I met Martha Zoller sort of the way thousands of others do. As part of my early work at WSB Radio, Scott Slade, broadcast icon and not quite four decades long host of “Atlanta’s Morning News with Scott Slade,” began a Sunday morning edition of his Monday-Friday show. However, the AMN Sunday Edition was long form radio, much more like CBS Radio with Charles Kuralt or Charles Osgood. Though born and raised around Griffin, Ga., Slade has a Midwestern accent and a deep, authoritative voice that you know and trust.
Scott’s voice introduced me to a radio colleague and already friend of his, Martha Zoller, already a dozen years into her radio career, as the host of “The Martha Zoller Show” on WDUN-AM 550, then and now sort of the North Georgia and Gainesville-based equivalent of WSB and the heart of the Jacobs Media Group. Scott assembled a round-table of journalists and pundits who would gather and tape each Friday, a roughly 7.5-15 minute segment typically consuming the final quarter of the hour long AMN Sunday Edition.
The group varied, but regulars included the AJC’s Jim Galloway and Greg Bluestein, Lori Geary (then of WSB Action News and now host of The Georgia Gang on Fox 5) and more often than most featured Martha Zoller. The banter was quick, witty and always civil. Martha was the most conservative voice in this small circle, but always cheery in making her case.
I knew of Martha because of her clout within the Georgia GOP and campaign media circles. Republican and Democratic candidates, nominees and incumbents alike had her number on speed dial, and she had theirs. Very few of them would pass through Gainesville, or enter or exit a campaign season without making a pit stop to sit down and chat with the one and only Ms. Zoller.
She would later spend a few years doing radio with another group in Athens and with a friend and colleague, Tim Bryant. Both Martha and Tim are conservatives and Martha is additionally a Christian Conservative. On many topics and issues, then and now, we didn’t quite see eye to eye, but even when disagreements were substantive, she always did her homework, and the tone was always upbeat, respectful and kind.
For the last four years and change, every Wednesday morning between 10 and 10:30, I would join Martha for Crane’s Corner, a regular weekly segment on her show. It was wonderful, live radio, which I hoped sounded like two good friends having coffee and catching up (as that in part, is what it was). But at least for me, it was a lot more than that.
I would lose my mother almost at the start of this shared weekly coffee. My twin grandsons, the Might Mites, would become social media darlings and later a third, the Tiny Tyke would join the family. Martha noted, commented and complimented each addition.
Within days of going public about a year and change ago with a rather dire cancer diagnosis and prognosis, again Martha was among the first of many friends to call, check in and ask if I needed to take some time away from her show. I chose just the opposite, as her program often lined up with my then twice monthly chemo visits, we frequently sat in the virtual Crane’s Corner while I was in the chemo chair at my oncologist’s office.
In February of this year, Martha had a cardiac episode. The heart attack got her attention. Very active and vital, she shared that stress was her cardiologist’s key concern, If she didn’t reduce those daily doses that a several hour live radio show can induce, that stress might start making some choices for her. Martha called to share her plans to retire from her daily show at the end of June. Friday, June 26th was her last planned regular show. God apparently had other plans for Martha.
Martha was a loving mother and wife, also a business partner in her husband’s medical practice and staffing enterprises, a loyal UGA Bulldog and Grady College grad, a member of the State Board of Education, longtime GOP grass roots activist and even more loyal as a mentor and friend. Wednesdays will no longer be quite the same for me … and along with a few thousand others across north Georgia, I am going to miss getting a chance to regularly hear from my dear friend, Martha Zoller.
