His voice brought Joseph Fennessey to Hampshire County, and what he thought would be a brief stay turned into a career in radio broadcasting and civic leadership that spanned four decades.
Fennessey was among the first employees of Northampton radio station WHMP when it went on the air in December 1950 at 1400 AM. As the early morning disc jockey, he hosted a program called “Dawn Patrol.” Fennessey became program director and then sports director, vice president and general manager before he retired in 1988.
Fennessey died Feb. 11 at age 93 in Port Charlotte, Florida., near his longtime winter home in Nokomis. His funeral was held Monday at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Annunciation Parish in Florence.
A passion for sports led Fennessey to begin broadcasting high school games in September 1952, mostly football and basketball. His voice was familiar to many listeners as he described some of the area’s top athletes in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Fennessey broadcast from the old Boston Garden when Bob “Jingles” Kovalski’s Smith Academy basketball teams played in the New England Tournament in 1960 and 1961.
The last high school game Fennessey broadcast was in March 1978, when the Hampshire Regional girls basketball team, led by Naomi Graves, won its fourth consecutive state championship.
Fennessey also had a wide following as the voice of the University of Massachusetts basketball team. Among his favorite memories was the 1970-71 season when Julius Erving, who went on to become an NBA star, led UMass to the National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
“Joe was a Northampton institution. His great radio voice was a familiar memory to all of us growing up in Hamp,” says longtime friend William O’Riordan of Goshen, where Fennessey spent summers at his cottage near Hammond Pond.
But Fennessey’s legacy reaches far beyond his broadcasting and management of the radio station. His civic involvement led him to leadership positions for the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce, Northampton Community Chest (now United Way of Hampshire County), American Cancer Society, Northampton Industrial Development Finance Agency, the development council for Cooley Dickinson Hospital, and Riverside Industries.
His volunteerism was recognized when the Chamber of Commerce named Fennessey its outstanding citizen in 1971. In 1979, he earned the United Way’s Norman H. Drouin Award for exemplary work as a volunteer.
“We called him Mr. Northampton or Joe Civic because that was the type of person he was,” says his stepdaughter Carol Conz of Williamsburg, adding that Fennessey may have taken the most pride in being named “King Winter” for the 1988 Northampton Winter Festival.
Though a leader in the community, Fennessey did not like to call attention to himself. “If I do something and know I have done a good job, I get inward satisfaction and that’s the only reward I need,” he once said.
A native of Orange, New Jersey, Fennessey came to Northampton after serving in the U.S. Army as a communications specialist during World War II when he lost a leg to shrapnel in Europe, and then majoring in radio in New York University.
Reflecting in 1985 on his career, Fennessey said he originally intended his job at WHMP to be a stepping-stone on his way to “bigger and better things.” But Northampton became more appealing the longer he stayed. “When you come from outside an area, you come in and you notice the good things that other people take for granted.”
Years later, Fennessey is remembered as one of those gems for being a role model as a manager at WHMP, where he mentored many younger broadcasters, and as a selfless civic leader.