Don Dresser

For more than thirty years, the people of North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota started their day with Don Dresser.

As a youth, he tinkered with tape recorders and began thinking about a career in radio. He attended Brown Institute, and after graduating in 1956, joined the staff of KTRF Thief River Falls, where he and an engineer developed an echo chamber that amazed listeners. In 1960, he began his long tenure at WDAY Fargo, North Dakota, working a night shift at first.

He took over the morning radio show in 1962, and stayed there for 32 years, turning down opportunities to move to larger markets because he thought the Fargo area was the perfect place to raise his family. Listeners in the Red River Valley loved his excellent voice, his quick wit, his talent for telling tall tales, and the entertaining style that made his program the top-rated show in the region for many years. He is revered as one of the area’s best known and best loved broadcast personalities. In his spare time he restores vintage Volkswagens, and has been an active amateur radio operator for many years. He retired in 1994.

Don Dresser passed away peacefully at the age of 84 on August 18, 2017.