Former longtime WUOM news director and broadcaster Fred Hindley died this week, the station reports. 

Hindley, who started working at the station in 1956, told Michigan Radio’s Charity Nebbe in a 2008 interview that just before graduating from the University of Michigan, he answered an ad in the Michigan Daily for a classical music program announcer.

“I was in the school of music at the time, so I thought, ‘This is fine.’ I’d been listening to WUOM at the time, and it was the only really great classical music program on the air in southeast Michigan.” Of the 40 applicants, two were chosen, and he began work half-time that June for a yearly salary of $3,200.

Hindley worked his way up to news director, holding that post at a time when WUOM played mostly music and hadn’t yet become affiliated with National Public Radio. His colleague Hazen Schumacher, whose “Jazz Revisited” program began in 1967, recalls that “in effect, what news was there was his responsibility. He got some stories from a wire service, but otherwise he had to dig up the news. His most popular thing was, he did a show at noon, an old-fashioned news show, you know. He was one of the last of the avuncular news personalities - he did the news and you trusted him.”

During Hindley’s tenure as news director, the station’s focus shifted to include more University of Michigan lectures - including some that raised controversy, such as when Norman Mailer came to town in the mid-1960s and said all the words one isn’t generally allowed to say on the air. But Hindley and the station decided not to shy away from it. 

The station did get a couple dozen calls, taking each one as an opportunity to explain that they felt they were offering an erudite presentation to an audience erudite enough to appreciate it. “It blew over. We didn’t do it too often, but it was a good beginning… to base the future on because the anti-Vietnam war period was coming along, and people were shouting ‘Hell no, we won’t go,’ and all that sort of stuff. And worse. And we always broadcast that,” Hindley told Nebbe.

Frank Beaver, U-M professor of screen arts and cultures and former chair of the Department of Communications, spent a quarter-century contributing to Hindley’s noon-hour news program. “Fred recorded every one of (the segments) personally, so in a way I was writing them for him. That would have been 352 a year for 25 years. He was always very attuned to what I was writing … very supportive, and a wonderful person to listen to what I had to say. I very much respected Fred’s opinion.

“He certainly had a handle on local news stories, and WUOM, at that point in time, was much more involved as an organ of the university, the community and the greater Ann Arbor area because of people like Fred. … The members and commentators who were on allowed the university to have a much larger voice. And that was before we were involved with NPR, so it was all generated locally: the music, the news, the commentary. Fred was probably the major news figure who worked before the programmers - the news and public information.”

Susan Nisbett, whose freelance career includes work with WUOM, The Ann Arbor News and AnnArbor.com, agrees. “His voice was very distinct, deep - not bass, but very resonant. He was one of the voices on WUOM that the whole community recognized. You didn’t have to hear the name - you’d hear that voice and you’d know who it was. It was that familiar. (And) he just knew a lot about a lot of different things. He put his programs together in a very intelligent way, but also he was always on the lookout for how to connect with the community and to make the station responsive to the community and the arts.”

There will be an open house at Fred Hindley's home from 5-8 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 20; details are available here.

Leah DuMouchel is a freelance writer for AnnArbor.com.