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SAUK RAPIDS, Minn. (AP) — Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner are sitting on the mixing board right next to Herb Hoppe, smiling at him from the case of an eight-track tape released in the early 1970s.
Autographed photos of Hoppe's WVAL-AM classic country music favorites line the north wall of the time-machine studio, which is dotted with artifacts weathered by a half-century of radio history, the St. Cloud Times (http://on.sctimes.com/2bzHj3Q ) reported.
A lot of things are like that at Tri-County Broadcasting's quirky Sauk Rapids home — vintage, old-school, one of a kind.
Just like the owner.
"This is what country music built," suggested Hoppe, 82, glancing around the studio in a home-made company that will celebrate its 53rd anniversary on Aug. 3.
But really, Hoppe built it — literally from the ground up and often with his bare hands, whether those hands were assembling the headquarters for a five-station business, selling advertising or climbing a 300-foot radio tower to change a light bulb.
"It's Herb's tenacity — his willingness to go through a brick wall and keep on moving," said Al Neff, program director at WXYG "The Goat" and a Tri-County employee dating back to 1992. "You talk about that Greatest Generation mentality? That's Herb's whole approach to life."
"There's not a lot of family radio stations left that I can think of," added Gary Hoppe, Tri-County's operations manager and one of the seven kids Herb and Val Hoppe sent to college with the hard-earned proceeds from their radio stations.
"He's kinda fiercely independent."
Kinda?
Hoppe never took a vacation in those 53 years while building his business from scratch. He was there seven days a week, sometimes 15 hours a day, and refused repeated purchase offers from competing chains.
He's still working at 82, even while battling cancer and the effects of chemotherapy.
"The last time I went to the cancer doctor, he said, 'God, you look good,' " Hoppe said with a laugh. "I said, 'I probably will, too, until I die.'"
In the meantime, Hoppe plans to continue the strategy that made him a self-taught success, no matter what he was doing.
"If he's upright, he's at the station every single day, and that includes Sunday," Neff said. "Unbelievable dedication."
"It was a hard row to hoe," Hoppe said, "but you'd better keep hoeing."
Hoppe learned to hoe on the New Munich farm where he was born in 1934. He also was a self-taught pitcher who threw seven no-hitters in amateur baseball, including two in a row.
"He was kind of a jack of all trades," Gary Hoppe said of his father, who met future wife Val (they were married in 1957) at an amateur baseball game. "That's kinda the way they were on the farm, too."
Hoppe subsequently became a self-taught TV repairman. He was already a father of four when in 1962 he decided to try something new.
"I didn't know anything about radio other than (how) to turn it on," he said.
It took a year of wrangling with the FCC before his broadcast license was finally granted. WVAL (named for Hoppe's wife) and its all-country format finally went on the air Aug. 3, 1963, broadcasting from a home built on the edge of a swamp.
"We picked this land out. Got a hell of a buy on it," said Hoppe, who did some of the construction work on "The Red House" himself. "Nineteen acres for $5,000 wasn't bad."
Instead of a commercial building, Hoppe erected an actual house, just in case.
"If the building didn't go as a radio station, it would go as a house," Gary Hoppe said. "That was the fallback in those days."
Val Hoppe, pregnant with the couple's fifth child when WVAL went on the air, was also a night-shift nurse at the St. Cloud VA Hospital. She worked there for 55 years.
Val and Herb had seven kids in an eight-year span, although it's hard to imagine when they found the time.
"Neighbors," Hoppe said with a grin. "I was afraid to ask 'What's new?' when I got home."
That wasn't often. Hoppe worked constantly, doing anything needed.
"It's just a superhuman American effort, and all based upon the premise that you earn the money before you spend it, you fix it yourself if you possibly can, and you build relationships with people," Neff said.
"I didn't mind working 12, 15 hours a day," said Hoppe, who rarely went on the air but did just about everything else — maintenance, construction, sales, whatever. "When things got a little tough, for a while I was about the only salesman out there."
That's how the legend began. Stories abound:
— WVAL's original 300-foot signal tower (it's now the 400-foot tower for WHMH-FM) sits on the edge of the swamp behind the station. The 260-watt light bulbs on top need replacing periodically, and there wasn't money in the budget to hire a tower-climber.
Up went Herb. Repeatedly.
"The guy's fearless when it comes to heights," Gary Hoppe said.
"He wasn't going to pay someone top dollar when he could do it himself," Neff said.
— There's a lot of current running through the small building beneath the cluster of Tri-County's AM towers, and it's awfully easy to get a major electrical shock.
Herb has. Several times.
"One day we took steel against steel, and — bam, it hit me," Hoppe said. "They told me I shouldn't have done it because of my pacemaker, but it didn't miss a beat."
— During WVAL's first decade, Hoppe brought in country stars for local concerts. Parton and Wagoner were at Sauk Rapids High School for a show in the mid-1960s.
"Herb liked Dolly a lot," Neff said.
Hoppe and Parton's tour manager had a dispute over payment, and Dolly was called in to moderate. She sided with Herb — and that wasn't even the best part.
"Dolly settled it," Hoppe said. "Next thing I knew, I was in the most beautiful position: Dolly gave me a big kiss."
Even Val approved. "She said, 'Hey, you deserve that,' " said Hoppe, still grinning at the memory.
Remote broadcasts became a staple for WVAL and Hoppe, who would load equipment and truck it out to broadcast on location from area businesses.
"That's where I really made it," Hoppe said. "One year, we went out 52 weekends, (including) Christmas and Easter. It worked out real good."
The five-tower cluster that carries the signal of Hoppe's four AM stations is just as unique. They're bound together underground by 55 miles of copper wire, creating a mega-antenna that can be directionally manipulated. It's the only one in the world like it.
WHMH-FM was launched in 1975 with an easy listening format, then transformed into "Rockin' 101" in 1983 when Gary Hoppe (then 22) and his friends got hold of it.
"It was about a half-dozen of us," said Gary Hoppe, who loaded his rock 'n' roll record collection and those of his friends into the system and made a radio station out of it. "Rockin' 101 was very eclectic."
That became the flagship station at Tri-County in 1983 as WVAL went on a 16-year hiatus.
WBHR-AM launched in 1983, went through several format changes and finally settled on all sports.
WVAL returned in 1999 as a classic country station. WMIN-AM and its adult standards format launched in 2005, and WXYG and its album rock format began in 2011.
"I listened to 'em all, just to see if what was on was supposed to be on," said Hoppe, who still prefers classic country.
He worked through all the changes. Until he couldn't.
Hoppe, who had rheumatic fever as a child and has suffered from lifelong heart issues, collapsed at the station about four years ago. A subsequent blood test revealed another challenge.
"It's not leukemia, but it's a form of blood cancer," Gary Hoppe said. "It just sits there and smolders. It never goes away, but they just keep attacking it (with chemotherapy)."
"The last four years," Herb Hoppe said, "I was fighting cancer and everything else."
Hoppe's son Kurt is a spinal cord specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. He was prominently involved in Herb's treatment, which included 20 rounds of chemotherapy and severe side-effects.
"Herb probably would not be alive if not for his son's expertise," Neff said.
"He went through the wringer on this stuff," Gary Hoppe said. "For a while there, he was diagnosed as a (quadriplegic), because he couldn't walk or anything.
"The prognosis is he might not live another four years."
About six months ago, the decision was made to halt chemotherapy. And Hoppe rebounded.
"I still like to get out there (to the station) at 5 o'clock in the morning," he said. "But now my wife is sick, too, so I've gotta take it easy with her.
"It's work that keeps you going."
Work has always been what keeps Hoppe going.
"His rule is 'outlast the bastards,' " said Gary Hoppe, who worked at a radio job in Los Angeles for six years before returning to the "family farm" in 1994 to become Tri-County's operations manager. "That's been his mantra."
Another part of that philosophy is to keep Tri-County in the family, even during an age when most radio stations have been absorbed by large chains.
"Most of the time, with chains, I didn't like the tactics they used," Herb Hoppe said. "I want this to stay in the family. I hope that (Gary) puts in another 40, 50 years."
That's a tough act to follow, and part of the Hoppe legacy.
"I think he wants to be known as one of those guys who has done some pretty innovative stuff," Gary Hoppe said.
"Sometimes it's luck," said Hoppe, who prides himself on the relationships he's built over those 53 years. "If you don't have respect for people, they won't have respect for you."
He's also the guy who got the kiss from Dolly. Herb Hoppe is pretty proud of that, too.
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Information from: St. Cloud Times, http://www.sctimes.com
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