Jane Blume (1942-2013): Woman of the World
Jane Blume interviews literary and musical luminaries
Jane Soifer Blume was a woman who not only touched lives but changed them as well. Brooklyn born, Blume made a mark across the United States, both in radio and the communications field while finding time to explore nearly every aspect of the human experience.
After studying literature and Russian language at Vassar College and the University of Pennsylvania, Jane embarked on a life with her late husband Phillip Blume that led the couple to a final home at the base of the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque and at KUNM.
Before hitting the airwaves of 89.9 FM Albuquerque, Ms. Blume steeled her radio skills at Minnesota Public Radio, and community radio station KBOO in Portland, Oregon, where she was public affairs director. In 1992, she landed the job of interim general manager for KUNM.
Paul Ingles, producer of Peace Talks Radio and rock n’ roll audio historian par excellence, wrote about the woman with a “big toothy” smile’s impact on his life shortly after her passing in 2013.
“Jane Blume hired me at KUNM in 1993. In some ways she saved my professional life as I had been chewed up and spat out enough times in 16 years of commercial radio work of all kinds up to that point. By giving me a chance as production director at KUNM, in public radio she opened up a new world in which to apply my radio skills that set the direction for everything I’ve been doing since,” Ingles wrote in Zounds!
“At the time, Jane was interim General Manager of the station, which was still reeling a bit from the years known around here as the Radio Wars when professional managers and the volunteers whose hands and hearts actually operated the station did not get along. There were walkouts and lawsuits and Jane Blume was appointed from within the KUNM community and handed the challenging task of bringing everyone back together again. Small in stature but fair-minded, empathetic and tough when she needed to be, Jane got KUNM balanced again to move forward.”
To her credit, and to the benefit of New Mexico, Jane did not abandon KUNM after a permanent general manager was hired in 1994. Really, she was just getting started at the station.
During the next 19 years of volunteer service to KUNM, Blume’s voice was heard as a deejay on the Saturday morning Folk Routes program, as the moderator with poignant questions on KUNM’s election night coverage, and as the host of University Showcase, a half-hour public affairs program where Ms. Blume interviewed scores of UNM scholars on an impressive array of topics. In this way, she bridged academia with community, an often vexing challenge.
“I recall working with her and Kathy Sabo on a live broadcast from Johnson Gymnasium when President Bill Clinton hosted an economic summit,” Ingles added. “Jane was always eager to be part of a well-planned and important broadcast. We went into the state prison together for one of the long-running Outta Joint at The Joint annual broadcasts of a prison family day.”
First produced in 1981, a year after the infamous Santa Fe prison riot left 33 inmates dead, Outta Joint at the Joint enjoyed a 15-year run on KUNM that featured live bands and afforded get togethers between prisoners and their loved ones.
“Every once in a while I run into an ex-inmate and they say it’s cool. It was the only time I could sit down and relax with the family,” said former KUNM deejay and Outta Joint at The Joint producer/host Charlie Zdravesky. “It was really for the families, so they could have a normal day once and now and then.”
On regular Saturday mornings, Jane was among the rotating hosts of the Folk Routes program. “She as really partial to the early folkish stuff,” said co-host Claude Stephenson. “She played a lot of the stuff none of us would touch a lot like Paul Robeson, Burl Ives, Oscar Brand. She kind of gravitated toward that old spectrum of stuff….and every now and then she’d go off in that Yiddish vein.”
Sometimes, though, Jane would not make the show. “She’d always have the craziest excuses for not doing a show. One time the evening before the show she was attacked by a hawk or falcon that chased her home. She was so shook up about that she wouldn’t come to her radio show. (Folk Routes co-host) Rachel and I laughed about that,” Stephenson said.
In yet another contribution to the radio world, Jane occasionally contributed English-language voice-overs for KUNM volunteer and journalist Kent Paterson’s news reports and documentaries on events south of the border.
“Her voice helped bring the voice of Spanish-speaking people who often have no voice in the decision making sphere of their own country to an English dominant audience in the United States. She helped spread awareness of developments in Mexico that might not otherwise be known,” Paterson said. “Jane was naturally curious about what was happening in our neighboring country, and visibly moved by many of the stories. She truly was a woman of the world.”
Juliette Craig, former KUNM volunteer coordinator, recalled Jane Blume’s impact on her life.
“Jane Blume had a colorful personality. She was outgoing, positive, warm, and super friendly! I knew her when she was the Interim General Manager of KUNM. She hired me to serve as the Interim Volunteer Coordinator. I had some past experiences that made me leery of female bosses, but Jane Blume changed all that,” Craig said.
“Jane was always striving to lift others up. She had a passion for social justice, and grass roots organizing. She offered to mentor me and invited me to join a local chapter of Women in Business. She taught me how to network and to work within a team.”
According to Craig, “Jane was a bundle of energy. In the mid 1990s, she was passionate about health care. She organized a Town Hall style meeting in her home. She believed health care should be a civil right, affordable and open to all. She was a crusader for civil liberties and admired musicians like Pete Seeger. Jane was an intellectual, who viewed public radio as a gem of inclusivity…I am better for having known her!”
Our “bundle of energy” pursued just as active a life outside KUNM as inside it. Jane founded and operated the Desert Sky Communications public relations and marketing firm. She also belonged to the Society for the Advancement of Consulting (SAC), Institute of Management Consultants, the Association for Women in Communications and the Northern New Mexico Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). Prior to Albuquerque, Ms. Blume did public relations work for the Portland Opera.
According to the SAC, Jane was a “dynamic and inspiring speaker who can deliver at least one dozen talks and seminars on public relations, marketing, advertising and hiring a management consultant.”
For her assorted professional achievements, she won awards from the NAWBO, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the New Mexico Associated Press, among others.
“Having Jane in your life was like dancing with a partner who glides along with you — smoothly, yet solid, in rhythm…” wrote Roberta Guise on the Institute of Management Consultant’s blog.
In June 2013, only a few months before her sudden death, Jane became the first inductee into the New Mexico Association for Women in Communications’ Hall of Fame.
Jane’s family members recalled an intellectually engaged woman who also enjoyed Israeli folk dancing and playing Scrabble. Son Arthur Blume told the Albuquerque Journal about his parents’ generosity, even to the point of bringing lonely strangers they had met in the airport home during holidays.
“Whatever organization she joined, she would end up as president,” daughter Kathryn Blume was quoted in the Journal. “It was never a search for power; it was always a deep commitment to what she was doing, and the capacity to very generously support everyone she was working with.”
In her long journeys through radio land, Jane developed a philosophy of public/community radio and where KUNM fits into it. Writing in the April 1994 edition of Zounds!, she surveyed changing demographics, innovations in broadcast technology and differences in the governance structures and program formats of KUNM and other university stations affiliated with NPR.
“While those other stations do carry some locally-oriented programs, most of the shows they broadcast come off the public radio satellite. More often than not, the stations are on the air from about 6 a.m. to Midnight, and the announcers and program hosts are all paid staff. KUNM, on the other hand, broadcasts a 24-hour schedule; on average, over two thirds of our weekly programming hours are locally generated; and the hosts are virtually all volunteers.”
Perceptive of long-range trends beginning to sweep the radio industry, Blume pondered a question that still is very important today in a world where Facebook, YouTube, Audio Vault and a zillion podcasts- not to mention satellite radio- vie for your eyes, ears, e-mail and expense accounts.
“What will happen to KUNM then? The station will be able to survive only if we develop more local programming (to meet local community needs) than we have on the air today. That is the challenge we must meet. In the meantime, we do have a base of local programming on which to build. Most NPR affiliates do not, and the subject is not even being discussed openly on a national basis…” she wrote.
“The station is fortunate to be in a community that so strongly supports what we do. In return, we will be striving to do better, and to develop an ever stronger local focus than we currently have.”
In September 2013, Jane was suddenly diagnosed with leukemia and died a few days later at the age of 70. She was survived by her son Arthur, daughter Kathryn, two granddaughters, a sister and a brother. Jane was preceded in death by six years of her husband Phillip, whom she missed profoundly. And here at KUNM, some of us who have been around for more than a little while fondly recall and sincerely miss that creative, vivacious woman of the world who touched and enriched the lives of so many in different ways.
Information: Paul Ingles, Juliette Craig, Kent Paterson, Charlie Zdravesky, Claude Stephenson, Albuquerque Journal, September 20, 2013. Zounds! April 1994. Society for the Advancement of Consulting, Institute of Management Consultants.
edited by Kent Paterson
