Paul W. Berg (1934 – August 4, 2020), known professionally as Pat O'Day, was an American broadcaster and concert promoter in the Pacific Northwest. O'Day, born in Norfolk, Nebraska, is probably best known as the afternoon drive personality at Seattle's KJR 950 in the 1960s; he would eventually become program director and general manager. O'Day is responsible for bringing the

Seattle music scene Seattle is the largest city in the U.S. state of Washington and has long played a major role in the state's musical culture, popularizing genres of alternative rock such as grunge and being the origin of major bands like Alice in Chains, Soundgar ...

to national prominence.

Career

O'Day owned Seattle radio station KYYX (96.5 FM) from 1977 to 1984. From late 1982 the station had a New Wave music format, one of the few commercial stations in the US at the time to do so. Starting in 1967, O'Day served as race announcer and commentator during Seafair for various radio and TV stations, lastly with

KIRO-TV KIRO-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Seattle, Washington, United States, affiliated with CBS and Telemundo. Owned by Cox Media Group, the station maintains studios on Third Avenue in the Belltown section of Downtown Seattle, and its ...

. The television station, however, announced it was parting ways with O'Day in 2013 and he would not return to broadcast the race. In 1998, a

plaquette A plaquette (, ''small plaque'') is a small low relief sculpture in bronze or other materials. These were popular in the Italian Renaissance and later. They may be commemorative, but especially in the Renaissance and Mannerist periods were oft ...

featuring O'Day with a photograph of him was added to the permanent disc jockey exhibit at the

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and othe ...

in Cleveland, Ohio. O'Day co-authored ''It Was All Just Rock 'n' Roll'' with Seattle writer Jim Ojala, detailing his work in radio and the concert promotion company, ''Concerts West''. (First edition published October 18, 2002; second edition, ''It Was All Just Rock-'n'-Roll II: A Return to the Center of the Radio & Concert Universe'', published Dec 2003; ) More recently, O'Day has been Schick Shadel's spokesman in both radio and television advertisements. In 2007, O'Day joined more than two dozen other radio and music industry leaders as a member of the nominating committee of the Hit Parade Hall of Fame. His story was featured in a 2015 documentary about

radio DJ A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile D ...

s called ''I Am What I Play'', directed by Roger King.

Personal life and death

O'Day had three sons (Garry, Jerry, and Jeff) and one daughter (Kelsey). Although a reputation for excessive drinking hurt him early in his career, he entered Schick Shadel Hospital in 1986 for treatment. He lived in the San Juan Islands with his wife Stephanie Johnson O’Day where he developed and sold real estate. O'Day set the

Guinness world record ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

for water skiing non-stop (on

Lake Washington Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It borders the cities of Seattle on the west, ...

) for 4 hours 52 minutes, in 1959.It Was All Just Rock-'n'-Roll II: A Return to the Center of the Radio & Concert Universe, by Pat O'Day and Jim Ojala, published by Ballard Publishing, December 2003. O'Day died on August 4, 2020, at the age of 85.Lacitis, Erik (August 6, 2020)
Pat O’Day, when at KJR, ‘creator of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll radio station in the Northwest,’ dies at 85
''Seattle Times''. Retrieved August 6, 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:ODay, Pat 1934 births 2020 deaths American radio personalities