BRANDYWINE HUNDRED — Traditional media met social media on Oct. 17 at Immaculate Heart of Mary School.
Mike Rossi, the longtime Delaware radio personality, met with middle-school students who completed an assignment based on Rossi’s signoff from 99.5 WJBR, the Wilmington fixture that went off the air in September after being purchased and reformatted into a Christian station.
Teacher Vickie Smith saw a post on Facebook about Rossi’s emotional signoff, which ended with the playing of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” He ended his first show in high school with the same song. Smith and the students studied the history of WJBR and its role in the community, along with changes in how media is received, and she asked them to write about what song they would have played if they had to say goodbye. Rossi saw the post and contacted IHM to see if he could meet the students.
Smith said she heard the audio online, and she wanted her class to experience something similar.
“I heard the emotion in his voice, and I thought that they needed to see something that has been so important to the community for so long,” she said. “It went amazing. They really worked really hard. They had lots of fun with it.”
Rossi told the students about his career in becoming a disc jockey, music director and program director in his hometown. He spent decades at 93.7 WSTW and other stations before moving to WJBR two years ago, where he became the midday host.
A native of Edgemoor Gardens, Rossi attended a Mount Pleasant High School basketball game when he was in eighth grade. He doesn’t remember the score or who won, but he’ll never forget looking across the gymnasium and seeing the setup of the student-run radio station, 91.7 WMPH. He was hooked.
“I just knew that was something I had to do,” he told the students, and by the end of October of his freshman year at Mount, he was on the air.
In an interview after the students left, Rossi told Smith how much he liked her assignment. Although he didn’t get around to talking about their song choices, he said they ranged from old to new. He didn’t know that he would pick a 50-year-old song if he had the same assignment when he was in sixth grade.
“That’s one of the things that is fascinating about this era of music. It’s held, that style of music has pretty much held for 60 years or so,” he said.
The most-selected songs, according to Smith, were “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, “American Pie” by Don McLean, “You’ve Got a Friend” by James Taylor, “Never Grow Up” by Taylor Swift, and “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles.
Over the course of his career, Rossi — a member of St. Cornelius Parish in Chadds Ford, Pa. — had the opportunity to rub elbows with plenty of celebrities. He showed pictures of himself with a number of them, including Janet Jackson, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars and Katy Perry. The two that got the most reaction from the youngsters, however, were those of Rossi with Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.
He recounted meeting Bieber at the WSTW studios in Brandywine Hundred before he became Justin Bieber. When guests would visit, the station would take them out to lunch or dinner. That’s how Rossi and his daughter ended up having pizza with Bieber at Chuck E Cheese on Silverside Road.
He told the students that anything is possible, “no matter what it is you want to do. I grew up here. I played baseball at St. Helena’s. I have been exceptionally blessed.”
He warned them about the dangers of believing everything they read on social media. As a media professional, he had to verify anything he reported over the air. Being first is not as important as being right.
“Like most people, the people who are posting are not schooled in journalism,” he said.
Rossi signed a few autographs for the students after his talk, seeming a bit surprised that his final segment at WJBR has had this kind of reach.
“They tell me that it’s been seen over 23,000 times,” he said. “That’s crazy.”
