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| Michael Kunkle (aka Marshall Adams) |
Michael Paul Kunkle, of Irwin, Pennsylvania—known professionally as Marshall Adams—died unexpectedly Monday at the age of 51.
At just 14, while still a student at Penn-Trafford High School, he launched the Harrison City Post, a scrappy community newspaper he printed on a mimeograph machine in his parents’ basement. Around the same time, he began contributing part-time to the Penn-Franklin News, the weekly paper he later called “the heartbeat of Westmoreland County.”
That early hustle set the tone for a career built on relentless curiosity and an ear for the story behind the headline.
He cut his teeth in radio, bouncing across call letters like a signal skipping towers: stints at small-town stations, including WKSB, WRAK Williamsport, PA gave way to bigger markets, each gig sharpening his voice and timing.
He wore his proudest achievements like merit badges—an anchor chair at WBT in Charlotte, news editor at KTRH in Houston, and, the pinnacle, program director at KDKA in Pittsburgh, the station he’d fallen asleep to as a boy dreaming of the big time.
In 2012 he planted a flag in Atlanta, converting WYAY into the city’s first all-news FM station—a gamble that paid off in ratings and respect.
Never one to rest, he soon founded Marshall Adams Media, a boutique production house where he crafted award-winning audio for the Fisher House Foundation, giving voice to the families of wounded warriors.