Chicago Radio: WXRT's Terri Hemmert Plans To Cutback

Terri Hemmert (photo by: Mark Rafferty)

Chicago radio legend Terri Hemmert will be scaling back her time at WXRT 93.1 FM in the coming weeks.

“After 45 years at WXRT, I’m going to figure out how to turn the record over and see what plays on the other side,” Hemmert said in an email to colleagues published by Chicago media watcher Robert Feder.

"Doesn’t seem that long ago I was a 15-year-old kid in Piqua, Ohio trying to figure out how I could get to be a Disc Jockey and meet the Beatles.  The impossible dream for a girl in the 1960’s.  But I’ve met two out of four Beatles, a gazillion Beatles fans, and I am a D.J.  I am what I play. 

After 45 years at WXRT, I’m going to figure out how to turn the record over and see what plays on the other side.  In a few weeks, I will move from being on air 5 days a week year round to a schedule with much more flexibility while still remaining part of the station and work I love so much.  My doctor will be thrilled I’ll be getting 8 hours of sleep a night.  After all these years. 

I will continue to be part of the fabric of XRT.  I will continue hosting Breakfast with The Beatles because that teenager still lives inside me. I will continue coming into the radio station at least a couple of days a week to use the XRT Public Affairs Department that I started 45 years ago with a pair of scissors, a typewriter and reels of audio tape, to find ways to share information with our audience and inform them how to make living in Chicago better by being aware of free events and volunteer opportunities.  

I will continue to be the one that gives voice to people who are making it possible for kids to get music education, and hear from people that live in Englewood, and high school students whose lives were saved by being in the poetry club.  I will also fill in for my fellow DJ's when they get that much needed vacation, and I will thoroughly enjoy immersing myself in the amazing XRT library, and re-connecting with the most loyal audience imaginable. 

Those weeks I’ll be here five days in a row.  How can you miss me when I won’t go away?  Best of all, I will actually have time to have lunch with you.  I’ll put a sign-up sheet in the D.J. lounge. 

I will continue to be proud of being part of the XRT family.  And the past few years the family has extended to every station in this group.  Let’s do lunch, and please find me to see what socks I’m wearing.  They don’t matter if no one sees them. 

I love music.  I love radio.  I love our listeners.  And I love my radio family.  Some things change, but that never will.  

Terri

Hemmert — who hosts WXRT’s mid-day show as well as “Breakfast with The Beatles” on Saturday mornings — has taught college courses for more than 30 years on top of her four-plus decades at the radio station.

Speaking with the Sun-Times last year, Hemmert — who was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2010 — addressed the idea of retirement, saying:

“Why walk away as long as they want me here? I’m happy here. I have a million things to do that are still compelling to me, still fun. I still get to do something for someone, and if you’re not doing something for other people, you’re not living right. This gives me a lot of opportunities to do that. Teaching.”