Obituary
Vicki Santa, Tampa radio leader, 56
A 10,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art radio facility stands as a testament to the pubradio passions of Vicki Santa, a station manager at WMNF in Tampa, Fla.
Santa, 56, died in Tampa Dec. 9 [2008] of a pulmonary embolism after a battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, according to a WMNF colleague, Membership Coordinator Gene Moore. She left work more than a year ago for health reasons. The earlier report that she had breast cancer was erroneous, he said.
She served on the board of directors of Pacifica Radio, was active with the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and worked to establish the Grassroots Radio Coalition in 1996.
Santa “really connected with community radio,” says Cathy Melio, one of GRC’s co-founders. “She was passionate about the transparency, the collaborative governance. She was big on grassroots fundraising and progressive news.”
“I always picture her in tie-dye,” Melio adds. “She was a great hippie. But she also had this sharp professional presence.”
Santa began her association with community radio at WMNF decades ago, says Rob Lorei, the station’s news and public affairs director. “Back in the mid-’80s she came to my attention because she was a frequent donor”—often giving three or four times during each pledge week.
“She’d stop into the station from time to time,” he says. “At this point she was very shy. We’d ask her to go on the radio to encourage other donors, and she just couldn’t do it.” But she was always there, sometimes 15 hours a day, even using vacation time to help.
Over the years, “she morphed into a person whose voice took over the fund drive,” Lorei says. She also co-hosted the station’s weekly Freak Show, offering selections of Grateful Dead and similar music.
Santa worked her way to development director in 1998. “She was definitely one of the best development minds in the country,” says Laura Taylor, current WMNF development director. “She had a way of cultivating each donor—from the lowest to highest levels—without seeming elitist.”
In 2000 Santa was promoted to station manager.
Around that time the station, which originally broadcast from an old bungalow, began a capital campaign for a new facility. Santa met with supporters to build a network of 1,000 people who each donated $1,000. That formed the early budget for the building, which grew to over $2 million, Lorei says.
The staff has been in the building—featuring two production studios—for about three years now. “It’s a showpiece,” he says.
Santa “didn’t have a huge ego,” Lorei adds. “She didn’t have to be front and center. Those are the kind of people that give of themselves, that lift others up—the best people.”
She lived simply in a small house—“her source of solace, where she built her strength,” Lorei says—with her longtime partner, Kenneth Wilson, as well as chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, cats, a macaw, two lovebirds, three cockatiels and a dove.
Last January, as she was going through a rough time with cancer, “radio women from all over the country went to see her and support her,” says Melio, a former station manager at WERU in Blue Hill, Maine. “It’s so heartbreaking. She’ll be hugely missed.”
More than 200 friends attended a celebration of Santa's life on Dec. 15, according to Moore.
Friends and colleagues posted memorial remarks on the station's website at www.wmnf.org/Vicki.
Web page posted Dec. 22, 2008, updated Jan. 5, 2009
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC