Greenville native Gail Lightfoot received career advice from her Uncle Jimmy Lightfoot.

“Gail, you need to get into radio,” he told her.

“Now Uncle Jimmy had been in radio from the time he was 13 years old in Bonham,” Lightfoot recalled during a recent interview. “He made it big in the radio business. He moved to California and eventually was hired as a program director at various stations across the country to bring up the ratings.”

Indeed, Lightfoot did get into radio. Beginning at KGVL in Greenville, she remained an on-air personality at a myriad of stations for a total of 48 years in broadcasting. A few weeks ago, she retired and left her final gig at the Metroplex’s highest-rated station, KLTY, after 12 years. Admirers have showered her with messages about how much they will miss and her “mellow,” “beautiful,” “jovial” and “sweet” voice.

As a youngster, Lightfoot focused on dance.

“I was a dance student, and my passion was ballet,” she said. “By the time I got to Greenville High School, I was helping teach tap and ballet at Betty Hogue’s School of Dance. Because I was so dedicated to my dance classes, I stayed in the Pep Squad instead of trying out for the drill team. But in my senior year, I joined the Flashes so I could be with my best friend Carla Ende.”

Texas A&M University-Commerce professor Dr. John Mark Dempsey attended Greenville High School with Lightfoot and later worked with her at KGVL.

“Gail was in the Flaming Flashes in high school,” he said. “Those girls, especially Gail, were just superstars. The pep rallies were like rock concerts. The GHS band was terrific and played a lot of recent hits like ‘The Horse’ by Cliff Noble. Then the Flashes would do one of their phenomenal dance numbers, and the gym would just go crazy. Gail’s been a star most of her life, whether she knows it or not.”

After graduation, Lightfoot attended East Texas State University in Commerce for two years. Then she went to work at KGVL.

“They hired me as a bookkeeper,” she said. “In those days everything was written by hand. After a while, some of the guys who worked there including Jim Gardner and Pat Mickler got me into the production room and showed me how to operate the equipment. It took me about 30 minutes to say my first word into the microphone. They continued to work with me, and I started being a disc jockey at KGVL. It was a full-time job, and I was 19-years-old.”

Lightfoot’s KGVL coworker Dempsey recalled their time at the local station.

“At KGVL in the mid-’70s, we were all guys (on the air) except for Gail,” Dempsey said. “We were all trying to be like the ‘boss jocks’ on the Dallas stations, KLIF, KVIL, KZEW, WBAP, with the idea of ‘That’s how to be a big-time disc jockey.’ Gail — with her beautiful, God-given voice to go with her beautiful, God-given looks — was just ‘Gail.’ I don’t think she had any idea of becoming a ‘radio god,’ but ironically, she did, more than the rest of us. She just had that easy-to-listen-to, casual, friendly quality. She was a natural.”

Lightfoot opened the FM station in Greenville.

“I was there for the sign-on for KIKT,” she said. “At the beginning, there was just a room with two reel-to-reel tape recorders and a microphone.”

In those days on her way to work, Lightfoot had a regular stop.

“I would go by the Royal Drive-In to get a cheeseburger,” she said.

Lightfoot spent seven years at KGVL-KIKT before working in other markets, mainly in Dallas.

“My first job in Dallas was at KBOX,” she said. “It was a Top 40 station, and then it changed to country music with the popular show, ‘Peck & Peggy.’ When there was an on-air search for someone to replace Peggy Sears, I sent in my tape. I got the job over more than 200 candidates, and I became one-half of ‘Tim & Gail.’”

After the demise of KBOX, Lightfoot decided that she wanted to remain in radio, but now she aspired to do traffic reports from an airplane or helicopter.

“I sent my resume to each radio station,” she said. “I was hired at KLIF, first as a jock and then doing airborne traffic. Brad Barton trained me in the airplane for KLIF, and I went from there to KEGL ‘The Eagle’ with “Stevens & Pruett,” doing their traffic from a helicopter called Black Thunder. After that, I moved to KISS-FM for the morning show with Jim Zippo.

“That was the heyday of radio. It was so much fun with Barton, Dick Siegel and Jonathan Page.”

Drive-time deejays, especially the morning hosts, had become performers, sometimes with comic sidekicks. Also, traffic reporters reached celebrity status in the crowded Dallas market during the 1980s. Along with Elaine Changer (Deborah Weeks Amaral), U-Turn Laverne (Kate Garvin) and Laura Houston, Lightfoot joined the Dallas ladies who spotted travel gridlock and bantered with their station’s deejays.

Lightfoot reported traffic for WBAP, KLUV with Ron Chapman and Platinum with Larry Dixon. Beginning in the ’90s, she was part of the talented Kidd Kraddick’s top-rated KISS FM broadcast.

While flying for “The Eagle” as part of the Russ Martin Show, she learned to fly a helicopter.

“I had great pilots;” Lightfoot said. “Most were out of Vietnam. They all were instructors. During the time I flew for the Eagle, I was taking flying lessons, and I got to keep my log time.”

Following two helicopter crashes in which pilots and traffic reporters were injured, Dallas stations began to phase out the copters. Then, following 9/11, air traffic was reduced.

“No one is airborne anymore,” Lightfoot said. “We have much better access to information because of technology. We have computers and TxDOT cameras, and we don’t have to call every police station like we did in the old days.”

After working for Metro Traffic for a long period, Lightfoot joined Total Traffic, which is housed in the iHeart Radio media building in North Dallas.

During the ’90s, she started filling in at contemporary Christian music station 94.9 KLTY. Lightfoot was happy to have a chance to work at her favorite station.

“I ended up staying for quite a while,” Lightfoot, who has reached the status of radio icon, said. “I was thrilled to become part of the live broadcast with ‘Frank, Starlene & Hudson in the Mornings,’ and I was on in the afternoons as well. It’s an amazing testimonial that Frank Reed, Starlene Stringer and John Hudson, along with so many at KLTY, are dedicated radio veterans.”

After nearly five decades on the radio, Lightfoot will now be able to spend more time with her husband, Tim Williams, her children Katy and Chase, and her grandchildren in Dallas and Kansas.

Lightfoot’s dear friend and sorority sister Sharon Baugh Jacobs said she is happy about the retirement.

“Gail’s career has spanned so many years and has impacted thousands of people‘s lives in the most positive way,” Jacobs said. “Gail absolutely has the best heart. She is a very spiritual person. I can sincerely say that her friends, her family, her animals and her church are all better because of Gail.

“I’m excited for her retirement. It is so very deserved, and now we can have a long lunch like normal people. She has always had a split shift where she only had a small window of time for lunch and then back to the afternoon shift. Now, we can spend as much time as we want!”

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