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Darryl Evans
was born in Altoona, PA about ninety miles east of Pittsburgh. He later came
to California where he attended college at both Valley College in the San
Fernando Valley, and also the Don Martin School of electronics in Hollywood,
earning an FCC (Federal Communications Commission) first-class license.
Darryl even started work at a radio station in the 1960's when he was only
fifteen years of age. He worked the midnight to four a.m. shift during the
last two years of high school. School was from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and
then he could catch a couple of hours of sleep, before beginning work again
at midnight. He had always dreamed of being a sportscaster like Vin Sculley
(baseball) and Chick Hern (basketball). In 1958
he interviewed DJ (Disk Jockey) Eliot Field for a social studies class that
he was taking. Field was an on-air personality with KFWB, who invited Darryl
to a March of Dimes dance and social gathering for which Field was the DJ.
Darryl was impressed and amazed by the people at the dance because they were
able-bodied people enjoying the dance with the disabled people and having a
great time together. When
Darryl was fifteen, he was on the radio introducing R&B (soul) music to a
wide range of listeners at KBLA in Burbank. He then went on to other radio
stations in Indio, CA, Las Vegas, NV, Winston-Salem, NC, Winslow, AZ, Belen,
NM, Brownville, TX, Monterey, CA, and then back to the Los Angeles area. Any
of you that may have been in a radio station would remember how much
intricate machinery the disc jockey has to operate rapidly. This calls for a
lot of manual dexterity and Darryl uses his hands accurately despite pain.
Considering the fact that Darryl Evans has a very painful form of Arthritis
throughout his body including both of his hands, it is hard to believe that
he is a successful disc jockey who must use his hands at every moment he's at
work, but he does it very well. Darryl
also works closely with the three entertainment unions, AFTRA (American
Federation of Television and Radio Artists), SAG (Screen Actors Guild), and
AEQ (Actors Equity). Darryl constantly works on behalf of performers with
disabilities trying to make the "people in charge" aware of the
talented pool of people with disabilities not only ready, but trained and more
than willing to work in the industry. Another thing that Darryl is trying to
do is to educate all the powers that be in the entertainment field and
society in general about the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) to which
he has been devoting himself since 1990 when President Bush signed the ADA
into law. "Of the 49 million people in the United States with
disabilities (17% of the population) less than 1% are currently working in
the entertainment business, thereby making the disabled the largest invisible
minority group in the U.S.," Darryl Evans says. Notes: Darryl
introduced us to Liz Conejo. To find
out more about the ADA, go to the What's Happening Around Town
link. It lists when and where the performers with disability meetings and the
ADA meetings are held. |
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