R.I.P.: Sonny Fox, Longtime Miami Morning Personality

Sonny Fox (Miami Herald photo)

Former Miami morning radio host Sonny Fox has died.

He was 73, according to The Miami Herald.

“Sonny in the Morning” was familiar to thousands of radio listeners since the 1970s who heard it on the former rock station WSHE 103.5 FM, contemporary pop WHYI Y-100.7 FM, oldies format Majic 102.7 FM and WKIS KISS Country 99.9 FM.

Fox came to prominence at a time when radio DJs became household names through the force of their personalities. Their personas, piped into our cars, homes and office transistors in the 1960s and 1970s, and later 1980s boom boxes and Sony FM Walkmans, became as familiar as the sound of Mom and Dad calling in from the other room to announce dinner’s on the table.

People like popular South Florida DJs such as Rick Shaw. “Crazy” Cramer Haas. Bill Tanner. Don “Cox on the Radio” Cox. Jo “The Rock and Roll Madame” Maeder. 97 GTR’s Patty Murray. These, among others, were Fox’s peers.

“Today I lost my husband and best friend. Sonny,” Janet Stronger Speziale Fox posted Friday evening. She, too, worked alongside Fox, most recently for SiriusXM Satellite Radio, and on terrestrial radio, too.

Fox was a stickler for preparation. He spent hours at his home pulling topics from the internet for his morning shows. He maintained a topic file. And he tapped his listeners for content. He had DJing down to a science.

Fox, with his shaggy hair and beard looked the quintessential rock jock, as if he stepped off the “FM” film set, a movie set at a fictional album-oriented rock station in 1978. This was about the time he was on South Florida radio making personal appearances and gaining fans.

Fox was “one of my earliest influences when I used to listen to Y-100 and then WSHE. A radio superstar,” said former WSHE rock jock Glenn Richards, who is now operations manager at WUFT Media in Gainesville.