Williams Writes Story About CBC Legend for ACE Magazine

WRAL-TV Director/Producer Clarence Williams recently wrote a story about CBC legend J.D. Lewis. Ace Magazine, a free publication about the African American community in the Triangle, published the story in their September-October 2002 edition. Williams is a contributing writer to the fledgling publication. He said of Lewis, "I just feel the need to honor him, for all that he has achieved."

JD Lewis, Jr.
A Living Broadcasting Legend
by Clarence Williams

JD Lewis is a broadcasting legend in the Triangle.

It's been almost five years since John Davis Lewis, Jr. retired from Capitol Broadcasting Company. His broadcasting career spanned over four decades and young folks still seek his advice. "JD" as he is most popularly known, is a living broadcasting legend…not just in North Carolina but in the country.

John Lewis, Jr. has witnessed a myriad of changes in our society since his coming to Raleigh, North Carolina in the 1920's. In 1923, John Lewis, Sr., a young insurance executive, decided to move his family from Oklahoma City to North Carolina.

JD remembers his father and their move to Raleigh. "He fell in love with North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company. It was the larges black business at the time and maybe still is. So, he came, they liked him, and he became manager of the Raleigh insurance district. I was about four years old."

JD grew up on South Bloodworth Street near Shaw University. His neighbors weren't just service workers, but doctors as well as professors form the university. The Lewis children were taught that education was the key through which the Black Race would advance.

JD's boyhood friend, the late Clarence Lightner, explained it best in an interview several years ago. "We were aware of what was happening. We were taught to carry ourselves in a certain manner. To be first class, to get your lessons and to behave yourselves."

A football and track star at Washington High School, JD received a scholarship to his father's alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. After college, he worked briefly for his father and as a clerk in a neighborhood store.

It was there that he met and fell in love with Louise Cox, a high school student. She passed a few years ago, but often recalled how madly in love they were. "I do think that I chased him until he caught me!"

The beginning of World War II revved up the timing for marriage. JD was urged by most of his college classmates to join the ninety-ninth Pursuit Squad, better known as the Tuskegee Airmen. He wanted to stay near his new bride for as long as possible and heard the Marine Corps would finally be accepting blacks within their ranks upon orders from President Roosevelt.

"So I enlisted in the Marine Corps. Blacks were a new experiment as far as the Marines were concerned. I was in the first two hundred black Marines. They called us Montford Point Marines because we were segregated from the white Camp Lejeune contingent, near Jacksonville, North Carolina."

JD was always a good student and the white Marine officers recognized this. He went on to teach math and science to his fellow Marines at the Pacific Fleet School at Pearl Harbor. It was at this same school that he was trained on the new radar equipment. His outfit was then assigned to the Marshals Islands to track Japanese movement.

The experience JD gained in the Marine Corps, in the area of radar electronics, proved to be valuable enough for him to start his own radio and television repair business in Raleigh in 1947. He also built a mobile sound truck with a public address system. The old Negro Baseball League was in full swing and JD was hired to provide the play-by-play accounting of the game using his public address system.

JD Lewis retired in 1997.

His reputation grew in the community and soon crossed the color barrier. In 1948 Fred Fletcher, then Capitol Broadcasting Company's general manager for WRAL-AM radio, heard about him. Mr. Fletcher attended a game and was very impressed. He hired JD as a morning disc jockey. From gospel music to interviews with community leaders, to reading the news…JD worked in radio from 1947 to 1968.

If people didn't know JD from the radio, they saw his work in the community. He is a lifetime member of the NAACP, Omega Psi Phi fraternity, The Urban League, The Boy Scouts of America and the First Baptist Church in Raleigh. When WRAL-Radio paved the way for WRAL-TV in the early 1950's, JD helped Capitol Broadcasting Company secure their FCC license.

JD's personality and good looks made him the perfect host for televisions' Teenage Frolics, a "Soul Train" style dance program, which debuted in 1958. Teenage Frolics went beyond the music and dance to include interviews with top nationally known entertainers as well as community and civic leaders.

It's often said that behind every successful person, you'll find a strong and supportive spouse. JD's wife, Louise Cox-Lewis, was always that special "spot" for JD.

In a 1998 interview, Mrs. Lewis spoke of how they had been married for eleven years when the unexpected happened. "I was told that I would not have children. We went through some years when we considered the possibility of adoption. But low and behold one day the miracle happened. Our oldest son, JD Lewis, III was born in 1949. We considered him a miracle child and believed he wouldn't be the only one. But for the next five years, I was pregnant…one child a year for the next five years!"

Their eldest, JD Lewis III, is a successful Florida attorney. Evelyn Lewis, the second born, was an honor student of Harvard Law and is a nationally renowned professor who presently teaches in California.

Patricia is a speech pathologist here in North Carolina, Yvonne Lewis-Holley is an administrator with the State and the youngest, Lee Lewis, is a child and adolescent substance abuse coordinator.

While serving part-time in broadcasting, JD was a community relation's representative for Pepsi and a project director for the US Labor Department. He was also responsible for job training programs of the Neighborhood Youth Corps.

In 1974, Jim Goodmon, president and CEO of Capitol Broadcasting asked him to come back to work full-time as the corporation's first Human Resources Director. JD went on to do editorials for WRAL and later worked as the Minority Affairs Director Goodmon laud's JD's appointment, "It was really important to me that the company had someone in that role that would keep a pulse on the community's needs. He served his last fifteen years in this capacity with Capitol Broadcasting Company.

After nearly 50 years of service, JD announced his retirement in 1997. The retirement ceremony was held at the Garner Road YMCA. He helped establish this "Y" a few years after WWII and served on its board since the beginning and several years as its chairman. Rather than give him a traditional retirement gift…the company and its philanthropic division, the AJ Fletcher Foundation gave the "Y" a 100,000.00 check in JD Lewis' honor.

JD Lewis, Jr. changed the landscape of the broadcast industry by providing a different perspective and working to achieve a diverse workforce. JD actively worked to open doors, for those he knew as well as those he didn't know. He still lives in Raleigh and is enjoying retirement. JD says, "I still maintain that urge to do more to help others."