The outpouring was swift and heartfelt after University of Arkansas at Little Rock public radio leader Ben Fry died in his sleep March 10 after almost 30 years of shaping campus stations KUAR and KLRE.
Colleagues and friends described Fry, who was general manager at the stations for 20 years, as an essential voice for public radio in central Arkansas, a voice they said he never raised in anger.
“He was an amazing, kind and giving person,” KUAR/KLRE program director Nathan Vandiver said, using adjectives that recurred many times in interviews and posts after Fry’s death of an apparent heart attack at age 54. “We’re forever in debt to him for his service to public radio … It’s stunning to see the flood of reaction, and to realize the level of impact that one man can have.”
Vandiver was named interim general manager, but he said he could never truly fill the void left by Fry, a Wynne native who got his start in radio at local station KWYN at age 16. After admission to UALR, he quickly got a job as an announcer at KARN, and then became its creative director. He joined KUAR in 1988 as news and information director. From the start, he worked with William Wagner, then a young board operator and now operations coordinator.
“Ben knew everyone’s job, every bolt and wire at the station,” Wagner said. “Engineering, underwriting, development, administrative duties. If people love UALR public radio, they have Ben to thank for that.” Wagner said Fry was the glue that held the station together in a crisis — even when an arsonist burned the stations’ transmission tower in 2011.
As an adjunct professor in UALR’s School of Mass Communications, Fry left his mark on hundreds of students, many of whom recalled that he remembered their names — and their wives’ and children’s names — decades after last seeing them. A film buff and scholar, Fry focused not only on radio, but also taught classes in motion picture history, film criticism and screenwriting.
“He was a tremendous person to talk to about movies, TV shows, music,” Wagner recalled. “He had a passion for it, and it rubbed off.” Fry hosted “Home-Fryed Movies” on UALR’s University Television, broadcasting public-domain films, many of them cheesy horror movies. He also wrote entries on film for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
Tributes to Fry came in from far beyond UALR. Former teachers, students and collaborators recalled “truly one of the good guys,” as Arkansas Educational Television Network Executive Director Allen Weatherly put it.
Mark Christ of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, who worked with Fry on the Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentennial Minutes, praised Fry’s radio editing skills but summed up his feelings this way: “He was my friend and I will miss him.”
Michael Hibblen, KUAR’s news director, and Karen Tricot Steward, its content development director, broadcast an almost 12-minute tribute to Fry. “He was an extremely nice person to work for, while at the same time he held us to very high standards,” Hibblen said.
Steward said Fry had been instrumental in securing a $278,000 grant to KUAR and three other NPR stations in Arkansas for establishing a statewide public radio collaboration, Natural State News, designed to reach rural listeners.
KUAR will join with KUAF of Fayetteville, KASU of Jonesboro and KTXK of Texarkana to report on education, health and energy, and provide breaking news and public-interest stories. The pieces will go online and be heard on national programs like “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” Fry was overseeing the launch.
Vandiver said he would become more involved in that project, and he thanked Dr. Lisa Bond-Maupin, dean of the College of Social Sciences & Communications, for offering up her staff and expertise during the transition. “Ben carried a great weight here,” Vandiver said. “But I’m confident that the staff will be able to pull together with the direction he provided us and keep public radio going in central Arkansas as a public service … Ben left a strong legacy.”
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