Lorenzo Wilson Milam, The Johnny Appleseed Of Independent Community Radio, Dead At 86

He didn’t start the community radio movement (that was Lew Hill of Pacifica), but, as one radio historian wrote, “if Lew Hill fathered the movement, Lorenzo Milam reared it.” He founded independent, community-supported stations in Seattle (KRAB-FM), St. Louis, San Francisco, Portland, Dallas, and other cities, and he even wrote a guide to starting up a station, titling it Sex and Broadcasting. A polio survivor, he spent later life as a writer (The Cripple Liberation Front Marching Band Blues; Cripzen: A Manual for Survival) and published two literary journals. – The New York Times