Whatever
Happened...
Question: What ever happened to Tom "Dynamite" Dancer, the disc jockey? Tom Dancer was
radio dynamite
By Pat Gee
pgee@starbulletin.com
Answer: Radio personality Tom "Dynamite" Dancer, whose trademark was "blowing up" people with a tape-recorded explosion if they disagreed with him, died in 1992 of throat cancer.
Dancer, who was originally from Birmingham, Ala., and whose real name was Graham Gambill, worked at KORL, K-108 and KDEO over a 25-year span in Honolulu. He started his radio career in the early '50s while he was in the Navy and on the Big Island, said his ex-wife, Judy Dancer.
"It was ironic that a talk-show star had his voice box removed," she said.
According to a 1992 Star-Bulletin article, Dancer died Christmas Day at the age of 56. His voice box had been removed the year before, and a voice prosthesis installed, enabling him to speak. It was the first successful operation of its kind in the world, the article said.
Dancer worked with the American Lung Association, speaking to school children about the dangers of smoking, which is what television and radio personality Michael W. Perry most admired about him. Perry said Dancer blew up a bunch of cigarettes on the air to underline his message.
"He was quite a guy" and "a force in the '70s," Perry added.
Dancer established a world record of broadcasting over 225 continuous hours in 1978, held it for about a year, then had to do it over again because someone else broke his record, said radio producer Dale Machado, who first met Dancer at KORL radio station.
Artie James, who used to own K-108 and now lives in Oregon, said Dancer "loved what he did and it showed. He played his game at 100 percent, and listeners loved him. He spoke out on what he thought was right and what he thought was wrong. He was more than a spin doctor. He was a straight shooter."
Judy Dancer said she is trying to get his last wife, Christine Dancer, who has since remarried in Ohio, to send back Tom Dancer's ashes to be buried at Punchbowl (the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific)."Family and friends want a place to bring flowers. People really loved him, and he touched a lot of hearts," she said.
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