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Don Kimberlin

Don’s background encompasses some thirty years of management and project control for telecommunications systems that involves virtually every form of electronic information movement. His experience includes work in seventy countries on five continents for such firms like AT&T (both domestic and international), ITT World Communications, Western Union International (now MCI International) and numerous other leading edge developers of communications systems and equipment.

But there was an earlier career – one that started in the mid 50’s when he was still in high school and hanging around St. Pete’s WTSP. After awhile, he was put to work on re-created baseball game broadcasts, playing crowd noise effects and inserting commercial breaks from acetate discs. In 1954, chief engineer Bill Mangold encouraged him to go for his First Phone license and gave him his first engineering job. In 1958 he switched to WILZ, then WDAE, WTUN (transmitter duty), and WLCY before becoming chief engineer for WWIL AM/FM in Ft. Lauderdale in 1962. After a stint there with WFTL AM/FM, he signed on with AT&T and, for a few years, worked part-time with Miami’s WIOD – his last radio job. In 1968, a second career opened up when he moved to New York and accepted a job with ITT.

Don is a graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, and has spent considerable time with publishers and educators in the articulation of Telecommunications Management and the Management of Change. His extensive list of technical credentials includes a NARTE Class I Engineering Certification with Master Endorsements for both radiating and non-radiating telecommunications technologies, a Disaster Recovery Certification from the Disaster Recovery Institute, and a number of export marketing and technology transfer awards from the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

He has spoken to audiences from Argentina to Zambia, and has been a regularly invited speaker on behalf of the U.S. Department of Commerce. In the course of this work, he has been an accredited representative of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Geneva, and was directly involved in setting a number of telecommunications standards found in everyday use worldwide.

Today (2009), Don is semi-retired. However, since the sum of his former employments has left him with a regard for the history of telecommunications in general (with a bias toward radio), he writes articles from time to time for various publications, most of which are an attempt to rectify public misconceptions.

Station History