Episode Three: Meet our new Board Member – Mark Jaynes

 

Transcription:

CFMC Podcast- Episode Three: Meet our new Board Member – Mark Jaynes

Hi, I’m Kim Cole, President of the Community Foundation of Borden County. I’m here today with Mark Janes, who has agreed to join our Board of Directors. So, Mark, welcome. Thank you. I appreciate you being here. Happy to be here. Very, very thrilled that you have agreed to join our Board of Directors. I know that you are a proud Monrovian. And I thought we would start by sharing with our viewers what led you to Monrovia and tell us a little bit about your childhood there. I owe it to my parents and grandparents. We were living on the east side of Indianapolis, and they had both, my grandparents had grown up in a rural area. They lived just outside of Indianapolis during World War II, and then for a while post-World War II before they moved into town.

And they always kind of wanted to get back to a rural setting. And so they moved to a rural setting. And so they looked at a couple of different directions. And lucky for me, they settled on a couple of adjoining 10-acre tracks about three and a half miles south of Monrovia. And my grandparents moved there first in 1968. My grandfather dug the basement out with an old Ford tractor and a scraper blade and used the cement blocks to build the basement, doing that while working at the rail yard in Avon. And then once they moved, he moved into the basement; he built the upper portion of the house. And we would go out there a lot on the weekends. And parents made the decision in late 1969 to sell our house and move out to Monrovia.

And it wasn’t initially a difficult transition because we’d been out there so much and had gotten to know some of the people in the neighborhood and were familiar with their surroundings. But, you know, I started first grade with two weeks left in the year at Hall Elementary. And my parents decided to go ahead and send us at that time, even though we had been passed on to the next grade, my brother and I. And they wanted us to get to know the kids there. And so, a very small rural school after going to an IPS school. And I remember the very first day I was there, they said, let’s go to the library. And we had this massive library in School 81 near Brookside Park on the east side of Indianapolis.

And when I went to the library at Hall, we walked in and there were two rolling carts. With two shelves of books and there must have been maybe 30 books total. I’m like, where are we and what have we done here? But, you know, then once we got to lunch and, in those days, the government wasn’t as heavily involved. And the cooks were all the farmer’s wives in the community and everything. And the food was incredible. And, you know, about the time we got there to Hall, they had started an expansion project. And so, the school got bigger, and more students started coming on board. And it didn’t take me long to realize that we had moved to a pretty special place. I was lucky to have been there for sure.

No doubt about it. Well, tell us then, as you got older in years, how you got connected to your first job in radio. You know, it’s interesting. I was, I think, a fifth-grade student at Hall. And our principal was a retired colonel from the Marine Corps. And was really good at radio. And he was brutally honest with you. And so, he stopped me one day at the end of recess and he said, ‘What do you think you want to do with your life someday?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m going to be a Major League Baseball player.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’ve watched you play softball the last couple of days. You might want to rethink that because you’re not very good.’ He said that, you know, with your obvious love of sports and your inability to keep your yap shut, which is one of his favorite phrases, he said you should seriously think about a career in journalism and broadcasting.

And he said, ‘Let’s go to my office.’ And that was one of the rare times I was in his office for a good reason instead of a bad. And so, I took full advantage of it. I was there probably an hour, hour and a half. And he was telling me about radio and television and, you know, print media. And suggested that, you know, you start writing letters to people in the industry. And I don’t know why, but it stuck with me. It just piqued an interest in me. And so, you know, if we had to write a play for an English class, I tied radio or television industry. I got into it somehow. I moved on to middle school. And in seventh grade, we had to do a science project.

I did mine on weather forecasting and meteorology. And I wrote, ‘You know, the weather men of the day.’ And out of Bob McClain and Bob Gregory and Stan Wood at the time. These are all dated references, folks. I’m sorry, but Stan Wood was the only one that wrote back to me and sent me a cloud chart and all that. So, I can’t explain what necessarily piqued my interest. During that time, I asked my parents for a realistic cassette recorder. You can Google that if you don’t know what a cassette recorder is. And I used to sit down in my parents’ Living room and watch baseball games and football games and basketball games on the television and call them back.

And then I would make up Mach Indy 500s into that cassette recorder and get my friends to play different drivers, many of whom I actually got to interview later on in my career, in my adult life. So, yeah, I mean, it was, it’s been a big part of my life, media, in some way, shape, or form from a very early age. And, you know, as soon as I got the opportunity to get into high school and enroll in journalism class and yearbook, I certainly took full advantage of that. Wow. That is a very long, deep-seated interest. And how fantastic that the principal took an interest to sit down with you and make that. In a roundabout way. So, tell us about, you know, I know that you were with WCBK in your first radio job.

So tell us how you landed there. Well, bear with me here because it’s not a direct route. I was the class clown. You and I have talked long enough now, and you’ve talked to enough people who know me that you’re not shocked by that revelation. And so I was, I was always disruptive for the wrong reasons. And I got to my freshman year, the summer of my freshman year, our basketball coach at the time, Dave Overley, who’s been on the school board in Mooresville for years. Dave was our basketball coach and was my driver’s ed teacher. And we got to know one another pretty well during that summer. And so he asked me if I would get involved in the football program as a manager and then help him in basketball.

I had suffered an injury when I was two and a half, lost a sight in my left eye. So it’s artificial. So, doctors would not, at that time, release me to play football, even though I wanted to. So, he suggested that I get involved in some way, shape, or form and stop getting in trouble and doing the things that I shouldn’t be doing. And for whatever the reason, I agreed with him. And so, he took me in and introduced me to Wayne Staley, who was our football coach at the time. Wayne went on to coach at Terre Haute North and coached Anthony Thompson, who was a Heisman Trophy runner-up. But I walked in and coached Staley. What’d he do? Because he knew right away who I was, had known me well from middle school.

And he said, well, he’s going to be our football manager. And he goes, yeah, I’m not messing with that. And Coach Overley said, well, I’ve talked to him, and he’s trying to turn a corner here. And he said, I think we ought to give him a shot. And so he said, okay, that’s fine. He said, but if he messes up, it’s on you. And so we walked out, and Coach Overley looked at me and said, don’t mess up. And so I stayed with them during the summer. And at that time, you couldn’t do all the things that you do now. It was just mainly weightlifting and running and things of that nature. But I was always there helping them with whatever they needed help with.

I got all the equipment ready and helped them get the season underway. And we had a live-in camp at the time where kids would come, and we would actually stay there and do three-a-days. And the parents would come in and fix meals and those things. And so it got close to camp, and my parents, my parents were going on vacation to Colorado. So I had to call Coach Staley and say, ‘Hey, I just want to let you know, I’m not going to be at camp next week because my parents are going to Colorado Springs, and I have to go on vacation with them, but I’ll see you when I get back.’ And he said, ‘No, don’t, you won’t be able to come back if you go on vacation.’ He said, ‘We’ve got to have the same level of commitment from everybody in our program.’

And he said, ‘That includes coaches and players and managers.’ And he said, ‘I appreciate all you’ve done this summer.’ He said, ‘But I, you know, he said, I understand it’s nothing personal.’ And again, I appreciate your hard work, but he said, ‘I’d like to go on vacation too, but I can’t.’ And I said, well, can I think about it and get back to you? And he said, no, if I see you Monday, I see you. If I don’t, I don’t. And so I thought about it long and hard, and something told me that I needed to stay. And again, with my grandparents right next door, it made that decision a little easier for my parents.

Plus, I think that they were excited about the fact that I wouldn’t be fighting with my sister all the way to Colorado Springs in the back of a car, so they signed off on me staying home pretty quickly. And so I went into camp on Monday, and he turned and looked up at me, and he said, well, I’d have lost that bet. He said, ‘I was convinced you were going.’ He said, ‘But I’m glad you’re here.’ And so school started a few weeks later, and as I said, I was in journalism class. And we were in school about a week and a half, and I got called down to his office. And Coach Daley points to this guy and points to me, and he goes, ‘That’s him.’ And the guy says, ‘Hi, Mark.

I’m Dave Sokol. I’m the sports director at WCBK.’ And he said, ‘We’re looking for somebody to do sports reports for Monrovia football and basketball.’ And he said, ‘We’ll pay you five bucks a game.’ And he explained to me everything that I had to do every Friday night and every Friday and Saturday during basketball. And I did that for three years for them while I was in high school, my sophomore, junior, senior year. And I don’t know that I’m sitting here now if I went on vacation with my parents. And I’m not sure why I made the decision to stay home and why it seemed so important to me, other than you know the fact that somebody was taking an interest in me and giving me an opportunity.

And I felt like that I needed to maybe to take advantage of that. Certainly, a pivotal moment in your life. Yeah, no question. You’ve had several of those. Been a few of those. Yes. And I’m assuming that that also is part of the reason why, if not all of the reason, why you’re back at Monrovia. High school and tell us about what you’re doing there. Yeah, you know, I was a broadcasting full-time for 20 some years. And then, you know, as the landscape of media started to change, you know, I had been with IndyCar from from 96 to 2001. And the Hallman George family owned the station that I worked for in Terre Haute. But they had sold it in late 1999 to Emma’s Communications. And then in 2001, Emma started consolidating things and eliminating positions.

And mine was one that was eliminated. And you know, it was my second stint there. I had been there from, I think, like 86 to 90, and then went back to Martinsville from 90 to 94. And so I had been back there since late 1994. And I never intended to work anywhere else. But, you know, that that changed. And, you know, it was devastating for me. Initially, and it was a blow to the ego or something like that often is, especially when you thought you were set for the rest of your career. And I really didn’t have any idea what direction I was going to go after that and where I was going to end up. But I knew I wanted to do something that would allow me to continue with IndyCar.

And so I happen to run into to Linda Kaiser, who was the high school secretary at Monrovia because I was living in Monrovia at the time. And, you know, her husband was a coach and a mentor of mine. And I had been an office aide for her at Monrovia when I was a student. And she said, Mark, I’m desperate for subs. She said, if you think you want to substitute teach, she said, I could use you every day. And so, I took advantage of that and I subbed up until the time racing season started. And then during the summer, they offered me the opportunity to come work there as an aide to children with special needs. And so, I did that, which they allowed me to travel with IndyCar.

I took the time off. With pay because it was made economic sense to do that for me. And they were, you know, very cooperative in that regard. So I did that for 11 years. And then we had some administrative changes at Monrovia that didn’t align with my philosophies about things. I’ll put it that way. And so a former superintendent or a former superintendent of ours and someone I had known again going back to 1983 at Monrovia High School. When he was a basketball coach, I did the P. A. for him. He was Paul Kaiser. Dr. Paul Kaiser was, who had become the superintendent of Beech Grove High School. And he happened to come to a Monrovia game one afternoon and he goes, ‘How are things going here?’ And I said, ‘Well, they’ve been better.’ And he said, ‘Well, we’ve got a communications program.

And he said, ‘I think you could really help us turn the corner with that.’ He said, ‘They’ve kind of changed the licensing practices and procedures now to were. You can get a workplace specialist license and you can teach high school communications.’ He said, ‘So why don’t you come work for us and we’ll help you do that?’ And so I did. And I was in my fourth year at Beech Grove, fifth year, I believe, at Beech Grove working in their communications department. And I happen to be doing sideline reporting for the IHSAA. And that was in 2015 when when Monrovia made the state finals in football. And Dr. William Roberson, who sadly we lost recently, a longtime educator and administrator in Morgan County, happened to be the acting superintendent at Monroe grade schools at the time.

And he was down there on the sidelines. And so after I’d done an interview with your friend and my boss, Mike Springer, about his dad, Bob, who was a legend. Dr. R said to me, he goes, hey, you think you might want to come home? And I said, well, I’m happy where I’m at, but I said, I’ll listen, of course, if it’s chance to come back there. And I knew what he was doing. He was doing amazing things at Monrovia. And so, you know, we talked after Christmas, and he brought me in seven years ago. And I had one class with 10 kids at a small handheld Sony camera. And now we’re up to a fully functioning studio and six classes and 70 kids.

And we got some pretty good news recently that the kid that was in that very first class, and you’ll forgive me if I get a little emotional. But he, he believed in that program when no one should have. And he helped me build it. And we got word last week that he’s going to go out next week and look for an apartment in Bristol, Connecticut. And he’s going to work for ESPN, which is cool. Yeah, that’s incredible. I can see why you get choked up about that. What a success story. You’re really touching people’s lives. And it sounds like from your journey. All of these pivotal moments are because of connections. Yeah, which is part of the reason why we’re so thrilled to have you join the Community Foundation because we’re all about connections.

Tell us about how you came to be the known as the voice of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The first three guys they asked said, no, I guess I, you know, I had been with the network since 1996. I was working at the station in Terre Haute. The Halmon George family owned it at the time. But my boss, our general manager, was also a director on the fair board. And so, I just, I went into his office one day, and I said, hey, I said, I could take some vacation time. I said, I can, I can work for you at the fair if you need the help. And he goes, Yeah, that’d be great. And so it introduced me to John Royer, who was a longtime affiliate relations manager and a sound engineer for the IMS Radio Network, but also did all the sound at the Indiana State Fair.

Like a lot of people, but for some reason he liked me, and so in 1995 when they announced that the Indy Racing League was going to be formed, they were looking for broadcasters and it just so happened at that time they had some openings with the IMS Radio Network for May, and so John strongly encouraged me to uh to send some stuff off to Bob Jenkins who was the anchor at the time. So uh in those days there was no computers; you had to do everything by mail, so I sent him an air check with some of my work and a resume and a cover letter. And I didn’t hear anything, and they announced

that you know who the broadcast crew was for the first Indy car race in ’96 in Orlando, and I thought well, I gave it a shot, you know, and then Phoenix rolls around and Nothing well in late April of 96, Mike King who had joined in 95 was the sports anchor at WTHI television and we knew each other well and he he saw me at the Terre Haute chamber of commerce dinner and he said I think you’re going to get a phone call and so I did and arranged to to meet with Bob at the speedway and in 1996, I got the phone call that I was invited to join the network as a pit reporter and I started the second weekend of of qualifying for the 500 back when they used to do two weekends.

And so I remember coming home from my first broadcast and my wife asked me how I thought it went and I said I think they were happy, I said but if I never Do it again, I got to do it one more time than a lot of people get to, that want to, and so um, you know. Late March will early March will mark my 30th year with the network, and I tell people I’ve been playing with house money for 29 years. I was a pit reporter from ’96 to ’99 and then was in Turn Three um for uh, for 15 years. And then when Mike King stepped out as the anchor, they brought Paul Page back for two years, and I was disappointed, but I understood that was Paul Page, you know.

I got it! But they told me to be patient, that my turn was coming, and Bob was probably very instrumental in in allowing me to handle that the right way because the same thing. Had happened to Bob years ago when Lou Palmer was named the voice of the 500. Lou was back for two years, and then they realized that Bob was the guy. So, um, you know, when it was announced that Paul after his second year was going to retirement again into retirement again, you know I went in and interviewed, and um, I found out I was still at Beach Grove at the time, and my boss came to a swim meet and told me, um, you know.

By the way, he said, ‘You’re the new voice of the 500, congratulations!’ And I said, ‘I want you to understand,’ I said, ‘You’ve just made somebody’s dream come true and I hope you appreciate the magnitude. Of that, and I went into a gym and I broke down and I thought of I thought of you know my grandparents and my parents and the decisions that they had made, I thought I thought about Nile Denny, I thought about Wayne Staley, I thought about Jim Kaiser and Linda Kaiser, and all of these people that had been so instrumental in in getting me to to that point in my life and uh it was it was pretty cool and I got thrown into the deep end because I was uh I was my first year’s anchor was for the 100th which was a pretty big deal but yeah that’s a really neat story, yeah um yeah it sounds like you’ve just had this onslaught of people that have been there Advancing years, and I can see why it’s hard for you to tell people no when they ask you to do stuff. Yeah, we are beneficiaries of that. I am so grateful that you’re joining us, thanks! Thank you, my pleasure, thank you.