Through the storm: Behind a radioman's silent battle with cancer
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Toolbox
By KEVIN O'CONNOR Staff Writer - Published: June 21, 2009
After his father died from a blood clot at age 59, Vermonter Bill Corbeil helped direct an annual golf tournament for his dad's favorite charity, the cancer-fighting Jimmy Fund.
He didn't foresee how his efforts would hit home.
From 1994 to 2007, the June event raised a total of nearly $170,000. Then last summer, Corbeil received shocking news: Just months away from his 40th birthday, the Brattleboro native learned he had life-threatening lung cancer.
Corbeil already had his hands full as a husband, father of two and new owner of hometown radio station WTSA. But the devoted son who raised money for children at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was about to add a new role: fellow patient.
Some who receive chemotherapy go bald. Corbeil's drugs cut deeper. This past March, the radioman, sporting a full head of hair, whispered to his colleagues that although he wanted to talk, the toxicity of his treatment had ravaged his vocal cords.
The next week, he was in the hospital, hopeful that modern medicine would help him regain his voice and vigor. The next month, he was home, his family at his bedside when he died April 21.
Because Corbeil hadn't publicized his diagnosis, the news stunned his community. But a month earlier, he ushered a reporter into his office, closed the door and, disregarding doctor's orders not to harm his throat, spoke at length on one condition: He didn't want a story written about him. He wanted something else.
Call of the airwaves
Born Jan. 1, 1969, Corbeil fell in love with radio practically the first day that mysterious, magical box told him a snowstorm had canceled school. Interning at WTSA before graduating from Brattleboro Union High in 1987, he broadcast his aspirations on the license plate of his first car: WBIL.
Corbeil enrolled at the University of Vermont in Burlington in hopes of laying the foundation. There he met a fellow student named Kelli Lawrence. A rock fan, Corbeil invited her to a Yes concert in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1991. Five years later, he drove her back to the Olympic village to propose marriage — on the skating rink's big screen.
Corbeil turned everything into a production. Take his big break working the controls of Burlington radio station WIZN's morning show "Corm and the Coach." When hosts Steve Cormier and former UVM basketball coach Tom Brennan tagged him "The Rocker," Corbeil not only joined their on-air conversation but also lived up to his name by snagging a private-party invitation from his favorite band, Van Halen.
Life was good. Then his father died the day before his 60th birthday in 1993.
Brattleboro businessman J. Wayne Corbeil was part salesman, part showman, part civic sparkplug as he headed the town's largest car dealership and seemingly every community board. The local paper printed his obituary on its front page. More than 700 people squeezed into his funeral.
His youngest son, then 24, would return home to help run the family business and the golf tournament his father started, raising as much as $20,000 a year for the Jimmy Fund. But playing the drums on the dealership's jingle, he continued to hear the call of the airwaves.
WTSA, founded as Brattleboro's first radio station in 1950, is best known for its full-time local news reporter — the only such broadcaster south of Montpelier — as well as its fifth-grade weather monitors from the Dummerston School. In 2006, when the station's former owner wanted to sell, Corbeil signed a purchase agreement.
"This has been my dream," he told the local paper. "I can't even put into words what this means to me."
Listeners cheered the prospect of local ownership as well as Corbeil's plan to renovate the town's old Rollerdrome where he once skated into what he promoted as "waterfront studios in Brattleboro's New North End!" But facing speed bumps from financers and the Federal Communications Commission, he spun his wheels for a year and a half before he could finalize the contract.
Corbeil figured the official sale on Dec. 1, 2007, would make news. Instead, he heard static after he had to cut staff in what he called a "difficult business decision." Some listeners wanted to know, with all the promised technology, would live programming switch to prerecorded? Would the music change to Muzak?
"I say it's being ruined," one commented on the Web site ibrattleboro.com. "But hey, don't take my word for it: wait till the radio listener market shares come in next year."
The gathering storm
Corbeil's first order of business: Prove his critics wrong.
After buying WTSA, he opened the new studio, unveiled the station's "We've Got You Covered!" logo (featuring the town's Creamery covered bridge) and reaffirmed its sponsorship of Project Feed the Thousands and Student and Community Person of the Month.
In March 2008, the local Rotary Club invited Corbeil to speak on the "Ups and Downs of Operating A Local Radio Station." Professionally, he was on. But personally, something felt off. He figured it was stress. But last July, doctors diagnosed something else: lung cancer.
It seemed impossible: Although 200,000 Americans face the disease each year, only 2 percent are younger than age 45. Corbeil roiled with shock, anger and sadness. He shared his anguish with the town's Catholic priest, who, in a house call, offered a prayer — and then proceeded to drive over the family mailbox.
As he did with seemingly everyone and everything, Corbeil arranged to fix the priest's car. He then started chemotherapy and stopped smoking, drinking and eating anything that wasn't labeled "organic."
Some in Corbeil's position might quit their jobs. He worked harder.
The second weekend of last December, he sat alone in his station as he faced a two-front storm. Outside, falling snow kept the rest of his staff at home as he gathered weather reports so he could "go live" just before dawn. Inside, his body reeled from treatment few knew he was receiving.
The following Sunday, he was back when another storm kept the host of the popular "Coffee & Jazz" from his 9-to-noon show. This time, Corbeil brought along his aunt and uncle.
Francis "Buddy" and Gail Speno had never sat, let alone spoken, in the studio. But for three wintry hours, the trio played songs by Frank Sinatra and friends, read cancellations and shared memories of the day Buddy, a veteran Democratic volunteer, received a call from President Jimmy Carter.
(March 3, 1980, at 9:27 a.m., White House records confirm.)
In between they aired calls from listeners enchanted by the surprise and spontaneity of it all.
"It was a delightful way to spend a snowy December Sunday morning," read one newspaper letter to the editor last Christmas Eve. "We hope the three of them join together to make it an annual December radio event."
Home and office
Corbeil rang in the new year resolved to beat cancer. But shuttling back and forth to Boston for chemotherapy didn't stop him from redoubling his efforts at the station.
In January, he secured a cell phone for the Brattleboro Union High School band so students could report live as they marched in President Barack Obama's inaugural parade. In February, he signed on to sponsor a community economic forum with Rep. Peter Welch.
The morning of the event, however, Corbeil's body balked. He called the station's longtime news director, Tim Johnson, and promised to listen on the radio.
The already smudged line between home and office started to blur. Call his house and you might hear morning announcer Ian Kelley caring for 9-year-old Connor and 2-year-old Zachary as their father received treatment. Stop by the station on the weekend and you might see Corbeil behind his desk, his oldest boy playing on a nearby drum set.
Corbeil checked into Dana-Farber in March for vocal cord surgery. He hoped to return by Easter to celebrate the season of rebirth. Instead, he learned doctors couldn't do anything more. He came home to his own bed to receive care from his wife, mother, brother, sister and cadre of cousins, then moved to the local hospital two days before he died April 21.
In some ways, the community reacted just like it did for his father — with shock, sadness, a front-page obituary, a funeral overflowing with people. In other ways, his passing was a distinctly Bill Corbeil production.
The morning after, the local paper published a column, "Farewell to a friend," penned by the lead announcer of his cross-town competitor. Two days later, WTSA devoted four hours to an on-air remembrance featuring high school friends recalling their first-car hijinks, Gov. James Douglas praising the station's public service and Red Sox all-star Rico Petrocelli talking about working with Corbeil for the Jimmy Fund.
Kelli Corbeil, a former bank vice president, has taken over her husband's office. She and the WTSA staff received bittersweet applause when the Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce honored the station last month as its Corporate Citizen of the Year.
"He's looking down on us now," she told the crowd through tears. "He's really proud."
Painting the sky
Back in March, Bill Corbeil wheezed with hope and trepidation. Straining to breathe, speak and swallow, he nevertheless told a reporter how doctors kept prescribing chemotherapy — that meant it must be working, right? But he also knew the odds: Only 13.7 percent of men in his position live another five years.
Corbeil said the uncertainty could enrage and terrify him. His smiling eyes filled with tears.
For a moment, he went silent — something a broadcaster's never supposed to do.
Whispering again, he recalled a gaggle of Jimmy Fund poster children in the halls of Dana-Farber. The weakest rode from procedure to procedure in little red wagons. Seeing them, he realized age and accomplishment didn't matter: He and they ultimately were all the same. And if they could forge ahead, he could, too.
Corbeil was comfortable telling his story privately. But publicly? Yes, he wanted to publicize the Jimmy Fund and its continuing need for contributions, yet he worried that revealing his personal situation might jinx his own chances for recovery. Besides, he didn't want to think about death. So, no, he didn't want a story written about him. He wanted something else: To live.
And so he did. Deciding to table press coverage for another day, Corbeil led the reporter on a tour of the station. He pointed to the cutting-edge computers filled with personally selected music, the Rollerdrome mirror ball still on the ceiling, the photos of himself with Van Halen and, closest to his desk, his wife and two sons.
Back in the lobby, Corbeil stopped at two worn wooden chairs. Decades ago, local businesses each contributed one, capped with a donor nameplate, to the Chamber of Commerce. During recent redecorating, the chamber replaced them — but not before Corbeil rescued the ones given by his father's car dealership and WTSA.
Concluding the tour, Corbeil left the best for last: the studio where he broadcast those snowy mornings when no one else could reach the station. Its state-of-the-art control boards are rivaled only by a big picture window that frames the surrounding town and whatever weather is painting the sky.
Corbeil's ragged voice rang with joy. He had everything anyone needed, he said, to "go live" in a storm.
kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com
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