R.I.P.: Jack Woods of "Charlie & Harrigan" Fame

Jack Woods, Paul Menard (courtesy Morning Mouth)

“Every day is a gift,” Ron Chapman said Wednesday morning, only an hour after learning that his longtime, long-ago radio partner Jack Woods died in a San Diego hospital at the age of 80 Tuesday night, according to The Dallas Morning News.

For a few years, beginning in 1962, Woods and Chapman were known to Dallas radio audiences as “Charlie & Harrigan,” stars at KLIF 1190 AM when Gordon McLendon’s pop station reigned as Dallas’ most popular. Woods was Charlie Brown; Chapman, Irving Harrigan. They were among the first morning-show hosts to combine comedy and pop music, and “it was an instant success in the ratings,” says the National Radio Hall of Fame entry about Woods, Chapman and Paul Menard, who would eventually replace Chapman in 1965.

Chapman and Woods remained friends all these decades later. They last saw each other just a year ago, over lunch at a Highland Park bistro, not long after Chapman suffered the stroke that left him briefly incapacitated.



According to Steve Eberhart, the one-time KVIL jock turned radio historian, Woods suffered a stroke a few weeks ago, then had “another incident” only last night. Says Chapman, who remained in touch with Woods’ wife Marilyn, by the end he was almost unable to communicate.

In 1966, when Chapman moved other Irving Harrigans replaced him at KLIF. Finally, one stuck: Paul Menard. They left Dallas for Cleveland, broke up for a bit, then reunited in San Diego, where they became beloved fixtures on KFMB and KCBQ. They were inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame only last year.



“I don’t know what to say other than I will love him forever and will miss him equally as long,” Menard wrote on Facebook this morning. “Thank you to everyone who prayed and did what you could for him.”

“Radio was my life for 48 years,” Woods told the San Diego paper in 2014. “Every single day was more fun than the day before. And, I got paid for it.”

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