By RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY
Staff Writer
The Alpine Mountaineer is proud to announce that its senior writer, Douglas Motley, will soon be hosting a weekly radio show on Redlands-based KQLH-FM 92.5.
More details will be available soon in this newspaper on what time and days Motley’s show will be broadcast on the station which is heard throughout most areas of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, including most mountain area communities.
Motley (aka Uncle Mott) is no stranger to broadcast media, having been a co-founder of KNAB Radio Chapman College, where he did a weekly radio show called “DM in the PM” from 1966 to 1970. Prior to that, he had been the lunchtime student DJ at Tustin High School for several years.
He jokingly told The Alpine Mountaineer that the best part of that gig was getting released from PE 15 minutes early each day to set up the record player and select the latest Beach Boys, Beatles, Rolling Stones and other records from that era. Motley laughingly recalled how he ended up in the assistant principal’s office for playing “Louie, Louie,” which supposedly had “dirty lyrics,” even though an investigation by the FBI never could determine what the offensive lyrics were.
After graduating from Chapman College (now Chapman University) in 1971, Motley opened a record store (Jabberwocky Discount Records) at the corner of Tustin and Chapman Avenues in Orange. Two years later, he opened a second location at Lincoln and Knott in Anaheim. Because various record companies (Columbia, Warner Bros, RCA, etc.) offered comp money to promote their latest album releases, Motley started a broadcast advertising agency (Summit Productions) and recorded commercials heard on KEZY-FM in Anaheim, KNAC in Long Beach and KLOS in Los Angeles.
When Motley and his wife relocated to Crestline in 1976, he opened a bike shop (Inland Bicycle Center) on Inland Center Drive, where he recorded commercials that were heard on KFXM, KMEN and KOLA. A few years later, he opened a second location at the corner of 14th and Market Streets in downtown Riverside.
After 10 years in the bicycle business, Motley retired in 1990 and began substitute teaching for all grade levels in the Rim of the World School District, where his students fondly called him “Mr. Motley Crew.” He says he went along with it because it was a lot nicer than some of the other things he was called. After substituting for two years, Motley was hired to teach eighth-grade English/Language Arts at Mary Putnam Henck Intermediate School. That job, he said, only lasted one semester because the district decided they had too many teachers and began laying off teachers.
After that gig, Motley told The Alpine Mountaineer, he went to work for the County Superintendent of Schools office, where he was the teacher, principal designee and chief janitor (he said laughingly) at Rim Forest Community School, an alternative education facility for students sent there in lieu of expulsion.
Following 10 years of teaching alternative ed on the mountain and in San Bernardino, Motley once again retired in 2000. In 2001, he got bored and signed up to write for The Alpine Mountaineer’s predecessor, The Alpenhorn News. “And the rest,” he said, is history.”
Neither rain nor sleet nor snow shall deter Douglas Motley from enjoying a barbecued steak.
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