To the editor:
*Editor’s note: This letter was in response to Chris Bartol’s letter published Jan. 10.
Dear Chris,
I was delighted to see the recent piece on WTYN in the Bulletin.  I’ll always consider myself a “WTYN Mom” and am grateful to your dad, Ace and the other staff for letting my son Alfred III start what has turned out to be a wonderful career in broadcasting there in the little studio (around the curve) from Lake Lanier. Your father let him hang around starting at age 13 and eventually hired him to do many of the odds and ends that the older Tryon High students wouldn’t do. He worked there until it was time for him to graduate. I remember his father and I having to drive him in at 5 a.m. every Sunday morning to do what he called run the board for area pastors who purchased airtime. I also would be so proud when I heard him playing the music. I knew that my son loved his days at WTYN and his work there would set him up to achieve great things. His experience at WTYN inspired him to pursue a degree in radio, television and communications at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Alfred’s award winning career has taken him from markets like Raleigh, Richmond and Greensboro, to some of the nation’s top cities including Dallas, Detroit, Washington DC and Baltimore, Maryland, where he is currently Operations Manager/ Program Director of Radio One Inc.’s top cluster of stations. When I’m with him now and see him interacting with his staff and music industry people from around the world, I laugh and think to myself that those 5 a.m. wake up calls to tell him to “turn WTYN on”, were so worth it.
I am so grateful to your father for giving my son a chance.
Kind Regards,
Peggy T.S. Payne,

Allow me to provide some additional context regarding Alfred III ‘s career recognition:
Street Information Network’s Station of the Year 2006, 2008, and 2011
One of Billboard’s Urban Programmers of the Year 2006, 2010 and 2011
Ranked No. 9 on Radio Facts Top 20 Programmers in 2012.
-submitted
by Chris Bartol