Kristin Jackson and Doug Raper

[00:03] KRISTIN JACKSON: I'm Kristin Jackson. I'm 41 years old. Today's date is Friday, August 19th, 2022. We're in Boise, Idaho. My interview partner is Doug Raper, and he is my dad.

[00:21] DOUG RAPER: My name is Doug Raper. I'm 72. Today's date is Friday, August 19, 2022. Location in Boise, Idaho. My interview partner is my daughter, as she just pointed out, Kristin Jackson. And again, she's my daughter.

[00:42] KRISTIN JACKSON: All right, dad, you ready for this?

[00:44] DOUG RAPER: I suppose.

[00:45] KRISTIN JACKSON: All right, so I'm going to start off with who has been the biggest influence in your life?

[00:50] DOUG RAPER: Oh, boy, that's a tough one. I have a lot of great influences, general managers that I worked for over the years in radio. But probably the biggest one was the guy who got me into radio, and his name was Bob Hubler. He was a big influence. He got me to join the broadcast Club at Boise State.

[01:16] KRISTIN JACKSON: Was he a professor here?

[01:18] DOUG RAPER: No, he was a student.

[01:19] KRISTIN JACKSON: Oh, he was another student. That's cool. Cool. All right. What are you proudest of?

[01:26] DOUG RAPER: The quality of programming that was done over the years by myself and people who worked for me. We did a lot of amazing things at different stations that I worked for, and I'm proud of what we did. I'm proud of the. When I look at the media today, I'm not so proud, but I am proud of what we did.

[01:50] KRISTIN JACKSON: Awesome. So why did you choose radio as your first career?

[01:55] DOUG RAPER: Well, I was going to Boise State, and my major was elementary education.

[02:00] KRISTIN JACKSON: And you would have been good at that, for the record?

[02:03] DOUG RAPER: Oh, I don't know if I would have or not, but my friend Bob got me to join the Broadcast Club. And since I didn't join any other clubs on campus, I said, sure, why not? So that's where my first experience with radio was, at Boise State. And we didn't have a transmitter or anything, so you couldn't drive down the road and listen to us. You'd have to be in the dorms or in the sub to be able to hear it on the phone line.

[02:32] KRISTIN JACKSON: Oh, it was on a phone line?

[02:33] DOUG RAPER: It was on a phone line?

[02:34] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yes.

[02:35] DOUG RAPER: Yeah, it was on a phone line. So that was my first experience. And I got spending more and more time at the radio station on campus broadcasting. We were playing the hits. And more and more time doing that and less and less time going to class, unfortunately.

[02:57] KRISTIN JACKSON: Sounds like my story.

[02:58] DOUG RAPER: Yeah, maybe I stole that story.

[03:01] KRISTIN JACKSON: I don't know. All right. What was your favorite job you've done in radio? I know you've done a lot from Being a music DJ to being a news director. What was. What was your most rewarding or favorite talk? Talk radio.

[03:13] DOUG RAPER: When I hosted a talk show, yeah, that was the best for me. It was enjoyable. I always told people, I give you more time on the air with me if you disagree with me than if you agree with me. And that's how I ran the show. I always gave the people disagreed more time than I gave the people who agreed with me.

[03:35] KRISTIN JACKSON: Better radio, right?

[03:36] DOUG RAPER: That's right. It was better radio. And, you know, I did. I did that. And I'd say a close, close second as far as favorite jobs was when I owned a small market station and managed it in Weiser And that was. I've never worked harder in my life than I did at that place. But I enjoyed it so much.

[04:02] KRISTIN JACKSON: Didn't you have to boat into work one time?

[04:04] DOUG RAPER: Yeah, we had a. There was a damn in the river there in the Weiser river, an ice dam that formed one winter and it broke and it let all the water behind it out. And we actually boated to work, going over the top of fences and things like that in our boat. And we stayed on 24 hours a day telling people what was going on with the flooding and where you could go and where you couldn't go. And that was the weird thing about it was we had about 5ft of water around the station, and you could. In the middle of the night, you open it up and all you see is black. Ooh. Yeah. It was kind of freaky. But then in the middle of the night, about 3:00 in the morning, there was a knock on the door.

[04:53] KRISTIN JACKSON: Oh, that's super creepy.

[04:54] DOUG RAPER: That was very creepy. So we opened the door and there's this girl there. And she'd been at a party the other side of the flood, just trying to get back to Weiser She had swam over to where we were, and we finally. We couldn't talk her into staying, so we called the sheriff's office and be watching for this girl.

[05:13] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah.

[05:14] DOUG RAPER: Yeah.

[05:15] KRISTIN JACKSON: I can't believe she swam to it.

[05:17] DOUG RAPER: I know.

[05:17] KRISTIN JACKSON: I don't think I'd be that brave.

[05:19] DOUG RAPER: I know. Me neither.

[05:20] KRISTIN JACKSON: Probably ice cold water, too.

[05:22] DOUG RAPER: Ice cold water, yeah.

[05:23] KRISTIN JACKSON: Oh, my goodness. So I know over the years, you've told me a lot of stories about things that you've covered in news, and I just was wondering if you could share with me some of your favorite stories you covered as a reporter.

[05:35] DOUG RAPER: Well, the biggest story that I ever covered was the release of the hostages from the embassy in Tehran. Tehran. There was all kinds of rumors that they were about to be released. They were at the embassy, they were at the airport. They were everywhere. We had ap, UPI, and Reuters wire machines when we were watching to see what was happening with this. I was working at KSL in Salt Lake City at the time in the news department. And we didn't. It was one of those things where you just. You didn't know what was going to change next, what was going to be next. So I got on the. I decided I'm going to try to track this down. So I got on the phone with an operator and I said, I need to get an international operator. So she hooked me up with an international operator who got me a number at the airport in Tehran. And as it happened, the person who picked up the phone when it rang, and a lot of this is luck. You can't plan this. You can't make it up either. But I got to talk to a guard who. Who was standing guard over the hostages. And he spoke English, thank goodness. Again, another lucky break. Could have just gone the other way so easily.

[06:58] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah, no kidding.

[06:59] DOUG RAPER: So I talked to him, and he said he was standing there with an automatic weapon. I got information they were about to go out and get on the plane, which means it was over or about to be over. And so I took all that interview and I put it on the air on ksl. We played the whole thing raw.

[07:18] KRISTIN JACKSON: Wow. Raw.

[07:20] DOUG RAPER: Raw.

[07:20] KRISTIN JACKSON: Wow.

[07:22] DOUG RAPER: And then I fed some of it to cbs and CBS aired it, and they called me a few minutes after they aired it and said, where did you get this? And I said. I explained, as I just explained to you what I had done. So we were the first station anywhere to have that information, and CBS was the first network to have it, thanks to us.

[07:49] KRISTIN JACKSON: Wow. That's cool. Little old Salt Lake City.

[07:52] DOUG RAPER: Little old Salt Lake City, yeah. That was the biggest story that I ever broke. I covered a lot of neat stories over the years. The collapse of the Teton Dam, I went down and covered that in eastern Idaho. And what was interesting was I was driving in to Rexburg, which is where I wanted to be, and the state police had a roadblock up and they wouldn't let me through. And I had a card from the governor saying, let him through. And they wouldn't honor it, seriously. So I went back into Idaho Falls and I saw the Red Cross truck there. And so I went up to the Red Cross guy and said, listen, this is what's going on. I can't get in. Can you help me? And so they let me ride in in the back of the Red Cross truck.

[08:43] KRISTIN JACKSON: Snuck you in?

[08:45] DOUG RAPER: Yeah, they snuck me in. So I was there and covered everything, and then I got a ride out with somebody else back to where my car was parked, so.

[08:52] KRISTIN JACKSON: That's hilarious.

[08:53] DOUG RAPER: That was kind of interesting. Evel Knievels aborted jump over the Snake River Canyon. I was there for that. That was kind of a weird, weird day. They had a fence up around where the rocket was and where the press was, and they had hired the Hell's Angels to guard it, not to let the crowd through. Well, when the rocket took off, the crowd surged forward, and the Hell's Angels ran.

[09:29] KRISTIN JACKSON: Oh, no.

[09:33] DOUG RAPER: So. And there was no fence between us, the press, and the edge of the canyon. So I ran into a tent that was right there, hoping that that would give me some protection. And thank goodness nobody was hurt, including Evil Knavel, who pulled the cord on it before it ever got off. Hardly ever got off the ground. I think he was. I think he was scared. Oh, I'm sure he was, and I don't blame him.

[10:04] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah, I wouldn't want to jump the Snake River Canyon.

[10:07] DOUG RAPER: No, he could have done. He could have gotten further, and he parachuted down into the canyon, and that was that for that day.

[10:17] KRISTIN JACKSON: That's crazy. And didn't you ride in a limo with Ronald Reagan?

[10:20] DOUG RAPER: I did, yeah. That was one of my interviews that I really enjoyed. He came to Boise campaigning for president, and each of the media got to interview him at some point. Mine was the last one on the list, and they had run out of time. They didn't have time for me to do the interview. And so one of his people said, well, how about if you just ride to the airport with us in the limo? So I rode in the limo to the airport with Ronald Reagan, interviewing him while we were going, and then got a ride back to my car. But it was interesting. I actually interviewed him twice. That was the first time. The second time, there was a story. I don't even remember what it was, but it was a story that had some sort of Idaho connection. And so I wanted to get his opinion on it. So I found out from his campaign headquarters that he was at a hotel speaking in Cleveland. So I called the hotel, and I said, can you get a message to Ronald Reagan and ask him to call me? And as soon as I said that, he said, oh, he's just walking by right now. So they handed him the phone. Oh, my gosh.

[11:32] KRISTIN JACKSON: That would never happen today.

[11:34] DOUG RAPER: No, they handed him the Phone. And so I did the interview with him. The next day, I get a call from Ronald Reagan's people and said, is this what really happened? I said, yeah. And they said, we never let him do that.

[11:49] KRISTIN JACKSON: I like it. It sounds like he kind of did what he wanted to do.

[11:51] DOUG RAPER: Yeah, I think he did. So we got the story anyway.

[11:56] KRISTIN JACKSON: That's awesome. So I know that there was a point in your life where you left radio and decided to start your own nonprofit. What drove you to start your own nonprofit?

[12:06] DOUG RAPER: It was just a chance to make a difference. Looking for a way to come into people's lives and. And do something for them rather than just telling stories all day. You're actually involved.

[12:21] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah. Do you want to talk about what the nonprofit was?

[12:23] DOUG RAPER: Yeah. I got out of radio for a while and we did. I did some work for nonprofits that did wishes for children with life threatening illnesses and worked for a couple of those. And then I decided to found my own organization in Boise called Wish Granters, and it's still here. Wish Granters grants wishes to adults who have terminal illnesses. So it's similar to, like, make a wish or whatever, except it's for adults instead of kids. So we come into their lives and try to make a difference for them, trying to give them something to hold on to, something they can look forward to. And sometimes that's easier to do than others. Example, we just had a gentleman who was referred to us for a wish, and he had a terminal case of cancer. And he said, no, I'm not worthy. And we tried to say, no, you are worthy. We want to do something for you. He wouldn't let us. He said, no, you'd do something for someone else. So. So I thought that was pretty cool.

[13:33] KRISTIN JACKSON: What made you decide to make grant wishes for adults? I mean, the kids, you know, they're everywhere.

[13:39] DOUG RAPER: There are. There's lots of children's organizations that do wishes and do amazing wishes, but there are very, very few that do anything for adults, which is why we were formed. The way we were formed was to help adults wishes. Some wishes are the same. You know, you got adults that want to go to Disneyland with their kids, just like there are kids that want to go to Disneyland. But we do a lot of other wishes. There was a lady with terminal cancer whose wish was to have a tree planted in her sister's backyard so that when the sister looks out the kitchen window, she sees that tree and remembers her. That was her wish. That was her wish. We've had wishes to go to Alaska, wishes to go To Hawaii. We had a gentleman, or a lady, I should say with terminal cancer, who wanted to go and see the northern lights in Alaska. So we got her up there. It was easy to get her up there. We can put her on a plane and get her in a hotel. We can do that. There's no guarantee she's going to see the northern lights.

[14:45] KRISTIN JACKSON: Right.

[14:46] DOUG RAPER: There's just no guarantee. And so what happened was they got up there and the first night there was nothing. The second night there was a tiny bit, but hardly you could. You really had to look to see it. And then the third night was magnificent, was amazing. What's funny is, after the second night, when they couldn't see much, she said to her husband, she said, if this is all we see, we have to tell Doug. It was wonderful.

[15:16] KRISTIN JACKSON: Oh.

[15:19] DOUG RAPER: I thought you're worried about me.

[15:21] KRISTIN JACKSON: Of course.

[15:23] DOUG RAPER: I'm not the one here. So that was a neat wish. But meeting celebrities, those are the toughest wishes to do. We do a lot of wishes for items like maybe a computer or something like that that they can use, or a new tv or to see a family member one last time, or to see a friend to go see a friend or have the friend come to them if they can't travel. So in a lot of cases, they can't. They're just not well enough to travel. But we have people. Right now we've got a gentleman who is waiting for windows to be installed in his house. The windows that he had were terrible. We just had one done for a gentleman who wanted new flooring in his garage. The new concrete type flooring.

[16:19] KRISTIN JACKSON: Oh, yeah.

[16:21] DOUG RAPER: And so that got done this week, in fact. So that was kind of cool. So you never know what the wishes are going to be. So we try really hard to make that dream come true, whatever it may be, to the best of our ability. Sometimes it's really tough when you lose them before wish happens. That's the worst part of being involved in this organization. If you lose them before you have it. We just had a couple of, actually three Oregon coast wishes, and they went at different times, but one of them was there for two nights and they had to go home, and they lost them right after they got home. So he saw some of what he was supposed to see and do, but he didn't get to see all of it. Then we had another one who was there for almost the whole time, but he got ill and had to go home. He said, if I'm going to go, I want to do it at home.

[17:27] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah. Which makes Sense.

[17:29] DOUG RAPER: Yeah, it does.

[17:31] KRISTIN JACKSON: And wasn't there a wish for a gentleman who just wanted television in his native language?

[17:35] DOUG RAPER: Yeah, that was an interesting wish. We had a gentleman who had moved here from Bosnia and he didn't speak English, so he had to have a translator. And what he wanted, what he missed the most was being able to see Bosnian TV and watch it in his language. So we started looking, trying to find. We tried the cable companies and satellite companies, who anybody got this kind of programming and nobody did. And we finally found a company in Chicago who did have that service and they donated the service to this gentleman in Boise. And that's what we see a lot. We see people who donate, they don't know these people. They've never seen them, they're never going to see them. But they donate the hotel room, or they donate the use of a rental car, or they donate whatever is needed. We had a gentleman or a lady that went to Hawaii and we had a gentleman here in town that donated the place for them to stay. He had a timeshare on Hawaii that he was going to use.

[18:52] KRISTIN JACKSON: Oh, wow. He canceled his own trip.

[18:55] DOUG RAPER: Canceled his own trip to make this happen for this lady and her family. So that's what you see. People are so good. And unusual wishes. You never know what this person is going to ask for until you do the wish visit. Then you got to work hard and try to make it come true.

[19:19] KRISTIN JACKSON: Awesome. All right, I'm going to switch gears on you a little bit away from career. What is your favorite memory from your childhood?

[19:29] DOUG RAPER: Christmas.

[19:31] KRISTIN JACKSON: Why?

[19:32] DOUG RAPER: I know it was always fun to put up the tree and decorate the tree and have the gifts and Christmas morning was always cool. So yeah, that was my favorite.

[19:43] KRISTIN JACKSON: And what about your favorite memory from my childhood?

[19:46] DOUG RAPER: Same thing.

[19:47] KRISTIN JACKSON: Christmas.

[19:48] DOUG RAPER: Yeah. I can remember you guys standing in the hallway waiting for us to say you could come down to see the gifts. And you had to stay in the hallway. You couldn't come down to see what was under the tree or what Santa had left. And so that was. Those are cool memories. Those are neat things.

[20:03] KRISTIN JACKSON: I remember waking up my brother Todd, who's 10 years older than me, on Christmas morning. Here's a little six year old me. I'm so excited. It's like five in the morning. He's like, Kristin it's five. They said 7:30. But he'd have to get up and sing Christmas songs with me for two hours before we could go. Before we could go upstairs.

[20:25] DOUG RAPER: Yeah.

[20:25] KRISTIN JACKSON: He didn't have a choice. He had to do what I wanted I was six.

[20:28] DOUG RAPER: You're now doing that with your son. You made him stand in the hall, right?

[20:31] KRISTIN JACKSON: I make him stay in his bedroom. I won't even let him come in the hallway.

[20:34] DOUG RAPER: Oh, okay.

[20:37] KRISTIN JACKSON: All right. If you were to give your three kids any advice, what would it be?

[20:43] DOUG RAPER: Never give up. Never, you know, stand. Stand for your beliefs. Even if it's something that is hard to do. And sometimes. Sometimes it is. I faced that problem when I was at KXLY in Spokane. I was the director of news and programming, and we had a problem disagreement with the general manager about way things should be done. And he wanted me to fire several other staff members. And I said, no, if you need to cut back on staff, take my job. Which is what he did.

[21:29] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah.

[21:29] DOUG RAPER: So. But it was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do. Those people didn't deserve it, so they didn't have to go. They got to keep their jobs.

[21:41] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah. That's cool. What is your favorite part of being a parent?

[21:50] DOUG RAPER: I want to say, watching you guys grow up, but that's not true because I want to keep you small. You know what that's about?

[21:58] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yes, I do.

[22:00] DOUG RAPER: Yeah. It's the love, I guess. You know, when you know you're loved and you love back. That goes for kids or grandkids or anything like that.

[22:15] KRISTIN JACKSON: That was going to be. My next question is, what's your favorite part of being a grandparent?

[22:19] DOUG RAPER: Well, I don't have to worry about. I can feed them full of candy and then send them home.

[22:23] KRISTIN JACKSON: Rude. Which you do all the time.

[22:27] DOUG RAPER: And that's true. You hear that a lot. But it's true. They get away with a lot more at Papa's house.

[22:35] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yes, they do. Well, Papa would let me. That's what I hear.

[22:38] DOUG RAPER: Well, and he's probably right. I probably would.

[22:43] KRISTIN JACKSON: Oh, that's funny. What are your hopes for what the future holds for your family?

[22:50] DOUG RAPER: I hope that, you know, with all the problems in the world today, with the wars and the disease and, you know, all this stuff is going, that they're not impacted too greatly by it. And by that, I mean, not just that they get this disease or they end up in a war zone or something like that, but that their souls are still intact. That it doesn't destroy them as an individual, because it can happen so easily. It can with all the stuff that's going on. You know, I thought I saw a lot in news when I was covering that, but it's nothing compared to what we're facing in this world now.

[23:38] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah. I think about that a lot working at a news organization. I'm regularly grateful that I'm no longer the reporter out on the beats doing the hard reporting. And I think a lot about the toll that must take on. On those people in our organization who are out telling those heartbreaking stories.

[23:59] DOUG RAPER: Yeah. Yeah, it does. And it's just. You can't control it. You can't stop it by yourself. But you can make as much a difference as you can in your life and stand up, as I said before, and say, no, this isn't right. And the more of us that do that, the better.

[24:21] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah. How do you want to be remembered?

[24:28] DOUG RAPER: As a person who cared, As a person who had fun? Don't worry about that because you've got lots of stories. I'm sure that would embarrass me. Yeah. As an individual who always worked to make it whatever I was working on to make it the best it could possibly be. I can remember when I was working in radio and we had to dub spots to be played in the programming network spots that we had to do in the programming. And I was in dubbing this stuff and. And getting it ready to play on the air because it had to be a certain length because it only fit in a certain hole. And I would get so angry. You remember?

[25:28] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yep.

[25:29] DOUG RAPER: I would get angry because it wasn't coming out to exactly what I needed the time to be. And so I'd have to change it again and change it again and change it again.

[25:41] KRISTIN JACKSON: Take out every little breath.

[25:43] DOUG RAPER: Take out. Yeah. I was pretty good at editing. I could take out a breath easily if I needed to shorten something.

[25:50] KRISTIN JACKSON: Well, thank you for that skill, because I now have that skill. I can take out any breath in anything.

[25:56] DOUG RAPER: Yeah. That's what I did. And I did it manually. You do it?

[25:59] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah. I didn't have to cut tape. I just have a big computer screen.

[26:03] DOUG RAPER: Yeah. Yeah.

[26:05] KRISTIN JACKSON: All right. And if this was our very last conversation, is there anything you'd want to say to me?

[26:12] DOUG RAPER: Well, first of all, I don't know. I could think about that, so stop it.

[26:16] KRISTIN JACKSON: You didn't want to see these questions beforehand. It's your own fault. You didn't know this was coming.

[26:21] DOUG RAPER: Tell me, what's the question again?

[26:22] KRISTIN JACKSON: If this was our very last conversation, is there anything you'd want to say.

[26:25] DOUG RAPER: To me other than I've always loved you from the moment I saw you or before? Before the moment I saw you and always will.

[26:38] KRISTIN JACKSON: Is there anything you want to ask me?

[26:42] DOUG RAPER: How did you talk me into doing this?

[26:45] KRISTIN JACKSON: I'm very convincing myself. I'm good at getting people to do what I want them to do.

[26:53] DOUG RAPER: You are. You always have been. You were always kind of that way with your sister, too.

[26:59] KRISTIN JACKSON: I can't get her to do anything I want her to do. Do you have a message for your kids that you would want to leave?

[27:09] DOUG RAPER: Hang in there. Hang in there and keep working at it. You know that's what I'm going to do.

[27:15] KRISTIN JACKSON: Good. That's what we want from you.

[27:18] DOUG RAPER: Yeah, well, too bad.

[27:20] KRISTIN JACKSON: We want you around. Yeah, until you're 103. You promised. I'm sorry. You promised me when I was, like, 6, and you're stuck with it now.

[27:30] DOUG RAPER: Well, that's it. I have to see how that works.

[27:36] KRISTIN JACKSON: All right. That's all the questions I have. Is there anything else?

[27:39] DOUG RAPER: No, nothing I had, no.

[27:41] KRISTIN JACKSON: Well, thank you so much for doing this with me today. I appreciate it.

[27:45] DOUG RAPER: All right. Thanks for having me in here.

[27:47] KRISTIN JACKSON: Yeah. I love you now.

[27:49] DOUG RAPER: I love you, too. Go out in the heat and have a fun day.

[27:54] KRISTIN JACKSON: It's only gonna be 90 today. You'll be fine.

[27:56] DOUG RAPER: Okay.

[27:57] KRISTIN JACKSON: It.