COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—”I’m not afraid of what’s on the way.”
This summer, after nearly 30 years as a radio newsman, Gary Street knew his time was almost up. Compiling a weather report, a simple task that used to take Street, 52, a couple of minutes, sometimes required 45 minutes. His voice was steady, but his hands shook so much, he couldn’t read scripts or use a computer mouse.
“Gary, he was always plugging through,” said Jason Janc, program director at KRXP (103.9 FM). “It was hard to see him walk away because he didn’t want to. Mentally, it’s all still there. It’s just physical.”
Being on the radio was Street’s dream job. He was on the air at 5:30 a.m. every day, volunteered for weekend shifts and never took his vacation time. In July, three years after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, it was time for him to leave the air.
“It was hard on him,” said Ross Ford, morning host and program director at KRXP’s sister station, KILO (94.3 FM). “I remember his last newscast. He was, I’m not going to stutter!’ He wanted it to be perfect.”
“Parkinson’s is just a pain in the ass,” Street said.
Four years ago, Street was having problems typing. He thought it might be carpal tunnel syndrome. He went to a chiropractor, thinking the problem could be a pinched nerve. Finally, his doctor ran some tests and told him it was Parkinson’s.
“I didn’t know all the symptoms,” Street said. “If I had, I would have been a little more frightened.”
Tremors, difficulty moving, problems with balance and a fixed expression are common symptoms of the disease. His entire life, Street said, he slept face-down on his bed, spread-eagle. If he tries that now, he’ll be unable to move his legs and be stuck, trapped, until he can throw himself into a different position that cracks the paralysis. The same thing, called bradykinesia, can happen when he’s sitting—he’ll need to get up and move, or face being rooted in place.
“I’ll try to rock back and forth and that will make my foot come out enough to break it,” Street said. “In most cases that works, but it’s growing in intensity.”
There are pills that help, allowing him to drive or walk or bowl with his Friday night league. But the relief lasts only for short periods and he can take only six pills a day, so he has to ration them.
“The one thing I’m worried about is the cat getting hold of one,” Street said. “I don’t know what that would do to him.”
“What you heard on the air was Gary Street,” said “Captain” Dan Jackson, the morning DJ at KKLI (106.3 FM), who gave Street his first job in radio in 1980 at the old KYSN. “His gentle, easy-going nature on the air is the way he is in person.”
In a business with outsized personalities, Street comes across as shy and reserved. Tall and gangly, Street looks like a goateed scarecrow. His humor is dry and sly and his passions run toward sports (his cat is named Herman, after George Herman “Babe” Ruth, and Street literally wrote the book on Colorado College’s football program—”A History of Colorado College Tiger Football”).
Street grew up here, graduated from Palmer High School, then did a stint in the Air Force. He was stationed near San Antonio in the mid 1970s, Street recalls, when he first thought of becoming a DJ.
“I thought, This would be a great job’—make a lot of money, crack jokes on the radio and play great music,” Street said. “Of course, none of that turned out to be true.”
He studied radio at Pikes Peak Community College, then started at KYSN. News came later, when he was at KKCS and KHT in 1982. In 1985, he moved to KILO. He stayed until 1993, when he got a job at KOA (850 AM) in Denver. KOA was the big time, with an entire staff of reporters and a dog-eat-dog, corporate mentality. Street felt out of place.
“I learned a lot, but I found that if that was going to be my job, I wouldn’t want to do it,” he said.
He came back to the Springs and spent five years at KVOR (740 AM), then moved to KRXP (then called “The Eagle”) in 1999.
On July 8, he hung it up.
“I knew I had become a liability,” Street said. “The money I was making for the job I was able to do was just not worth it. I didn’t think it was fair to be doing that.”
Were Street a different kind of guy, Ford said, “people wouldn’t be lining up to help him out.”
Street worked as long as he felt he could, but his disease was progressing.
“I had some rough newscasts,” he said, “the worst I’ve ever done.”
Quitting was no simple matter. Parkinson’s is a debilitating disease, not a deadly one.
Without a job, Street had to figure out if he could make ends meet for the rest of his life. He’s not a wealthy man, although his car and his townhouse are paid for. He qualified for disability when he left the radio station, then for Social Security this fall.
“If I’m careful, I can make it,” Street said.
He stays in touch with radio friends and still has a mailbox at the station. He attends support group meetings once a month and helped organize a Parkinson’s fundraiser this year.
“I find it inspiring,” he said. “Some of the people who show up the meetings are far more progressed than I am and they still get up and get things done.”
“My daughter thinks Gary’s this huge celebrity,” said Michelle Quintana, a teammate on his bowling team. “She brags at school that she knows Gary from KILO.”
Street’s team, the T-Devils, has bowled together for 13 years. His scores, he said, have fallen from 176 to 137. Street doesn’t entirely blame Parkinson’s—his scores were headed south before he was diagnosed.
“At some point it’s got to hit bottom,” he said.
At a recent Friday game, Street froze standing over the ball return and started to fall. His teammates rushed to prop him up.
“They jumped in and took me away like there was an ambulance in the parking lot for me,” he joked.
A couple of weeks later, he bowled a 180.
“It’s an interesting disease, I’ll give you that,” Street said.
Actor Michael J. Fox, who has become the face and voice of Parkinson’s, once said he wouldn’t trade his life now to be cured of the disease.
“I know how he feels,” Street said. “Since I’ve been diagnosed, I’ve rekindled old friendships and made new ones. I find myself stepping outside of my comfort zone. I’ve shaken more hands in the last three years than I have in the rest of my life.”
It’s not that Street doesn’t hope for a cure, but he’s not counting on it. He focuses on small goals—tips for coping. A heavier pen helps steady his handwriting. Walking and exercise help offset the disease’s symptoms. He worries about the stairs in his home, but figures the worry keeps him focused. He’s trying a mustard concoction to alleviate the constant foot cramps.
It’s not, he said, a bad life.
“Everybody’s got something,” Street said. “Mine’s just a little more visible than others.”
