It’s nice to try something new, even if it’s old. Or rather something old in a new way. In this case I listened to the “radio” by livestreaming it on my laptop. It was 10:30 at night and I put on WRGY. The program schedule said I was listening to “Off the Clock Music”. It did not disappoint. “Changes” by David Bowie, one of my all-time favorites came on, followed by another classic, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones. The scene from the “Big Chill” came back to me.

In just a couple of minutes memories were stirred and I was happily brought back through time. It was a refreshing change from my own playlists. It’s nice to be surprised, and that’s what I have always enjoyed about radio.

There are so many options nowadays it might seem strange to return to radio, and I almost felt old fashioned, but Iris Ramirez, the new station manager at WRGY proved me wrong.

She’s young, just barely out of college and sincerely passionate about her career in radio. So much so that she moved halfway across the country just two days after her graduation ceremony.

Iris was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. At 18 she moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma to go to school at the University of Tulsa where she was a double major in music and arts, culture and entertainment management.

“I also had a minor in education, so I was definitely a busy bee.”

She mostly studied classical music, but also some jazz courses, and music history.     “I did all the kinds of basics of music. Like reading music, music theory, your training, all that kind of stuff, and I took private voice lessons most of college.

Her instrument was her voice.

“I was a vocal music major. I was originally vocal music education for a long time, and then I switched over in 2021 to just like a regular, like Bachelor of Arts and Music so I could start doing audio engineering.”

Iris has always been a fan of radio.

“My parents, they would play the radio when we would be going to school, they would play the local rock station in El Paso and so I grew up listening to that and then just whenever I would need something different. Like listening to it even throughout college just to get the local stuff and not necessarily what Spotify or Apple Music can give you.”

She originally came to Rangeley to spend some time visiting her aunt, Jill Crosby.

“I mean, I love Jill so much and I never really got to see her a whole lot growing up just because she lived so far away. Then right before I started college, I just kind of wanted to do something to start this new independence that I had where I was about to be 18 and then I was about to start college and I needed a summer job, so it all just kind of worked itself out. I worked at the Farmer’s Daughter almost every summer I was here before working at WRGY.”

It was during one of these summers that she made her connections in Rangeley’s art community.

“Yeah, I did an internship with them in 2021 as part of my arts management degree. I needed two internships, so I did my first one with the theater and then the second one with WRGY.”

One thing led to another and in May she moved here full-time. However, it wasn’t because she wanted to leave Oklahoma, rather it was because she was enthusiastic about coming to our community radio station.

“I love Tulsa. I think one day I would love to move back. I just love my job at WRGY so much that I was like ‘No, this would definitely be worth moving across the country for.’ So, Tulsa has a special place in my heart, but I just wanted to prioritize this job and actually be at the station for it.”

What she means is that theoretically she could have worked remotely, something she has been doing for a while.

“So as a station manager I guess I think I recently just put it somewhere that I think May 15th was my official start date but I I’ve been working as assistant manager since September of 2021. Yeah, I have been doing that part time and then once I moved over here, they were officially giving me the title and stuff.

I was doing it remotely. I had access to both of our work computers from my laptop, so it made it pretty easy for me to just start building our playlist for the days and stuff like that and I have an audio editing software on my computer, so I’m able to do that and have been doing audio stuff for a while now so I had all the equipment ready at my apartment.”

She is thoroughly enjoying Rangeley and her new position at WRGY.

“It’s going great. I love my job so much. It’s so funny when people ask me if I still enjoy it and I’m like I’ve always enjoyed it and I don’t think that’s going to change. It’s just, it’s literally the perfect job for me and it’s exactly what I would have wanted outside of college and so yeah, I think adjusting to Maine life has been great and meeting new people has been really fun and just getting to live my dream has been so great as well.”

Of course, the road hasn’t been completely smooth.

“I guess it’s just the unexpected things that happen, like especially the lightning strike that happened. I think learning to be flexible with that and kind of figure out how we’re going to get through our busiest time of the year without actually being on air has been interesting. So, I guess it’s those things that I wouldn’t have necessarily stressed too much about while I was in Oklahoma because I wasn’t physically there to see it and now that I’m here to see it, it’s like oh this is very real and this is happening.”

About one month after Iris officially started as station manager, her metal was tested.

“So we got struck by lightning on the 14th of June and then we basically- it’s the transmitter which is kind of what helps create our on-air signal got struck and so it fried that completely and as well as the audio processor equipment too.”

They had some power, but not enough to get back on-air right away.

“If we were to use our equipment on that temporary power, it would pretty much blow up everything.”

Fortunately, while waiting for the tower at Saddleback to get full power, they could still keep up their programming through their streaming service.

Iris has not only benefited from the decades of experience of both WRGY Vice President, engineer and well-known meteorologist Russ Murley who you may have seen on television, but also former WRGY station manager, and local celebrity Ernie Gurney.

“Ernie is one of my best friends. He is so great. He has been just such a great mentor to me as I’ve been kind of learning things about radio and just WRGY in general. He literally taught me pretty much everything I know about WRGY right now. So, yeah, right away he and I became really good friends.

And it was just so great that I would always say how great my coworker is because he and I just make jokes all the time and he’s just one of my favorite people.

He just got appointed to our Advisory Board, so he’ll be around still, but he’s retired now from station manager and stuff.”

While Ernie has taught her many things, she still naturally had to make it her own. “Yeah, I mean, I definitely have a different way of organizing things. I have kind of redone our organization system that was going on with program building and things like our community calendar. So, a lot of that has changed and then I redid part of our schedule. So, all our music programs have been kind of flipped around and we have new music coming up as I’ve built these new playlists. So that’s been really fun. So I’ve changed a couple of things and we also have a working sound board now. Russ actually he was the one who fixed the soundboard at center.”

Another big change is that Iris is really and truly in the center of the community.

“I’m in the studio and that’s another thing that’s changed is we actually have someone present in the studio. It’s just a real personable experience. I think it’s nice when you’re walking down Main Street and you look at WRGY and there’s someone there smiling and saying, ‘Hi’. Like, if you want to come on in, you’re more than welcome to. So I think it just makes for more community engagement between the station and Rangeley itself.”

At the end of our interview Iris continued to show her enthusiasm and I gave her the opportunity for some last words.

“There are big changes happening at WRGY and I am beyond excited for them to happen. I love my job so much. I cannot stress that enough and people kind of I feel like question that. How I could move from a city to a small town and how working for this little radio station could really make a huge difference to me, but it does, and so I’m just so grateful and we did a GoFundMe to move my stuff over here and that’s something I’m going to be forever grateful for as well. So just that I’m thankful to the community for keeping the community in community radio.”

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