WYSO Recently
It may seem unwise to jump into things with both feet first, to cross the street without looking in either direction, but when Witt alum Luke Dennis '00 decides to do something, he appears to be a force of undeterred passion and focus.
Dennis, the general manager for WYSO Public Radio, has been helping coordinate the physical station’s move from the Antioch University campus to the historic Union Schoolhouse on Dayton Street. The hope is to complete the transition by February, in time for a public opening celebration around Valentine's Day.
In addition to uprooting, the National Public Radio (NPR) affiliated station is having to manage a financial shortage in federal funding. This cut came from President Donald Trump when he signed a bill last summer that cancelled more than $1.1 billion, previously allocated between NPR and Public Broadcasting Station (PBS).
To make up for the $300,000 cut to their funding, WYSO has set "aggressive, increased goals for every revenue area" according to Dennis. However, he went on to say that the station has met and exceeded each goal as of the completion of the first quarter of their fiscal year. "The local community is really stepping up."
Dennis describes his role right now as "managing during wartime." He is trying to model "confidence and clarity of vision amid uncertainty."
About Luke Dennis
Last Spring, Dennis reflected on the circuitous path that took him from Wittenberg to the radio station in Yellow Springs.
Those who know Dennis might say he has always had a “cross that bridge when I get to it” mentality. At the age of 18, he was accepted to Kenyon College, a prestigious institution with a small acceptance rate; he turned the college down at the last minute because he thought that the financial aid package offered to him wasn’t enough. With no back up plan and less than a month until fall semester, he was enrolled at Wittenberg University eight days after visiting the campus for the first time.
In 2000, Dennis graduated with a double major in Theatre and Music. That same year, he and Sally Oldham, whom he would soon marry, moved from Ohio to Boston so Dennis could pursue a graduate degree at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
While reflecting on his decision to go to grad school, Dennis admitted, “I really wish I had waited a year or two,” but between the three jobs he worked, he “wasn’t putting a lot of focus on [his] studies.” After three years, it came time to begin writing his dissertation. “I just couldn’t picture myself doing it.”
So he dropped out.
Dennis and his family moved back to Ohio, which gave Dennis the opportunity to take a class called “Community Voices” with Neenah Ellis. Ellis, then the general manager of the station, took note of Dennis’s talents. “I knew he would fit in and I knew he understood the importance of a public radio station in the community,” she said. However, there were no openings at the time and Dennis was offered the job as the curator for the Harvard library, where he had previously worked in Boston.
A year later, after the short-lived return to Boston, Dennis and his family returned to Ohio for good. Amidst the stress posed by a quick move and job pivot, Dennis reached back out to Ellis, and was hired on as WYSO’s first ever Development Director.
“We saw results very quickly, and by results, I mean increased revenue, membership, and engagement with people; just an all around kind of enhanced outward focus,” remarked Ellis. “Luke immersed himself in organizations and reached out to individuals so he could learn our best practices.”
When Dennis was hired in 2012, WYSO was moving into its current building the same week that Dennis had joined. Juliet Fromholt, a full-time WYSO employee since 2009, remarked, “It was a really interesting time here at the station and we were a lot smaller back then.” By the time Dennis started at WYSO, there were 11 or 12 people working on staff, she said. The small staff led to Fromholt and Dennis teaming up to handle marketing and events.
In 2016, the two theatre-kids-at-heart launched a Spring fundraiser that ran for three years at the Dayton Memorial Hall called “WYSO Serious?” It was a live variety show dreamed up by Dennis that involved skits, music, and guest artists such as the local drag troupe “The Rubi Girls.”
“It gave us a chance to just be silly, you know?’’ recalled Fromholt. “Working in a news organization, so much of our work is very serious and can be very heavy, and it’s fun not to take yourself too seriously.”
Debbie Henderson, the person in charge of Wittenberg University’s costume shop when Dennis attended, had called on Dennis for a lighthearted fundraiser a year prior. When the Yellow Springs Art Council was putting on a fashion show using the craziest costumes from the Wittenberg theater, Henderson asked Dennis to once again don his “giant flouncy gold and white satin outfit” and “long blonde wig” from his time playing Moliere.
“He was just up for the whole thing and had a great time,” Henderson said. “Everybody loved it.”
However, not every fundraiser was a whimsical performance.
After seven years of financial struggles and a thinly stretched staff, WYSO was finally given the opportunity to buy their license from Antioch, the university that owned it, in 2019. Ellis told Dennis, “This is our lucky day.”
Raising the money to buy the license would be herculean, but thanks to Dennis’s persistence in establishing connections with committed donors, the staffers had a plan.
Dennis and Ellis taped papers to the wall that outlined how much money they needed to raise, 20 donors they thought would contribute, how much each person could offer, and how they would go about asking. “Our audacious plan was to do it fast, faster than anybody believed possible,” Ellis said.
Instead of hosting events or broadcasting their mission on air, they met one-on-one with these donors. “[Dennis] knew all of them. He’d been to lunch with all of them. He knew their parents, he knew their dogs, he knew their kids,” said Ellis. Within five months, each of the 20 donors had said yes to donating and they had raised $3.5 million.
“That was all because Luke had done the groundwork,” Ellis said. “He knows how to move towards a goal he cares about, and luckily for me and for our community, WYSO became one of his passions.”
Dennis’s passions stretch beyond his career. According to his wife, Sally Dennis, his hobbies include pickleball, meditation, and playing in a band once a week with his friends.
Their band, once referred to as “Lord Kimbo,” and now without a name, was created from a few chance encounters over ten years ago. Dennis explained, “We play every week, faithfully, and if we miss a week, everybody feels kind of down like ‘I missed you guys.’”
Sally Dennis best summarizes Dennis’s passionate, seemingly spur-of-the-moment decisions like this: “Luke is one of those people who just has an idea and then just follows through on it and does it.”
Dennis, amid the changes underway at WYSO, makes a point to reaffirm his confidence in the station. "WYSO is unafraid, even though we're seeing brazen acts of censorship and major challenges to the freedom of the press. We will continue to insist on the reality of the world through good journalism."
