R.I.P.: Jim West, Former WBAL Radio Morning Co-Host

Jim West

Jim West, the WBAL NewsRadio personality who became co-host of the popular morning show “Jones & West,” died Friday of heart failure at Oak Crest retirement community in Parkville. He was 95, according to The Baltimore Sun.

“Jim was the morning sports guy and I was the engineer producer,” said James M. “Jim” Bigwood. “Jim and Bob Jones were naturals on the air, very patient with each other, could ad-lib beautifully and both had a good set of pipes.”

Mark Miller, the station’s former news director who is now a spokesperson for Howard County, enjoyed working with the two men.

“Jones and West were just two guys who loved their jobs and never got mad at each other,” Mr. Miller said.

James Griffith Wetzel, whose professional name was Jim West, was the son of Donald L. Wetzel, a Pennsylvania Power & Light accountant, and Gladys G. Wetzel, an educator and homemaker. Mr. West was born in Pittsburgh and moved to Hamilton in 1938.

He attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, and dropped out his senior year during World War II, and enlisted in the Army. He was stationed in Tokyo at the Imperial Palace as one of Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s guards.

After being discharged, he graduated from Poly and attended what is now Towson University.

His education was once again interrupted when he was recalled to active duty in 1950 during the Korean War and sent to Korea to entertain troops in a show called “Operation Kapers.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Towson and graduating from the National Academy of Broadcasting in Washington in the early 1950s, West began his career at WBAL-TV as a singer in 1952 on “The Brent Gunts Show.”

From 1956 to 1961, he was a disc jockey on WBAL NewsRadio. Always interested in sports, Mr. West in 1961 was named news and sports director at WITH-AM-Radio. He also covered box lacrosse and high school football for WJZ-TV. In 1971, West left Baltimore and headed for Chicago, where he worked for WGN-TV doing play-by-play for the Cubs and the Blackhawks hockey team. He returned to Baltimore in 1979 as morning sports director and news anchor for WBAL NewsRadio.