“In this business, turnover is a way of life. There are a lot of radio nomads, but that kind of life isn’t for me” — George Graham, in 2022 article marking his 50th anniversary as a WVIA-FM employee.

Graham announced his retirement this week, and we cannot adequately measure the hole this leaves in the region’s music scene. It may have been inevitable, but it cannot go unmarked.

At its simplest, Graham became exactly what he never wanted to be: An icon. And he did it precisely because he eschewed any praise. For more than half a century, he exemplified a fundamental rule: It’s about the music, not the person who presents it.

He not only held the title of WVIA-FM’s first employee, he was a founder, using a degree in engineering to wire the station for analog in the beginning and supervis

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