San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
RADIO MAN RETIRES AFTER YEARS AS VOICE FOR OTHERS
William ‘Tayari’ Howard an on-air and real-life champion for underserved San Diego communities
Longtime radio personality William “Tayari” Howard walks into a bedroom in his Lemon Grove apartment to gingerly grab a 65-year-old audio tape.
He holds it carefully in his hands, before meticulously placing it back into a flimsy manila envelope.
It’s one of the most precious things he owns, he said.
“It’s the only thing I have left of my mother.”
The voice captured on it belongs to disc jockey Dorothy Howard, who became known as “Louisville Lou.” She was a pioneer in Black radio in Louisville, Ky., the first among three generations in the family to make a career in radio.
She had big plans for her career at a time when radio was dominated by men. But she died of cancer at the age of 25, when Howard was small, he said.
Now Howard, who is 70, has decided to retire after his own 50-year career in radio. And with extra time on his hands and several binders full of stories, newspaper clippings and photos of his mother, Howard said he hopes to write about his family’s accomplishments.
“My daughters never met my parents, and all they have are photographs and stories,” Howard said recently. “What I can do that goes beyond (that) is write a book.”
Tayari Howard is known to many in San
“He is an impact player in the biggest game of all, the game of life, especially when it comes to serving kids and families from San Diego’s most critical communities.”
Michael Brunker • longtime friend and vice president for mission advancement for the YMCA of San Diego
Diego not only for his love of playing smooth jazz over the airwaves but also for his contributions to San Diego’s nonprofit organizations and the city’s underserved communities.
His home office is filled with the trappings of a long professional and civic career.
There are dozens of awards, framed platinum and gold records and two presidential awards given to him by President Barack Obama. There also are countless news articles about community events Howard spearheaded in southeastern San Diego.
“There’s always people in need,” Howard said about his philanthropy. “There’s always somebody in a worse situation than you are. This pandemic is evidence of it.”
Howard was born in 1950 in Louisville. His mother met William John L. Howard at a radio station where they both worked.
Dorothy worked in radio for several years and in 1953 toured with famed jazz orchestra leader and composer Duke Ellington as a drummer in his band.
Howard’s father worked as a program director, a rare position for a Black man at the time, at the radio station WLOU in Louisville.
Howard lost both parents to cancer at a young age, but he has fond memories of times he spent with them inside the studio.
Those f lashbacks pushed him into broadcasting, where he felt most connected to his parents, he said.
“One of the things I truly miss is not having my mother and father alive today,” Howard said.
He moved in with family in East St. Louis, Ill., and at age 18 joined the Coast Guard to pursue a career in aviation. Health issues made that impossible, so he became a dental hygienist in San Diego in 1970.
He enrolled at San Diego City College and joined the college’s radio station, where for two years his show featured mainstream jazz. He went on to two years at KPBS and then to KUUMBA radio.
At KUUMBA radio Greg Akili, an activist who worked at the station, dubbed Howard “Tayari,” which means “alert and ready” in Swahili.
Howard said the name was fitting because he was always ready for anything, and anytime a shift at the station opened he was the first to raise his hand.
Howard worked for multiple radio stations in San Diego.
During the day, he used to work in the SDG&E collections department, but at night he drove to Tijuana to record his smooth jazz show for XHRM-FM — operated by entrepreneur Willie Morrow
at the time — because not many stations in San Diego hired Black hosts.
He spent 16 years at XHRM-FM Magic 92.5, and 16 years at Smooth Jazz KIFM 98.1.
Throughout his time as a radio personality, he realized people in San Diego weren’t just recognizing his voice, they were connecting to it. He felt pushed toward philanthropy, he said.
He has supported causes targeting homelessness, poverty, the educational needs of Black children and military veterans.
He also organized many events and festivals in southeastern San Diego. For several years he collaborated with the Coast Guard to fly a Black Santa Claus in a helicopter to southeastern San Diego events.
He has raised about $1.8 million for more than 30 nonprofit organizations, he said.
Once he camped out on the street for several days to raise money for homelessness, and he went to jail for “breaking hearts” to raise money for the American Heart Association.
Longtime friend Michael
Brunker, vice president for mission advancement for the YMCA of San Diego, said Howard has been a great influencer in the San Diego community.
“He is an impact player in the biggest game of all, the game of life, especially when it comes to serving kids and families from San Diego’s most critical communities,” Brunker said.
Brunker commended Howard’s dedication to children in southeast San Diego. Howard helped introduce hundreds of kids to radio through an educational program that operated for 40 years.
Howard says his greatest achievement has been keeping his parents’ dream alive through his own career and his daughters.
“I’ve been the middleman who’s resurrected my mother and father’s legacy and career,” he said.
One of Howard’s daughters, Mercedes Howard, 33, works as an on-air personality at a radio station in Denver.
“He always taught me that you’re basically nothing without your community,” she said.
Another daughter, Summer Johnson, 43, pursued a career in radio and journalism at an early age before switching to a different industry.
Still, she said, she has fond memories of spending time with her father in a radio station.
Both daughters had hoped to plan an in-person celebration for his retirement but decided instead to create an online fundraiser because of the need to keep a social distance during the pandemic.