S-C Radio: R.I.P. Upstate Radio Personality Bill Drake

Bill Drake

For the past 38 years, William Bennett “Bill” Drake was the voice of Spartanburg.

Drake died Friday from cancer. He was 73, according to
goupstate.com.

Drake knew his life's goal was to be on the radio.  His first broadcast was on Sunday, Sept. 20, 1959. It was at a small commercial station two miles outside Ripon, WI . He walked the two miles from school to work through cow pastures.

After graduating in 1963, Drake worked for a station in Green Bay, Wis., but moved in 1966 as an announcer for WEMP, which was a major-market station at the time.

Drake had been in Milwaukee for six years and was a union steward at WEMP when he was fired in a wage dispute. With three children, all of preschool age, and a wife, he could not afford to be idle. He immediately placed ads in trade magazines and began searching for work.

The family moved to South Carolina in April, 1972, when Drake received a job offer to host an afternoon show on WIS Radio in Columbia. It wasn't long before he was doing a weekly show live from a Columbia shopping mall and hosting a live sports talk show.

The Drakes moved to Spartanburg in May 1976, after Charles Sanders, then-executive vice president of Spartan Radiocasting Co. WSPA Radio offered Drake the morning show, a slot he had missed in Columbia.

As the morning man at WSPA-AM, Drake would sign on the air at 5:30 a.m. on weekdays for his show, “Awake with Drake.” At 10 a.m., he would leave work and devoted the rest of his day to talking to people.

Read More Now