KSFR lost a valued member of its extended family April 12 when the station’s former news director Bill Dupuy died after suffering a stroke at his Santa Fe home.
He was 84.
Born in Texas and raised in Baton Rouge Louisiana, Dupuy landed his first job in radio at the age of 17.
Later he worked in news at a major station in Houston before serving as a public information officer in the Air Force. He left the service as a captain.
He moved to San Francisco in 1967, where he met his future wife, Ellen.
Bill Dupuy would go on to work in communications and public information for a range of organizations, including stints with a New Hampshire state college, a cancer research center in Maine, and a bank in Cleveland, Ohio.
After a home swap brought Ellen and Bill Dupuy to Santa Fe in the late 90s, they fell in love with the city, and moved here in 2000.
He was theoretically retired at that time, but wound up taking a job fro a spell as a science writer at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Upon hearing that KSFR was seeking a news director, he jumped back into the journalism business.
During his decade at the station, from about the mid-oughts to the mid-teens, he expanded it from a part-time two-person operation into a thriving and vital news source for the region.
With an emphasis on local news, Dupuy and his team produced 10 or 11 newscasts every day, totalling more than 20,000 hourly updates during his KSFR career.
That’s according to Bill’s KSFR News Blog from 2009, which you can still read today.
Bill Dupuy was known for well-researched, highly detailed reporting and interviews.
He also launched a one-hour noon news magazine for KSFR, working with paid staff and volunteers to produce a program that become must-see listening every weekday.
Here’s a very short sample of Bill Dupuy on his noon news show:
"Block even admitted that he lied about some of those expenses. One of them had to do with several thousand dollars. He said he paid to a country ban for a campaign rally outside the northern New Mexico town of Las Vegas. The band leader happened to be the county clerk at the time and eventually said his group did not play after all.
"We found out that the editor of the newspaper in Las Vegas is among the most recent to testify before that grand jury, .
"David Giuliani is on the line. Can you tell us what you told the grand jury?
"My testimony revolved around emails I had exchanged with the Jerome Block campaign . . . "
After leaving KSFR in his 70s, Dupuy still refused to retire.
From his home studio, he recorded voiceover narrations for a range of books, from westerns to works of history.
Bill Dupuy is survived by his wife Ellen, son Max, and daughter, Nikki.
Ellen Dupuy told KSFR that she plans to schedule a service of remembrance and celebration later this year.
For KSFR News, I’m Rob Hochschild.
