It has been nearly two weeks since Ray Kalusa passed away. I have dreaded this blog entry mainly because of the shock and pain of his passing.
Ray was traveling from his home in Los Angeles to his mother's home in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving when he suffered a brain aneurysm. He had a fender bender with the car in front of him and died on the side of the road. Ray was 49.
Ray was my second program director. He hired me at KYIS (98-9 KISS FM) in Oklahoma City. He gave me my first chance to do the midday show at KYIS. He gave me my first chance to image a radio station and my first chance to image a sports station (WWLS The Sports Animal). He left Oklahoma City in 2003 to become the program director at KSPN (ESPN Radio 710) in Los Angeles. On the day he died, Ray had just signed a deal to produce the syndicated Dennis Miller radio show.
I still remember the life and radio lessons he taught while he was in Oklahoma City and even after he left for LA. We talked about once a month or so, the last time being the week before he died. He still was generous with his time, giving me career advice whenever I asked.
As many have mentioned, Ray was a "smile." He was always smiling and he always brought smiles to others. He told some of the best radio stories. We would jokingly number them, "Here's number 512." Along with Citadel Oklahoma City operations manager Chris Baker, we would make grunting noises in the hallway. It was ode to inside joke among anyone worked in Top-40/music radio and had heard the "9" tape.
Raymond Francis Michael Kalusa grew up in Chicago, listening to John "Records Truly Is My Middle Name" Landecker and Larry Lujack on The Big 89 WLS. He went to college at Notre Dame, playing baseball and studying accounting. After college, he jumped into the radio biz working in South Bend, Salt Lake City, Reno, San Diego, Oklahoma City and finally in Los Angeles. He programmed the number one station in Reno, Nevada in KWNZ. He then went to work at the legendary Q106 in San Diego. Luckily for a lot of us in OKC, he came to Oklahoma and built the 98-9 KISS FM you hear today along with ratings monster WWLS The Sports Animal. I still hear things on those stations today that remind me of Ray.
Off the air, Ray was a marathon runner who stayed in great physical shape. When paramedics arrived on the scene, they described him as a 29-year-old male, instead of 49.
He left many grateful friends across the country. God put him on this earth and he touched my family. I don't know why God took him, but I'm thankful to have called him "friend."
