Kanawha Valley radio personality Albert "Big Al" Sahley once told an interviewer he was aware as a teenager that entertaining was his calling, but he had no idea at the time that his pursuit of that calling would result in a career in broadcasting.
The Charleston native and 43-year veteran of the Kanawha Valley's radio scene, who died Saturday at age 80, stumbled into his career by accident. After attending West Virginia University and Morris Harvey College (now the University of Charleston) and failing to find a desirable career path to follow, Sahley found himself working at his father's Spring Hill grill when an ad salesman for an area radio station stopped in. On impulse, Sahley asked the salesman if he could arrange an interview for an announcer's position, since "I sound a lot better than that guy I'm listening to now," he said in a 1999 "Innerview" with the Gazette's Sandy Wells.
Sahley got the interview, but the station manager didn't give him the job. However, a DJ who reviewed the interview tape liked what he heard, and when he transferred to another station, suggested that its manager give Sahley a call. Soon, he began working an eight-hour Sunday shift at WTIP for $1 an hour.
From that first radio job in 1956, Sahley parlayed his humor, impressionist skills, and willingness to take on new challenges to build a career that included work as a disc jockey, talk show host, play-by-play sports announcer and emcee, followed by briefer careers in municipal politics and real estate development.
While most of Sahley's radio career took place in the Kanawha Valley, mainly at stations WKLC and WCHS, he hosted a morning show for a Miami, Florida, station in the early 1960s that lasted until the station's format changed from Top-40 to Big Band, and management replaced all on-air personalities. Sahley's morning show was given to Larry King, the future host of "Larry King Live" on CNN.
Sahley returned to Charleston, hosted "Charleston at Night" on WCHS, and branched into television, first as Bozo the Clown at WCHS-TV, and later as Fat Drac, the vampire-costumed host of "Friday Night Dead," a weekly horror movie program on WVAH-TV and a play on NBC's then-new "Saturday Night Live."
In the early 1990s, Charleston Mayor Mike Roark appointed Sahley to serve as the city's parking director, and in 1996, he was asked by the Kanawha County Republican organization to run against Democrat Phyllis Gatson, who was unopposed, for the county assessor's post. He lost that race, left the field of radio, and turned his attention to developing real estate in the Teays Valley area with his brother.
In 2006, Sahley was in the first group of inductees to be honored in the West Virginia Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
"He was a great guy and a real character and definitely the star of the station," said Charlie Cooper, who worked with Sahley for many years at WKAZ.
"He was a dream to write character voices for," said Cooper's wife, P.K. Khoury, who also worked with Sahley at WKAZ. "He could do anything - Austrian psychiatrist, the Mad Hatter, and of course his signature voices: Fat Albert and a drag queen who wore pink peau de soie pumps. He was one of the only announcers at that time who commanded a separate talent fee for his voices to be used on a client's spots. No fee, no Al Sahley."
Khoury, who like Sahley is a Lebanese-American, said the announcer put his fluent Arabic language skills to use when appropriate. Since WKAZ was located atop the former Heart O Town Hotel, Sahley was known to spend his breaks "relaxing in the hotel lobby's big, comfortable chairs," Khoury said. On one such occasion, Sahley overheard a group of Middle Easterners gathered at the front desk, where they were expressing their displeasure "with everything about their visit - the rooms, the food and the service," she said. "Sahley listened for a while and then as he strolled past them on his way toward the restaurant, he casually told them, in Arabic, that they should be ashamed of themselves for saying such unpleasant things and making life difficult for the good people of his home town. He relished the shocked looks on their faces, and not one of the visitors contradicted his rebuke."
Khoury, then single and a Washington, D.C., transplant in a new town, said Sahley made an effort to make her feel at home. "Albert included me in his Lebanese family holidays. I ate Christmas dinner with him and his brothers and sister more than once," she said.
She described her former colleague as "quick-witted, full of mischief and a true radio talent. Al Sahley was not always easy to work with, but working with him was like working with no other jock I've ever known. ...He was larger than life, in person and on the air."