Built radio station into what it is today

Mario Valdes, an architect by trade who became the architect of public radio station KRCC (91.5 FM), died on Friday of complications from lung cancer. He was 54.

“He really embodied the spirit everybody here has with the station and the community,” said Delaney Utterback, KRCC’s general manager.

Valdes started at the station as a volunteer in 1979, became KRCC’s manager and first paid staff member the following year, and then ran the station for 26 years. He left the station last year after a dispute with Colorado College, which owns KRCC, about funding.

Much of what listeners hear on KRCC today comes from Valdes’ tenure.

When he started, the station would simply go silent whenever the college went on summer break. He helped make KRCC the National Public Radio affiliate in southern Colorado in 1984, and started a local news program in 2005.

“That’s a loss,” said Lou Mellini, general manager for the commercial radio stations KILO (94.3 FM) and KYZX (103.9 FM).

“I think he really brought excitement to public radio and college radio,” Mellini said. “You think of all the years and how he really built KRCC.”

Valdes was born in Havana, Cuba, then grew up in New York City, where his family moved when he was 2. He studied architecture at Oklahoma State University and moved to Denver and then Colorado Springs after graduating.

His radio career grew from his extensive record collection. Valdes volunteered for a music show on KRCC, and radio gradually edged out architecture in his life.

“When you have a mind for building things, what you build is kind of besides the point,” Valdes said in a 2006 Gazette interview.

Although Valdes didn’t work at KRCC for the past year, Utterback said he continued to be very much a part of the station.

“KRCC was really an organic thing to him,” Utterback said. “He never really left here — I would go and ask him questions. It was all still first person: It was ‘our’ stuff and where do ‘we’ stand on that. It really was what he did.”

Valdes is survived by his son, Adam, his sisters, Joyce Skowron and Frances Collado, and his father, Mario.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0275 or awineke@gazette.com